Christian Joy 2

It's very difficult to preach about a found sheep and a found coin without exhilaration (Luke 19:1-10)!  Here in two deceptively simple stories Jesus lays out the source and cause of Christian joy - the startling truth that God knows us,  God finds us, God loves us, God rescues us.  No wonder multi-dimensional joy ends the two stories, joy with friends and neighbours, and joy in heaven.

To the rational mind, talk of a God who knows and loves me sounds absurd.  But this is not about making me big, but of making God bigger.  Not of a personal faith in God which is constructed to my satisfaction, but of faith in a personal God who acts in ways far beyond our understanding for us.  I mentioned an evangelistic talk I heard as a student when we were asked how much total knowledge of the world we possessed.  We smiled. 'Suppose you know 1% of all there is to know', he said. To which we laughed outright, thinking of the trouble we had finishing our course assignments. 'Isn't it presumptuous to assume that within that 1% you know all about God. Enough to reject him or to say how definitively how he works?'   In a world of string theory, cyber space, and continuous discoveries we need to take what Jesus says seriously about God's far reaching personal knowledge and love.

For God, his entire mission through Jesus Christ is to find people who are not where they should be within God's family and to bring them back.  I told the story of an Australian I met in Singapore. In his early thirties he was a helicopter pilot laying pipeline in Malaysia.  He told me how he lived on base with the lads. ' My life was diabolical. I got through one marriage. I lived with the lads - it was rough, crude.  But at the beginning of this year I met Jesus Christ and he changed me.  And I found near my base a little church who just held me within their family.  I couldn't believe in the most hellish, godless place God could find me, and keep helping me in this family.'  His face was wreathed in smiles as he told me.  So was mine.  This was joy.  Multi-dimensional,  In his life, among his church friends and echoing in heaven.

Of course, I was also able to speak about repentance which lies at the turning point from being lost to being saved.  The Communion service which followed gave us the best opportunity to celebrate being God's lost and found department together.

Preaching this was an immense joy.  You can imagine.  But, preparing for next Sunday will place greater demands on me!

Christian joy

The next three weeks, while our pastor is away, I am preaching in my home church.  3 weeks is long enough to take a theme into a little more depth. And in praying and preparation the theme of JOY surfaced strongly.  Perhaps, because many of us have found recent months of national uncertainty fairly joyless!  Mostly because Christian joy is sometimes overlooked as an extraordinary gift of God.  Understanding joy needs care because some equate it with jollity and extrovert enthusiasm   Of course, there is extrovert joy in Scripture - look at the intoxication of Pentecost Sunday.  But there is also introvert joy, a contemplate experience even in the face of suffering (Jas. 1:2).  It's a big and serious subject.

As the sermons are being written I realize that classifications borrowed from the film industry can be applied.  The first sermon on the source and causes of joy (Luke 15:1-10) is U certificate.  No-one can tease out the stories of the lost sheep and lost coin without getting Jesus' point.  Joy in belonging to God. Just underline the words joy and rejoicing!  The second has much more demanding content (Gal. 5: 13-26   ) and deserves at least a 15 certificate.  It places joy among the fruit (rightly connecting it with the other Spirit qualities) and contrasts it with usual human behaviour.  Two ways open up - the natural way of the flesh which is our daily default pattern or the Spirit way - walking and keeping pace with the Spirit.  And these two ways of behaving open up every day.

The third sermon really needs an 18 certificate because it looks at joy in suffering (Jas 1:2-8;Rom. 5: 1-5). To link joy with suffering takes us to deep places and I know that both preparing this sermon and listening to it will be demanding.  I shall keep in touch as this little series develops.  Perhaps you might like to look up the different passages and anticipate the messages?! 

Rembering Ron

Yesterday I was at the funeral and thanksgiving service for Ron Messenger (1923-2019).  Someone said to me: 'I hope there will be a good crowd.  When you are old not many will know all the good things you did.'  Well, the church was packed and the service inspiring. For me, he was the Baptist Mr. Counsellor.  From the beginning of my ministry I knew Ron as a pioneer of a therapeutic healing community of Greenwoods. Everyone in the denomination knew of him. With gentle authority he demonstrated such love and skill with some of the neediest, most troubled people.
  

You learn so much at a funeral. I didn't know of his service during World War Two as a navigator flying for the Fleet Air Arm. Nor how large his family was with five sons whose families now add up to nearly 40. Nor of his early enthusiasm with the Boys Brigade and his charismatic leadership of the community. Several words kept being repeated. We learned that the war changed him and forged the word FORGIVENESS as key to Christian living - which led him into ministry.  LOVE best described his life and ministry ever since.  Nobody seemed unimportant. And LISTENING marked his phenomenal ability to focus on you.  He used to say: 'Look how Jesus spent time with the one!'Oh, one-on-one....there was so much good to remember.

Personally, I shall never forget the wonder when in retirement he was willing to share his gifts as counsellor in my Cambridge church in 1989.  At first hand, I marvelled at his work in our Stoneyard Centre caring for people that I (and most of us) felt utterly inadequate to help.  He touched countless lives.  He led courses on pastoral counselling for the church (I still have the notes).  His marriage counselling was legendary including advising one couple they weren't ready to marry - and they agreed! To the leadership team he brought depth, experience and maturity...always with grace and a twinkle. So many stories of love and listening with forgiveness at their heart.

The last three years he was bed-ridden, totally blind and very deaf.  Yet he remained a shining witness with such faith in God's love.  We learned that one of his visitors asked him how he was, to which he replied 'Oh, it's good.  I'm learning to listen!  

Isn't it wonderful to have known and been influenced by people like Ron?

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Feels like Home

Recently I was given a book written by a pastor friend, Lee Eclov, with that title: Feels like Home.  He writes so well, packing the book with stories from his long ministry. What hit me between my eyes is his overriding conviction  - that the best way of viewing the local church is to see it as family.

He claims: You can’t feel at home in an organization. Summing up his ministry he says: 'I am not project manager, goal setter, strategist, but homemaker'. The church as God's household looms large (1 Tim 3:15 Eph 2:19).  Yet it contrasts with viewing church as organization.  It develops in a different way.  Vision statements don't work because it's about people who often don't fit in with vision. Outliers. In fact 'watching out for prodigals' is a top priority of God's household.  And growing family takes time - pastors need patience within God's family

As he teases out implications of belonging to Christian brothers and sisters he underlines the tension between nuclear family life and our first family in Christ and invites us to find a role within two families because a healthy church life is God's gift to any family.  Through all these he keeps illustrating by stories drawn through his long ministry.

His commitment to church as homemaker resonates with my own experience of him and his warm supportive ministry.  And his introduction continues to challenge me:

When Christians look for a church they are looking for a home.  They don't just need a place where they like the music or preaching, or where their kids are happy. They need a home because Christian discovery and growth can't happen without one.  The Bible knows nothing of Christians disconnected from other believers. Jesus' people are a family, "the household of God' (Eph. 2:19).  You might think a church that feels like home would be easy, but actually it is a miracle. Christian love and Christ-like service don't come naturally at all.....in fact life with our Christian family is counter-intuitive at every turn.  Everything that makes a church feel like home depends on the Holy Spirit working wonders within and among us. 

Do you sense a challenge too?

Fresh ambitions

This last weekend I made a couple of commitments.  By now, readers will know of the somewhat random nature of my postings...flitting from one subject to another.  And actually this is about trying to reduce flitting!

The first commitment was renewing my gym membership for a year.  I have belonged to a gym for several years beginning in the US under orders from a fierce doctor whose dire warnings about my health really motivated me.   In following years, motivation has become erratic and occasionally absent all together.  But, with a fresh year's renewal I really want to develop more regular exercise.  So, that's one ambition.

The other concerns reactivating my keyboard which has lived in the attic for much of the past year.  I pushed it up there when we needed the spare room for accommodation.  It's not full size and I only bought it because my minor stroke left me needing to exercise my left hand. However, like the gym, enthusiasm for doing exercises waxes and wanes.  In my teens playing the piano was one of my main hobbies but all that is in the far distance. I have a CD which re-introduces me to basics of scales etc.  It backs single finger exercises with extravagant orchestration so that Old MacDonald had a farm sounds positively symphonic.

How long will these fresh ambitions last?  I know the peril of going public but that's part of the pressure I need to put on myself.  Maybe I'll let you know.