Category jesus

Jesus Longest Prayer on Jesus Longest Night

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John  17 1-11

Todays readings are perfectly set   at a pivotal, moment in the story,


It’s Midnight just before he is arrested, he knows what’s coming, he knows the symbolism of this happening at this moment.. It’s the Jewish day of atonement,.Every year on this day (Leviticus 16), the high priest of Israel would enter the holiest part of the temple and offer three prayers: for himself, his fellow priests and all the people of God.

 Then  would bring out  the sacrificial lamb and declare it the object that carried all their sin. Then the lamb would be killed be killed, making them right with god.    

As the high priest jesus says three prayer

By praying these three prayers today, Jesus has become the priest that’s entering the holiest place, and by his sacrifice he has also made  himself the sacrificial lamb on atonement day, for all of us.

In The first prayer. He asks for glory,  so he can glorify god.

Stating the gift his sacrifice brings, confirming his role in that gift, and how long the world had waited for this moment.

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

This is Jesus saying, he knows he has the power to do what he needs to, and he is determined to finish the task God gave him, long before the world began

Then he does something akin to what we may have done in his place if we had to leave our children in another’s care. He prays  for his  them , and then Asks the person that’s caring for them, to do certain things.

I remember once my mother was really ill, and my dad had to work as we didn’t have much money in those days. We knew how many dinners were left that week in those days, so dad had to work.   I was around  9 , my younger, brother was 6, and my elder brother 12, too young to look after us both, feed us, get us to school etc while dad did long hours to feed us.

So aunties and grandparents stepped in and looked after us until she returned.

My mum left them a  note asking them to do certain things for us while she was away,.

This is Jesus asking God to do the same, praying for the people  he is about to leave. His disciples

He  is praying  for his disciples, which means US.

Asking God to look after us.

All of us.
We here today, all the disciples before and all those that come after us.

This and what

He asks for tells us a lot  about us, and how we got here today.


6 “I have revealed you[a] to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 

I love that so much don’t you?

God gave all of  to jesus, each of us today are gifts to jesus from god.

We got here today, by being given to jesus by god. And then in turn Jesus revealed the glory of god to us.

I think that’s lovely don’t you, we didn’t happen into this, we were gifts  by god and given, to jesus , we are chosen , wanted, loved, children of God.

This process this deliberate act of god I think imbues us with knowledge programmed into our dna, and that gives us the next thing he says about us

something I think we all know here today


7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.

So god chose us, gave us to jesus and Jesus revealed god to us and we know where the love that Jesus shows comes from.

Then he really  makes it clear this prayer is  for us

Saying  

. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. 11 I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. 

Then he comes to the ask.

Then he prays a prayer often prayed by priests for their flock and it’s a powerful prayer.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of[b] your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.

So now we know…

So we are gifts to jesus, which gave us the knowledge of who he is, and where his words and actions come from, and he know then that he has the power to become our sacrificial lamb and take our sin.

This makes us one, with Jesus , Jesus

He wants god to look after us, and he wants us to stick together to be one

Then just after our lectionary today, he prays something so lovely I just wanted to share it with you.

Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

So that’s where we are headed ,and what Jesus wants ,the thing he desired just before his arrest,  that one day we are  with him , to see his glory

I hope and pray that comes to pass for all of us

Lastly

I thought it might be nice to finish on that prayer t hat Jesus prayed, and if I may pray for us all.

Just with the tense changes from third to first person so that I can pray for us  all

Jesus you are longer in the world, but we are in the world, and we know that you are alive and with God who gave us to you.

Holy Father,     ,  please protect in your name those that you gave to jesus your son, so that we  may be one with you , and with each other

Forever and ever

In Jesus name

Amen

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Why I am the way the truth the life – is not plural

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Yesterday King Charles became defender of the faith.   Today’s reading asks us important questions about how we might do that.  What does it mean and how do we defend the truth of the bible?

For some these passages we are reading today are seen as akin to theological colonialism, passages that belong to a less enlightened view of the world.  One that we have progressed from.   The very idea that in a post-modern world there is a truth, a single truth, is anathema.  Every truth is up for debate, even science is debated with, and every fact is countered on social media.    Post modernism is seen as the new enlightenment.

However , this truth, that Jesus talks about today isn’t a group of truths, he doesn’t say a truth he says the truth.

He didn’t make a mistake when he said that.
To back that assertion up, I will state the case clearly as I can.   Everything in the bible points to Jesus, from in the beginning was the word, through all the Old Testament, through to all the gospels that tell his story, through to acts and the letters, which explain more about how the world changed as a result. Jesus never says he is the son of a god, but the god.

So all of us who stand in up the front here on a Sunday, were taught systematic theology.  The way that works is if you hold a certain belief about the bible, the next phase is to check what that does to the rest of your theology and what dissonance that causes.  What in the bible either reaffirms or contradicts this view that I have. What else do I have to revise or revisit, what else in scripture reinforces my view or makes that perspective more difficult. Not just direct scripture, but the narrative of the story and other stories that may have nothing to do with this one apart from perhaps the underlying narrative of the story.

The bible overlaps, interlocks, repeats itself, characters pop up, they appear  in sequence,   they repeat things, say things that mean the same, things that happen are explained later etc so when we remove one part or change the meaning of one part , then we have to look to see if that works everywhere.

Think of is like a jenga board.

So let’s work on three things, Jesus is god, Jesus is alive, Jesus is the only path we have been given, the only mediator between us and God.


So let us be plain,  Jesus was both fully God and Fully human, he was not a teacher on a par with Bhudda or Confucius, he repeatedly alludes to that fact.

As it says in Romans  Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  There’s no a lord, in among other lords implied here as well.

So Jesus knew he was God, and human, he ratified that by what he did on the cross, he ratified that by the hundreds of prophecies his deeds fulfilled.

What do we have to say really didn’t apply to Jesus because if we disagree with that, then all the prophecies aren’t really about him, they were never fulfilled, they were a coincidence and Elijah and Isaiah really get battered.

So if he isn’t God we have to pull out vast tracts of the old testament, which then ruin the narrative of that?



if we accept that idea what does that do to our world view.  At the very least it means we have to take the things he said and did seriously and the words of his book seriously, because we just accepted these are the words of God.

So we can say that the new testament confirms jesus is god.  There are various passages where is shows that Jesus is alive past his death,  there are many, but one of the clearest is Stephen when he saw him just before he was stoned to death. He explained what he saw…
So if Jesus isn’t God and he isn’t alive, Stephen has to go
Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

Then we have to answer post modernism.
I don’t think anyone here has a problem with that,
Then we come to the single truth bit
we have todays , where he states he is god, and the single path

john 14

5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.[d] From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

So that’s one tract that says it, but if we disagree with that where else do we have to take the eraser too?

There are numerous places where our god is stated as a sole mediator

1 Timothy 2:5 

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

Peter and John as they stood in front of the Sanhedrin in fear of their lives, where it would have been much easier to cave into well, he wasn’t really the messiah, and not a messiah.

what do you have to do with this scripture when they said ?  in acts 4:12

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 

And Paul speaking to Corinth when he said.
1 Corinthians 8:6 ESV / 76 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.


Or Jesus when he calls himself a singular door…

John 10:9 ESV / 223 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

  • I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

So Everything leads to Jesus, and Jesus and the rest of scripture see’s him as a sole path to redemption.   If you have jesus as a river among many rivers to the ocean, then as with all systematic theology, you have then to see what else has to go out the bath with the baby?

We if we aren’t happy with John 14:6 acts and Corinthians we have to deal with Jesus I am statements (not we are)

I am the bread of life. 6:35, 48, 51.

  • I am the door of the sheep. 10:7, 9..
  • I am the resurrection and the life. 11:25.
  • I am the way, the truth, and the life. 14:6.
  • I am the true vine

    In fact there are at least a 100 verses that say Jesus us god and the sole path to salvation

    or https://www.openbible.info/topics/jesus_being_the_only_way

There are at least a 100 pieces have to come out of your Jenga stack and it still has to stand.

So by deduction and pulling the jenga pieces away we then have to see what we are left with

A clearly mistaken God and Paul, and peter.

There are many places in the bible where he is stated as a sole mediator, path, door, gate, vine, means to the resurrection and the life

To look for the reverse, in no way is he referred in any sense in the plural, in role, in purpose, in how we should view him.

In our culture that is uncomfortable.

Lets do one very important thing to this view,  it is not unmerciful, its not judgmental, its not unkind,

 its not saying everyone who doesn’t go this path is damned.

Jesus showed love to everyone, the woman at the well, people of other religions were held up as examples in the good Samaritan.

the centurion, the thief on the cross all ascended into heaven. 

There is a difference
But us, us Christians we know differently so we have a different standard

Luke 23 answers us these questions

47 That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. 48 But one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.

we get away with that much less lightly because we know, we know who he is.

Lastly I will let an Islamic scholar answer my final position, when asked by an audience member what do we do about the unbelievers?


His answer and mine is that its not mine to judge?

because as the bishop said if I get to heaven three things will surprise me

1/ I am there

2/ The people I expected to be that aren’t

3/ The people I never expected to see that I have.



lastly Charles didn’t do defender of the faiths ,  Charles is odefender of the faith and supreme governor of the Church of England.

That is right , its every Christians job to defend our faith, but we must also remember

This isn’t the same as not defending the rights of all faiths, their disciples have the same rights that our lord gave all of us to be loved by him, to flourish without harm.

Our lord defended the rights of all faiths and so must we,


Justin welby is going prefaced this vow with

making clear that “the church will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely”.

That’s the goal, for us, to liberate as many people from financial and spiritual poverty as possible, and let the lord do the rest.

Because , as Father Joe said, when I get to face our lords judgment, all I want him is to look at me and say “nice try”.

Amen

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The problem with taking Christ out of Christmas

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The streets are decorated with all manner of shiny things. The adverts are full of idealistic beaming relatives as some consumer good or another is bestowed upon them.  Every family is perfect, and every film is heartwarming.   People work hard to put lights up on houses despite the price of energy, and people stretch burdened finances further so that our kids have the latest thing.

On this very point, Peter Andre is pleading with radio stations to listen to what the British public asks and I quote, and stop broadcasting the classic Christmas song ‘Most Wonderful Time of the Year – out of respect.  He says and I quote, While I acknowledge there are some extremely pleasant moments during Yuletide festivities, these are normally fleeting and often come with a busy schedule, an empty wallet and not much to show otherwise. “Strip back the gift-giving, tinsel and twinkly lights, and people are left with the stark reality that this time of year is cold, dark, and expensive.


Sue very soon is delivering a Blue Christmas service for those who find all this pressure to be happy, full of gifts, and expectations of beaming as they go around a crowded Tesco’s just too much when their reality is one of loss and sadness. The reverse of the image we are asked to aspire to and worse still – deliver.

Why has all this happened?  Because all the paraphernalia of Christmas has become exploited,
It lost its roots as a result. Give it a week after Christmas day and Cadbury eggs will be in the stores.

Contemporary Christmas has become just another impossible thing to aspire too, like women’s magazines that are filled with body shapes that are ruled as perfect. That causes so much harm as our kids try and conform.

None of this is Christian really; none of it has anything to do with the Babe in our story today.

However, they do have one thing in common, a request for a certain conformity, an ideal of how to behave, Jesus does have a very, very big ask.

 The Christian Christmas does have high standards.  The difference is we are asked to give to others, love and forgive to a ridiculous standard all year round, to conform to godliness as best we can.   That’s our universal conformity. That’s we know this is the only way the world works.

However, unlike in the Ads and films etc. There is a massive difference,  When it all goes wrong, it is not such a disaster.

Why?

Because

In reality, one very special thing is happening in today’s reading,

We are being forgiven our sins.  That’s it. We have grace, which the glossy ads lack.

We are being forgiven our sins.

We are being forgiven, and the ask is, we are being asked to forgive.

By a child who in our story today, has no consumer goods and yet carries the one gift we all need. Forgiveness and the gift of God calling us friend

There was a little part of me that wanted to stop my sermon here and just let that sink in.

So while both these ideas are both asking for conformity, one for an ideal Christmas, one for the ideal Christian.  The big difference is, the adverts don’t let us off, the pressure to conform is relentless and the price of failure a ruined ideal, not just for you but for all those you love.  A fearful thing that causes our kids to suffer such stress, as they can’t live up to Instagram perfect, or fit in that dress, or change shape.

In our version of conformity, the idea of conformity has been abolished by the act of forgiveness of a loving God.  We are asked to aspire and try hard, but we are forgiven as we are.


The forgiveness that is bestowed has many wonderful effects, bit here’s one I love to point out.

Emanuel, God with us joined us to forgive us for imperfection, in fact, to abolish the very idea because we are all made in his image, and every image is just how he wanted; this sets us free from the tyranny of failure to be enough. We are enough, all of us, every person born or yet to be born. We are enough; we are loved.

Because he made us as and loves us as we are, We are asked to come as we are and not as we aren’t; in messy families, in the arguments and the squabbling, the difference between our Christmas and the commercial one, they sell perfection. We come as loved, just as we are and only as angels as children of christ on the last day by a loving God.

This sets us free from any external valuation anyone or anything may place on us, including the valuation we put on ourselves. Nothing that happens on this earth can affect our value as human beings; nothing can make us any less in any way because we are loved enough to die for, to come down as a baby just to meet us where we are. We are enough

So as you step out of church today, I hope you feel released from the pressure of delivering a perfect Christmas because it was never the ask, in our Christmas, that was never asked for, in fact, imperfection was what god loved because he abolished the very idea.

.  Our Christmas has not even got the worry of a  dry turkey or the expectation of needing to be happy on the agenda, really. You are forgiven for not being able to conform to an idea of Christmas that God never made.  The idea he asks you to conform to is love and to forgive just as you are forgiven when you drop from those heights.  

Remember


It’s expected it was known that it would happen and he sent us his son to set us right with a perfect God. Through grace

So now know you are free from the expectation of being a  perfect person by the child that was born in today’s story. Born into a less-than-perfect world,  Born into a less-than-perfect situation, into a less-than-perfect family.  This is where God joined us to forgive us.

God could have joined us in the top suite of a hotel with more money than Elon musk, with perfect abs and an Aston martin and an Instagram model on his arm.

But he joined us here, as a baby, with refugee parents and in a stable, and he chose that place to come to forgive a world that needs it.

That’s it

That’s what happened in today’s story.

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Faith and hope during advent

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Romans 8  1-4 14 to finish

Three sayings on faith and hope.

Christ is both the object hoped for and the hope inspired by it, said Moltmann.   

The faith we have takes its stand on hope and hastens beyond this world, said Calvin.

 “Faith is about what is beyond the horizon of the humanly possible. Faith is exploring what people could never achieve by themselves. Faith is the mysterious need in us to get to where we could surely never go. Faith, in fact, is about what we call God. Faith is the inkling that we are meant to be divine, that our journey will go beyond any horizon at all into the limitlessness of the Godhead. Said mccabe

These ideas are all based on our reading today. They are more easily summed up by saying Christian’s  are people of hope.  We have been chosen since before we were born to know this hope, and we were led by the spirit to bring it into our daily lives such that we are here today.

  Our faith knows as McCabe said that we are destined beyond the horizon, like the sun,  just before it comes into sight, lights up the sky from something that is hidden from us for a short while just before it comes into view.

Knowing these things should, as Paul says , mean that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us”.   

This does  not mean suffering is meaningless nor without value to god and we know  this because of what’s about to happen in advent.


Jesus  is coming to join us,  as a vulnerable child born into poverty destined to suffer. So  while his promise puts everything into perspective, we should see the, way he chose and chooses  to join us in our suffering to prove that he isn’t asking for anything he isn’t willing to endure or doesn’t care about, Both then and now  the Christ then and the Christ in us suffers with us present tense.

The fact that Jesus came and lived In Galilee are facts  indisputable such that even atheists would not argue with them,   we know however this is based on the narrow lens of science. 

However, Christians have a wider lens, and our facts are based on more than the things we can prod or measure with a ruler.

Our facts reflect the true nature of the human condition and true nature of reality.  Our facts also  rely on the knowledge the holy spirit imbues us with that lets us know the dawn is just below the mountaintops.  

This is why Jesus  calls himself the way, the truth, and the life. 

He shows us the way , we live the life  , because we know the truth 

Our faith  our hope is built on the implications of these facts , and goes forward  always in hope , on its promise.   

The promise of being made whole and  liberated from bondage and  decay by being brought into the freedom and glory  of wholeness by being the children of God. People who call god father and friend 

This is why ours is a joyous faith, not one obsessed by misery or one endured in sackcloth and ashes, but one that lives in joyous celebration of the journey our faith has set us upon.   

The perspective that gives to our lives. 

This is the joy our lord asks us to share with others and is something we can do much more easily at Christmas a time when gifts of all types are shared.

The greatest gift of all we share  is hope, because we are children of hope, and we bring all this world’s suffering into perspective for us and for those around us.   

As we come into a season where the light of the world is joining us, our job is to share that light and the hope it brings.

Amen 

The parable of the shrewd manager and our late queen

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Luke 16 1-13 The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

Question 

Who in this last week of thinking about our queen has really thought about or been jealous of her money?

How many  of all the eulogies we have heard have been centred on that fact?

They have been about her service, her faith, humour, but money

When her funeral happens in the morning how much will be about that.

Not any I have heard, a few republicans have mentioned it in regards to her role, but not her.

She got the subject of money correct among many things.

On the subject of money, we do need money…..

On the other end of the scale Ive been poor and having enough is nicer, it solves many issues. I recall one time needing to do some overtime to pay a utility bill, and I had an MOT, and that failed, and then I couldn’t use the car to do the overtime to pay the bill, and of course now I had two bills to pay.  Ive seen the shanty towns in Colombo, and in Johannesburg and my problems shrink further still compared to that.

 Having enough relieves that sort of stress, and in our story its that sort of stress all the people that owed the money were no doubt u under owing so much money.

Because all the people spoken about today who were owed money were rich?

All those that owed it were tenant farmers, and my uncle bob was one of those and he didn’t have much money I can tell you. Life was hard, hand to mouth, making their own food on an allotment to fill the gaps.

There are various interpretations of this parable, and I am comforted that Paula Gooder in places found it as confusing as me?  But here’s where I landed, the word used for squander is actually closer to spreading around, so a sort of wasteful sharing if you like.

I think its about recognising that which we sow on earth is reverberated in heaven, part of that which is reverberated is what we do with what we own, are owed, that make cake a difference. that is to say the manager is rewarded for spreading about the money and alleviating the stress that the tenant farmers were under by the landlord.    

Why? Because as he said you cannot serve two masters, your eyes are either on gathering in as much money as you can, or transversely while owed a lot, you can gather in as much as is fair, or as much as people can give when the bill is owed and the MOT’s due.  

The idea in this story is in not being a slave to money means you tend to be a little more generous and therefore spread a little more happiness around. The reverse leads to the reverse, you gather in every penny, are not generous, and you spread sadness.

I think also that a message comes across, that the landowner was less worried about the squandering of money, of that spreading around but that it had to have a purpose, to make his tenants lives happier, and less stressful.


So essentially this parable is saying, our lives can tell a different story than the money we have, or the wealth we accumulate if that isn’t the sole lord and master of our lives.  

This is why I think the queen albeit immeasurably wealthy, her life told a different story.  Her legacy isn’t all about that, it’s a fact but to most not the most important one. In fact I am not sure I or many  would swap my average  life of comfort, for her wealthy life of service to all.

As in this story its not not having money that’s the problem its allowing it to take over our lives, our society, our government etc. When we measure the treasures, we store up in heaven none of them will have pound signs attached, of that I am sure.  When we measure all those things that detract from them, how we treated others as a result of measuring the world as profit and loss will be part of it.

That idea extends into so many things, into our health system, social security, refugees, how we help those that are homeless and all those in need. Its why I always wince when we measure those things solely by money and not by real need.  Because as Jesus is showing us here, that is the real sin, not squandering the money, but where its squandered and how and why. 

We have a god of outrageous love and grace, and by any terms when love is given like that it could be measured to be squandered, but its not really. Because we get it back when we are in the phase of existence our dear queen is, where shis is inheriting all the rewards of her grace and kindness as we speak I am sure.

Money and how we treat people as a result of how we spend , share or withhold it , has ramifications far beyond our earthly debt. Jesus did just clear the debt because the landowner was owed it, but he also didn’t squash the people that owed it.  The landowner was owed money but not obsessed by it.

So much of our society is obsessed by things, and has lost the idea that sharing those things stores up treasures in heaven used well.

  How empty does celebrity or fame, or bling become when we see what we can really be given in return.  I used to get ever more guilty as I progressed in my career thinking its about giving everything away and living like a hermit.  But its not about that so when 

in Luke 6 Jesus says 

 anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Todays passage shows it doesn’t matter if you have another 2 coats indoors, if you give to whoever needs,


So our goal isn’t to necessarily become poor, but to not be defined or to define ourselves by what we have, rather by what money enables us to do for others,  how we can use that wealth to store up treasures in heaven.  

Our legacy is really when we are gone and people speak about us and we face his judgment, that the measure isn’t what we had, but whether it obsessed us, owned us , defined us.    Listening to the stories of the queen this week, I think she got that right, and made our world, our country our commonwealth a better place and that’s whats going to define her.

On a smaller scale perhaps  that what the goal of our lives should be

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Jesus and come dine with me

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Luke 14

In amongst the TV that my daughter sometimes watches, there’s one that truly boggles my brain. People go round people’s houses for dinner, and then the people who have been fed and watered clearly to the best of the host or hostesses’ ability are then rude about it! I watched one part of this, and I was like, bad manners are now a TV program?

But that isn’t a million miles from what Jesus was up to today!

Imagine being invited for dinner and then really lecturing them on how they decide to seat people. Especially when they have seated you at the seat of the most honour.

As much as that program riles me, it’s fair to Jesus is quite rude to his host today, and my sermon today is to maybe look at why.

In Jesus’s time, the Pharisees held dinners for visiting itinerant preachers that moved from town to town. This was just such an occasion that Jesus was invited to. The seating for said dinners was very much ordered by your standing in the community; the higher honour, the better seat, however quite often, people used to try and move up the social ladder or be seen too by moving themselves up in the order of seating.

In an Honour based society, the more honour you could have been seen to accrue, the better for you.

Loss of honour meant shame, and the word shame entomology can be directly routed back to being forced into a lower place around the table.

This jostling for position is probably what Jesus was watching going on when he spoke up


So we have to ask ourselves what’s got Jesus upset enough to be so forthright and blimmin rude really.

 how we work that out really goes to the heart of how we use the bible as a guide for our lives. What’s a rule, what’s a paradigm, what’s an ethic, what is moral? It’s work we should do because Confusing those leads to all sorts of trouble. Treating a paradigm or a metaphor as a rule leads to literalism, and that’s a path to madness.

In simple terms,

Jesus isn’t after you changing where you sit.

Physical seating only matters, in this case, if certain seats are seen as having more honour. So if the seats at the front of the church are seen as more honourable then the seats at the back are the place to be. But if it doesn’t matter to you, then it doesn’t matter.

I say this as someone standing at the top of the church has moved from a special seat. I’ll be honest with you, it bothers me greatly until I came to the realization that people do have to hear what we say up here and be able to follow the service and that’s best done in a place where people can see us.

Today’s story has many layers, and seating really disguises

what Jesus is actually on about today.

The story is  about who we invite to the table, and who  indeed invited by Jesus and  whom we should invite to whatever we consider as places of honour, the best seats, the greatest places, those who we show off as worthy or merit and honour

The occasion in the story is a feast, and soon we are all to be invited up here to Jesus’s feast, and as a church in this story, we have been shown here as to whom should be invited.   

Because The most crucial thing Jesus is asking  us here today is this question, the question we should go away from today with


Who  does Jesus want us to ask “Friend, move up to a better place.'”


It’s kind of the story of Luke, really, Luke is the gospel where Gentiles are invited to the feast. Gentiles were considered by Jesus’s audience to be unclean, beyond redemption, sinful and breaking rules that God cannot forgive. 

They were withheld from religious rites that religious law stated god does not want at his table, and those who’s sin debars them due to their breaking of certain theological or religious norms that meant they cannot be accommodated.

When Peter questioned the inclusion of gentiles god said to him do not declare anything unclean that I have called clean.

This brings us to the central point

Who is beyond Jesus’s grace is the central question being asked here.

Todays story shows us that , nobody is beyond grace, nobody is beyond his love. Everyone is invited to the table indeed to the places of honour, because of Grace, which is why  god has declared us clean.

Grace is why Jesus came, Grace is the central idea of every word in the bible. It’s the drop that encapsulates the meaning of the ocean . The roots of the word Grace mean  Rejoice I am Glad.

Grace is for those that are declared beyond the pale! 

So to drill right down to it the story today is actually becomes about us.

Those whom that are considered unclean by us, lower than us untouchable, aberrant, who are so far from what we consider acceptable that we don’t want them in that door.

What I would really love from today is if you go out of here and think about who and why you might choose to stop from some religious rite, baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, marriage whatever.

Think about  that and then realise. whoever you think of as beyond grace, Jesus is today saying these are  whom you should invite to the places of honour, and whom Jesus calls friend as well as you.

I’ll try and illuminate that story by a couple of stories


I read a story recently, and a lady of the night was asked to come to church and her response was “why would I go there it would only make me feel worse!. That’s the reverse of Grace.

A bishop and a curate once were going to see a man who’s wife had left him  after he had cheated on her. The Bishop asked the curate, could you ever imagine doing something so awful?
The curate said no of course not.
The Bishop said, you better stay behind then.

Nobody is beyond grace, nobody is more or less broken than one another and all are called friend, and invited to his table.

That is what Jesus is saying today,  nobody is beyond his grace.

That’s it.
Amen

Who are we responsible for in the good samaritan?

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I’ve been fortunate in my life and met many good men (and women too by the way) that have for some reason gone out their way to help me, show me love and been there for me. Their blessings go on through many lifetimes, and I hope I share a little of what I have been given.

I hope if you think for a moment, you can think of a few.
and In simple terms

Today’s story at first glance is simply about a good man, doing what a good man does. Nothing more complicated than that really. A bloke needed help, and someone found someone like that and helped them.

Its also about a lawyer wanting to clarify what he was legalistically supposed to comply with to work out where his responsibility ended.
He was trying to understand what he needed to comply with to get the payoff!
The software I work with these days helps people understand what they sign up for in a contract. What are the clauses that might cause us pain if we sign on the dotted line and we don’t like what happens as a result? I’ve seen companies go under because a company discovered a loophole in the contract and we didn’t get the payoff.

But contracts that we don’t like are hideous if we sign them and that’s a fact.

Is it any wonder this is what the lawyer, the expert in the law, who would have looked at the world in a very similar way was looking, or trying to understand if he knew all clauses in the contract? Its basically what he says.

So what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? I love the lord god with all my heart etc and my neighbour as myself. Jesus affirms this as correct. But to make sure that this is enough to fulfil the law, and get him into heaven the lawyer checks.

29 so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
What’s the contract regards who is my neighbour. What do I have to do to fulfil said contract and get the payoff of eternal life? Who am I responsible for?
Lets look at the story in jesus used in reply and then lets at the answer?

First off….
He could have just said “everyone” and left it at that.
Why didn’t he do that?

A man is stripped naked and beaten by robbers. So at this moment, he is an anonymous, vulnerable bloody mess. A man without tribe, country, or creed. Vulnerable and needing a neighbour he has no identity apart from human and male.. Like the tomb of the unknown soldier, his anonymity means this man represents us all, he could be any one or any one of us.

Then a levite priest, , passes by. Levites are those chosen by God to serve in his temple, so chosen in amongst Gods chosen people. Hes a levite, those who set and ensure others abide by the law. His law declares this man unclean, and anyone who touched him would be ritually unclean. This Levite priest hurried by the poor man leaving him lying naked in a bloody heap on the floor.

Then a Samaritan arrived . A Samaritan
The context of Samaritan mustn’t be lost on us.

Samaritans to Jesus audience did not belong on the land they occupied. They were of a strange culture, they dressed differently, probably sounded differently. They had occupied the land while the jews were in exile, and now they weren’t going back, in fact they had no back, they were 2nd, 3rd, 4th , generation. They practiced a strange version of the religion of the jews.
For all these reasons they were despised looked down on and considered unclean by the jews. They seen as taking resources, and land, and were disliked simply for being Samaritans . In another story the woman at the well who was a Samaritan was shocked that Jesus even spoke to her, both because she was a woman and a Samaritan.

So we have gone from one end of the scale to the other. From the lauded to the dregs. Those people we rather look down on and would rather not be around, those whom we blame when it goes wrong by default, those with less privilege and standing in our community, those we find very few of on a day-to-day basis, and don’t know how to talk with them when we do, where the culture gap is hard to bridge, the religion strange. The disliked, distrusted , unwanted, bottom of the pile. Mostly they are anonymous to us, invisible, when we think of them, very few kind thoughts might arise.

But this Samaritan He stops on the road from Jericho when he found the injured man.

and he stops on the road to Jericho….

The road to Jerusalem from Jericho was known as the way of Blood, because so much blood was shed by robbers. It’s a winding road with steep sided and lots of twisting turns as it drops a 1100 foot from above to below sea level.

In certain respects I can sort of relate to this. Like those estates in the 80’s that had so many perfect hiding places for muggers that the council like to give them in the 80’s.These were places that you had your ears and eyes open, you certainly never stopped and moved as fast as you could. When I used to catch the late train home in forest gate I always breathed a sigh of relief when I got past certain known mugger hotspots. I avoided the steel bridge at all costs., Rushed past places that had deep shadows where people could come from all of a sudden. So I sort of know that feeling.

But the Samaritan

He stops and shows real –

and the word I am going to use is Altruism,

The word Altruism is defined as when we act to promote someone else’s welfare, even at a risk or cost to ourselves.

He definitely shows more than pity, the priest showed him that but , pity demands no action. The Samaritan, journeys between pity and altruism and he acts, taking one more step into dangerous altruism on this fearful road.

Jesus making the man naked and anonymous means he has to show universal altruism. Altruism of a sort that goes beyond the boundaries of his own tribe.

Then he gets him safe at the inn, and pays his bills to get better. 2 denarii, about £50, at that time about 2 weeks wages on average, so costly in every way.

There’s no law here forcing this man to take a risk, no law forcing him to do this, indeed the priest who knew the law rushed by, not wanting to be made unclean, not wanting to be next, let alone give up 2 weeks wages.
This is Jesus defining who is our neighbour and who is worthy of altruism.

In this story Jesus has told us there is no clause in the contract t, no boundary to love, no end date to the contract, in fact don’t seek a contract.
Its just outrageous love we are asked for. Jesus tells us that example can be set by anyone from any culture, and also that can be asked from anyone from any culture.

By making the injured man vulnerable and stripping him of all associations with creed, tribe religion etc . Jesus makes him every and anyone in need, We are simply one race, the human race. Whether the refugee comes over on a dangerous boat ride, or from a war-torn place. We have to show altruism that may put us at risk. How can there be an illegal immigrant, if Jesus just threw away the contract ? When in Jesus example where this man came from , why etc is deemed unimportant, in fact its actually deliberately stripped from him. this story shows we are simply asked to stand up for, stand in for whatever human happens to be around.

They were going down that road…. That’s all we are shown. Then we are shown what love is. Its more than altruism, or dangerous altruism, its excessive, it costs us, to risk out lives, to travel more slowly with an injured man on our horse while we work, it costs. It takes time and trouble. Its excessive well beyond anything that could reasonably be asked of us and it’s given without question to whomever we meet that needs our love.

The joy of this story is that whoever we are and from whatever standing in our or any community, we can still shine and be lauded and laudable in Jesus’ eyes.

Also to answer my earlier question.
That’s why when he was asked who is my neighbour, Jesus didn’t just say everyone. Because Jesus wants active, not passive love, he certainly doesn’t want sympathy, but active dangerous outrageous altruism.

Bonhoeffer said the biggest mistake we make is to try and work out who we are responsible for.
This parable shows we are all responsible for each other, in the human race.

it was that realisation was one of the key moments for me, this is why it’s the only way the world works.

In simple terms, Jesus asks us to obey the unenforceable clause, go beyond reason, beyond risk, beyond culture creed and religion actively not passively.
To stand up for and stand-in for whoever needs our love, out active love.
That is what the kingdom of God is like. We have been given the task of showing what that sort of love is like, in our lives as Christians. That’s what we are asked to witness to others by our behaviour. It’s when we bear witness to the kind of love Jesus asks us to show when we see our neighbour as Jesus asks us to as simply human and nothing else? When we stop asking who are we responsible for. That our faith becomes powerful and stands out.

I really wish the Lawyer hadn’t asked that question, because now we can’t say we don’t know, But he did and now we know, all of us do, and now as Jesus’s followers of the way, we know the way. All of us.

Amen

The how, the why, and the certainty of being Gods sheep.

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john 10 ,ezekial 4, psalm 23

I am going to tie five things up together today
• Our personal experience
• The experience of sheep
• How that ties into todays story and todays psalm
• How our psalm and our story intertwine
• How all of that is borne out by our personal experience

First a question today, who has felt the lord’s presence in the last two years of lockdown and beyond?

IF YOU ARE READING THIS ONLINE – pause for a moment and think

Who here feels guided by our lord?

Who here has felt comforted by our lord at various times

Remember those answers

However to something slightly different

As a boy from Forest Gate, you can imagine my sheep husbandry skills are somewhat limited.
I took Lauren to the lambing at Marsh Farm children’s farm one year is about it.

So, I had to check that whether sheep must be chased by a sheepdog or whether they will indeed follow the shepherd?

What do we think, chase, or follow?

It’s both.

First, I discovered sheep aren’t stupid, they are among the most intelligent of farm animals, second only to pigs.

I found out they will follow someone they trust, and you only have to get the lead sheep to follow and the whole flock will follow.

But they must trust the shepherd, and they have to be fed when they follow. If the food stops the lead sheep will feel tricked and then won’t want to follow.

However once trained, the shepherd can get the lead sheep’s attention by calling them.
So our lords metaphor works well.

Sheep dogs do work as we all know,

Sheep dogs it turns out is the sheep running from a threat, the flight response. A sheep dog knows it and turns the lead sheep and the others follow. The sheep dog causes enough fear to move the sheep but not enough to kill the sheep through stress. This is why your domestic dog getting into a field of sheep can cause such harm, they just scare the sheep to death, literally. A trained sheepdog will harry the sheep just enough.

So chasing the sheep causes fear, trusting the shepherd means the sheep follows his guidance through trust.

How does that metaphor work for us. How does our lord lead his sheep, how does he tend them, wy and why do we follow?

In simple terms
Our lord wants us to trust him, the sheep do have a choice. They aren’t stupid
Those who do so, can hear his voice through prayer and the holy spirit. So we can follow him.
As jesus says “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. “

Our psalm this morning explains the why way better than I ever could.

Jesus leans heavily on the Psalms and our psalm, psalm 23 would be well known to his audience.

Our passage this morning leans on that psalm.
The lord as the psalm says is our shepherd that means we shall not want? Where green pastures wait for his sheep where we lay down, which means an abundance of everything we need. So we want for nothing, Our food is the bread from heaven, and we trust our shepherd, and that’s we we follow him

The Psalm makes it clear we still have enemies and we do still suffer, and all walk in the valley of the shadow of death in this plane. But that he is present in the suffering, indeed a shepherd’s rod is used to protect the flock from suffering (literally to defend from anything that attacks his sheep) and his staff is held wide and used to guide his sheep.
But suffering is part of our lives, even though we are protected and guided, our shepherd is always present and never sleeps. With his rod and staff to both protect us and guide us. The man nailed to that cross, suffered with us and for us, and stays with us to this very day.

Through this suffering our lord made it so we can be with him, guided by him by hearing his voice more clearly as eternity roles onwards.

In Ezekiel It is prophesied that the lord will become our shepherd because the Israelites were doing such a bad job and they are berated for not looking after all his sheep, including the poor and the weak. 4 You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals.

Today’s reading is our lord assuming that role of the shepherd. The role of guiding us and protecting us, as he says My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

The reason why they follow and do not perish is explained in our psalm today this is where they intertwine, Jesus is the act, and our psalm is the why

Because Jesus is my shepherd, we shall not want.
2 Because he makes us lie down in green pastures,
where the bread of heaven is abundant, so we have everything we want
so we trust him and follow him

he leads us beside still waters where we will be refreshed by him
3 And where he restores my soul.[b]
He leads me in the right paths to eternity with him[c]
for his name’s sake.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever

Going back to our gospel today
This is why we hear his voice, and follow , this is why we trust him, this is why we belong to him, and he will I give us eternal life, and we will never perish. And as Jesus repeats twice to make sure he has been heard. This is why nobody will snatch us out of his hand, because the father and he are one. United in the desire to bring his creation close, in a loving trusting relationship, led to eternity.

This makes us part of a story, all of us who put our hands up, were predicted by Ezekiel, spoken about in the psalms, , and claimed by Jesus.

We are here today part of that story, an active living thing going on every day for eternity.

This is why so many of us feel him guiding us, this is why we feel guided and comforted by him. This is why we feel protected by our lord. It is literally our reading and our psalm in action. In our lives, for eternity

Amen

Good Friday – the day it all went wrong

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Its all gone wrong
His followers have scarpered
Apostles that ate, slept lived with him every day
Have run away
The world is calling him names
Today, Today
At this moment its certain that by any empirical logic this was a false promise
Nothing is pointing to him being anything other than dead.

You can logically see why they may run.
Messiahs don’t do this
They remove the oppressor
They bring victory
They restore honour
They restore the temple
They bring the world to the worship of God
They assume the role of Caesar
They don’t get nailed to some rough wood, paraded through town and then die the worst
In no version of the story one might logically predict or expect ends like this.

Now the world hates them, these Jesus followers.
Betrayed by one of their own
They are hunted men now
They have nowhere to go
Nowhere to run
Their own people despise them
Forced to deny him
His own mother had to watch him suffer on the cross
Hes let them down.
It’s all gone wrong

We look back at our lord and remember and give thanks
But for us, its not easy still to stand up and be counted
For us there are other tests.

If you speak up about your faith at best they wont know what to make of it
Or they make mock, or call you names.
Call him names
Call our church names
Tell you your dreaming
You have been and are mistaken for following him
So we have our own trials our own reasons for disowning him

It’s as easy for us as the people in scripture before the cock crows

However even here we must remember there is always light in the story
And Late in our story today, we find them.
Like in our story today some stick by him
It comes in the shapes of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea

While others hide.

They take the body down and enbalm a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds
Much more than in the mary and Martha story.
More than the three kings
They find him a new tomb
New tombs are rare and expensive ostentatious when everyone is hiding

They Place him in it. Embalm
This is embalming of a king, costing lots and lots.
A visible Act a futile act on the face of it brave and foolish when they are on the run
Joseph is a rich man,. Spoke out as the counsel boiled up to this moment
Nicodemus who had met jesus in secret, he was a voice of dissent in the council as they led up to this
Afterwards after their best efforts, when its all gone wrong

These two
They don’t know where the dawn comes from
Logic says hide, he let us down
But they are not only spending a fortune they are taking a great risk
The world hates the followers so they have to do these things In secret
So this is very brave when there’s no logical reason for it, he has failed, in ignominy
When he’s so badly let them down

Made them pariahs

There’s nothing left here but faith in him despite everything, in the face of everything

What about us today though
today for us we have lessons to learn from these two today today.
Lessons for all people of good Friday
How many times have we faced this moment in our own lives.
When it all seems like Jesus promises have not come true.
When hes let us down.

If he was real this wouldn’t have happened
If he was real the world wouldn’t do X or Y to us
The Psalms are full of people crying out
Saying how its all so unfair
Where if it had all been true he would have stopped this

None of us know what we will do in that moment until we face that moment.
Until our lives take a turn for the worse
Then we will know.

One day in our faith story we may find its all gone wrong.
And he hasn’t come to rescue us

for our church today?
Outside this church the world goes on
Our congregations shrink
shops are open
consumerism has slowed a little

It may seem our lord seems to have abandoned us
The world seems to have moved away from our lord
It may seem hard and even pointless to have faith in our lord.
The world has moved away from us
But we are still here
Then There are more mundane abandonments
On a mundane day to day basis we may have to defend our faith to those that are bemused
detached, angry, or who don’t have a high opinion of the followers of Jesus or anyone of any faith.
So in that respect we all live in good Friday.

Society lives on in ways that ever more resembles the hopelessness of Good Friday
Or in our lives or we may face our own good Friday moment when real and existential things happen to us
When hope seems silly illogical thing to have, when common sense says this is mad!
I think at that point we may have to simply find a way to carry on

Like Nicodemus and Joseph today.
Even when its all impossibly dark
Despite all logic they carry on
Certainly don’t waste a fortune on this failed escapade
Nothing logically says carry on
But here they are, they are present for the lord.
even when its at its worst
At its most illogical
This is what their actions in todays story asks us
Each of us here today

How we live, how we might react when everything points to it all being untrue?
This is what Good Friday asks us.
This is what we have to ponder today
When hard times hit
When our churches empty
When everyone thinks we are mad to follow a Jesus that is so clearly not a real messiah
When people laugh
Blame
What we will we do
what did we do
what should we do.

The hopelessness of good Friday, the seeming logical futility of faith when the world says everything points to it being wrong?
on those days when we struggle to follow a God we cant find, or see, or know, or pray to.
What is our church going to do
what are you going to do.
These are the questions Good Friday asks
These are the questions Jesus asks us on good friday
The only answer is yours.

What is the reason for hope?

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What is God?
Can we imagine God, can we relate to God?
Is he an old white man on a cloud?
Is he everything, all realities, all substance, everything, everywhere, ever?
look around and at the stars, God, look at the ground, see an ant. Look in a microscope and see God, look at a mountain, see God, look at the stars and infinity, see God.

that’s the physical realm in every realm God is present, God is in every thought we have, in every prayer, in every breath.
God knew you before you were born. The list is endless, where God is, and I mean that literally.
The problem is, anything big enough to be God, that I could imagine would not be God.  

If infinity is real god is in  and of the infinite, if its not God is the boundless holder of a defined reality
In short

God is unimaginable.  Too big too vast. We cant get our heads around him.
How do we fixed in time and space love a thing not fixed, that’s in all time and all space? Whenever you imagine a fixed point he runs away, in infinity


 
How do we love that God, when we try and put our arms around him, try and enclose him with love and make him ours, he slips away somehow? We know we don’t know him, we know our tiny part? How can we love something that is so far removed from us, how can we love a thing that in almost every way is incomprehensible, too perfect for us, a thing that cannot be less than perfect,  that our imperfection cannot meaty with, how can that love our imperfection?

in so many ways something that we can’t even begin to know to comprehend? The answer to so many questions we don’t even know to ask. The bible talks about a fearing God, that is an entirely appropriate response for a thing so big, so vast so powerful.  But how do we bring that close, into our mundane lives? How do we make that God part of everything we do?

Today, God gave us a way to do so , as of today we can, today he has made himself a newborn baby, even  more? a small defenceless refugee baby
On the run from a despot, in meagre surroundings a long way from home.
Mary is a long way away from her mum, and support system, and as clueless as any new parent might be. Truly as defenceless and threatened as any baby might be, truly exposed to the mess of it all.


Any mother knows that regardless of what mess we are in babies need protection  and love and care.
He lays wrapped in swaddling and just like any other baby and needs all the things a newborn needs.

We can all love a baby, we can relate to those needs, we can put our arms around a baby. We want to protect a baby, we don’t fear babies.



But this baby, this one is different
Promised, and prophesied by all scripture, like our reading by Isaiah today 500 years before and more recently promised to mary by an angel
This baby they look down on is God.

All babies are gifts, all are known to God.
But this baby is God. He is God, everything that God is, is now enclosed in the diameter, in the physical space that is taken up by the object the size of a small baby.
From the unimaginable to the most helpless object in the world. A new-born baby.

So God has gone from so vast we cannot imagine, to a thing we can all relate to, either has been one, or have had one, or met one. A baby. That’s how small and defenceless God has made himself.

From something that holds everything ever in itself, to a thing holding our finger as the first thing it can focus on and grasp as an object in space.

But why, why has God decided to do this? God doesn’t do accidents or mistakes?
So why has he done this?

Be assured, Everything about this scene is deliberate, the deliberate action of God. To decide to become fully human while remaining fully God. In God maths are his, so there’s not two halves but two wholes. Fully God and Fully Human. But make no mistake there’s no mistake in this scene.  This tiny baby is God, from everything everywhere to a thing as limited to time and space as a baby.


But why God, why this way, and why at all.

Why, the answer is because everything in this scene screams hope.
Hope for everyone, he has done this, in this way to bring hope in your lives.


Why hope?  because here is the greatest thing ever, in this place, and it shows wherever you are God not only can be here but is liable to place himself there. Hope because however bad it gets, you know God isn’t worried about getting his hands dirty, he’s been in bad places himself and knows what it’s like.


Hope because this proves that God loves you enough to come here to know you in whatever mess our lives are and call you a friend.
This god isn’t going to write a book, give you a set of instructions and wander off. He’s going to join you where it’s messiest. In amongst the dung, literally and figuratively. This child is the flickering candle in the darkness that has not been overcome by darkness. Proof that darkness can never overcome his light, proof that nothing that happens in this life is beyond his experience.

This baby knows you, every single one of you, and when he reaches thirty is going to say and do things that will shake the world and turn every power structure on its head. He’s already started doing that just by being born like this.  Every king of this world has just been put into perspective, every power in this life the same. They got usurped in their power by a defenceless baby, and that shows what power in our lives amounts too. They have limits, this baby does not.  This baby breaks the shackles any power may have over us, and that’s why we call him lord and nothing else.

This child is both the object hoped for and hope itself, this child goes on with us forever as he sleeps, and looks up with eyes that cannot yet focus on the eyes of his mother. All ending events are no longer endings, but steps on a journey of love with the source of love.

We as Christians are people of Hope because we know we go on over the horizon, nothing is permanent, every pain is transitory and a briefest second of eternity. Everything will be made whole by a baby in an animals water trough. This fact changes everything, so we are loved by God enough to die for, and his dying opens up a place where we know nothing in this life is more than a scratch on our journey into an eternal relationship with God. Nothing can ever affect your value again because this baby which is God, has decided to die for you, so you can never die again. That’s how long he wants to love you for, forever.


Simply by being an object in time and space, God had broken the shackles of time and space for all of us. Our lives are forever imbued with hope, by this child’s arrival, this, moment was the moment hope became a reality, where hope became more than a wistful pipe dream, or a wishful idea based on nothing more than a sunny outlook. Our lives are not shackled by sin and our brief struggle with little or no point to our tiny spark. Our lives are now predicted, made, valued, and cared for enough to die for by a God that joined us. He proved all that today.

God made himself real in our reality,  and in doing so he made hope a reality, for all that follow this child in this life and the next.

He is here to be our salvation, and salvation simply means being made whole, all our brokenness is gone from this moment. One day we will all be without all the things that hold us back, pain, anger, illness, cruelty, and even death is defeated by a baby.  Despair is gone, we can never despair or be without hope, because this morning Mary can pick him up and show him, love.

This morning hope is a reality, and therefore so much more than just a hope. Hope is a dream, god made that hope real. The difference between a dream and a reality is a and his plan is now ours.

We can never be lonely ever again. As we pray today, we know that this child is still with us every step of the way, and we can talk to this child through prayer. Ending loneliness forever, because

We can never be alone because he is with us every step of the way and we can share in this so easily? He can talk to us, and direct us, the sure and certain hope, as Paul says

All we have to do, is follow him, today, and this morning 2000 years ago,

 he came to show us how.
Amen