Dabbling with All Saints Day ( A Prayer of Thanksgiving and Confession)

This week in Church we are celebrating All Saints day... yes I do realise that it is also (reformation Sunday). I guess it is a way of countering the influence of Halloween that has crept into the New Zealand psyche over recent years... Due to a combination of American media  and large chain stores and supermarkets in New Zealand seeing the possibility of increased sales. It does focus on glorifying the creepy and the scary. While many Churches run light parties  as a counter to that this year we have decided to run an all saints day service to acknowledge the people who have gone before us and inspired us in our faith... here is my attempt at a prayer of thanks giving and confession for the weekend. Please feel free to use it make comment suggest amendments, or totally ignore it.

Loving God,

We gather as your people to worship you

We come together to affirm our faith In Jesus Christ

We come that we may be strengthened to serve and witness

We come knowing that we are part of your people

We come as a small part of your church universal

Joining with saints round the world and throughout time

 

Merciful God

We come to remember your goodness  and grace

That you created the world and all that is in it

You have made each of us in your image; unique and beloved

That you have lead and guided your people throughout history

That you sent your son Jesus to save us and restore us to yourself

That by your Holy Spirit you dwell with us

 

Faithful God

We remember those who have run the race and kept the faith

Those whose journey with you are told in the scriptures

The Patriarchs, monarchs, prophets and people of the Hebrew Scriptures

Apostles, church leaders, and first generation believers of the New Testament

We remember the Men and women who down through the years have faithful passed on the gospel

Those who by their word and deed, with sacrifice and suffering have made Jesus known

 

Gracious God

We remember the people who have gone before us in this place

In this land: as we celebrate 200 years of the gospel in Aotearoa New Zealand

And Here: In the generations who have faithful served you at this church

And in our lives as we remember all those who shared their faith with us

Grandparents, Parents, pastors, teachers, children and friends

Thank you for this great cloud of witnesses

 

God who holds our times in your hands

We remember and give you thanks for your goodness in the past

For all you have done and those who have gone before  

We acknowledge your grace and goodness to us now

We thank you for the people that you have called to journey with us

We place our trust in you for tomorrow

Your continued grace to us, our children and our children’s children  

 

Mighty God

Forgive us, we have done the things we should not do

Forgive us, we have left undone the good you call us to do

Renew us O Lord; fill us a fresh with your spirit

Enable us to faithfully serve you and one another in love

Empower us to witness to the great hope we have in Jesus Christ

That we might bring glory to you O God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Fighting To Stay True...Pergamum: What the Spirit IS Saying To The Churches (Part 4)

We are working our way through the letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor at the beginning of the book of Revelation.  We are doing that because we want to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches: The churches then and there at the end of the first century and to us here and now at the start of the third millennia of the churches epic journey following Jesus.  What does the spirit have to say to the churches as we face trouble from outside and face problems from within?  Today we are going to look at a church that faced a very challenging context; the church at the place described as where Satan lives and has his throne, a church that had stood firm in the face of persecution and martyrdom but a Church where there were people who were seduced to compromise the truth, to mix the worship of Jesus with the pagan practices around them.  What is the spirit saying to us… 

If Ephesus was the New York of Asia Minor, then Pergamum was its Washington DC.  In the New Zealand context you could say if Ephesus was its Auckland then Pergamum was its Wellington. It was the political capital for the province, the seat of the roman governor. It had been the seat of power in the region before the Romans had come as well. It was a city suited to such a roll as it was built on top of an almost 1,000ft acropolis or hill and commanded the whole area around it, a strong fortress.  Pergamum had the second greatest library in the ancient Mediterranean area after Alexandra. When the Egyptians stopped exporting papyrus   for writing on, Pergamum gave its name to what they developed to replace it… what we call parchment. It had a theatre that could seat 10 000 people and was known as a center for entertainment and for festivals. 

AS the Political Capital it was the center for emperor worship, there is still the remains of a statue of the emperor Trajan near the summit of the acropolis today. It was also the centre for many pagan temples. A temple to Zeus dominates the land scape. That’s a picture of the altar to Zeus  to the right… There were also temples to Athena, Dionysus; the God of wine. 

The city was also well known for the worship of Asclepius, the God of healing and that temple was like the Lourdes of today attracting many people looking for healing. It was the alternative medicines mecca. The symbol associated with Asclepius was the serpent.  As we see these factors combine we can see how Jesus can call it the place where Satan lives and has his throne. It made it a hard place to be church.

Again we are introduced to the one speaking to the church by imagery that is taken from John’s vision of Jesus in Revelations Chapter 1. It is Jesus who is speaking to the churches, when the Spirit speaks to the Church it brings us the words of Jesus. Here we see Jesus is the one who holds the two edged sword.  In scripture the sword is seen in two ways both of which speak to the church in Pergamum and to us. The Sword was the symbol of Roman authority and government and the Church at Pergamum is being reminded that they may live at the center of roman rule and even where Satan has his throne, but ultimately it is Jesus who is sovereign, Jesus who rules. The two edged Sword is also an image in scripture of the word of God it is the symbol of God’s truth.

Jesus tells the church at Pergamum that he knows where they live. Now we are used to those words these days in a weird creepy horror movie stalker kind of context, “I Know where you live’ is like a threat… And we are all worried about the big brother capacity of government agencies. But for the church at Pergamum and for us it is a source of comfort and encouragement. To the other churches Jesus had talked of knowing their deeds and actions but Jesus knowledge of the church goes beyond the confines of the faith community into the context as well. In Pergamum Jesus is aware of the hardship, the persecution that has gone on the temptation to compromise their faith to fit in. He knows both the reality of what we face and the spiritual reality behind it. He knows the pagan environment that the church at Pergamum faced and the increasingly pluralistic and secular environment that we find ourselves in. An environment, which was described by one novelist I read recently where ‘God has been resigned to being the domain of fundamentalists, fanatics and humorists’.  He knows that both environments are hard to be faithful followers. But Jesus knows where we live.

Jesus acknowledges the churches strengths. AS the center of Roman rule in the province Pergamum had been the first place to have to deal with persecution. In Roman society you were able to worship who you liked as long as you also were willing to worship the emperor.  Christians were not willing to do that. In Romans 13 Paul encourages the believers at the heart of the Roman Empire to respect the Roman Government, God had proposed for civil government, it was there to protect the weak and to punish the wicked, but it was only a servant of God not to worshiped as a god. The Church at Pergamum had withstood the persecution. Unlike Smyrna they had already witnessed the death of their bishop Antipas, but had remained faithful as witnesses to Jesus. Tradition tells us that Antipas was ordained Bishop by John and was roasted to death in a brazen bull. Here is a church that had stood firm. That could not be broken by persecution.

Then Jesus acknowledges the problems the church has.  There were groups amongst them that were compromising their faith and the Church had not fought against them. The letter uses an Old Testament story to illustrate this.  Balaam is a prophet that Balak the Moabite king pays to come and curse the people of Israel. He is afraid of them and so calls on spiritual means to disrupt them. Balaam is unwilling to do this; in Numbers 22 we have the wonderful story of Balaam’s donkey stopping him. However we find out later in Numbers that Balaam had told Balek how to get the Israelites to curse themselves. He suggested sending women to seduce them to join in the worship of the Moabite Gods thus earning God’s wrath, which is what happens in numbers ch 25. 

In the New Testament as gentiles had come to Christ and joined the Church the Christian leaders had gathered together in Jerusalem to work through the issue of how Jewish did people need to become to be followers of Jesus. The resulting judgment  recoded in Acts 15 asked them specifically to stay away from food sacrificed to idols and from sexual immorality, from our reading in 1 Corinthians you could see that such things were an issue in the early Church.  Much of the life and commerce of Pergamum would have revolved round Pagan temples, family celebrations would have been in the temple, artesian guilds, professional associations would have had meals at temples and sacrifices to the emperor of various deity would have been part of that. Various groups were teaching that such things were acceptable for Christians. The Christians in Smyrna suffered financial hardship because they would have refused to make such a compromise but here poverty is not seen as one of the issues so it may well be that some were not willing to sacrifice to the imperial cult to save their lives while others were willing to sacrifice to the pagan cults to save their livelihood. 

In doing this however they would have ruined their witness to Jesus Christ. It’s a challenge for us today, how much do we influence our society for the kingdom of God and how much have we let society influence us. Have we allowed our faith to be compromised when our hopes and dreams and the pursuits that dominate our time and our sexual morals are not much different than the world around us. We may still have a theological affirmation of who Jesus is but the way we live that out does not reflect our commitment to Jesus and his kingdom. 

Recently I’ve been reading a book called ‘Shrink’ by Tim Shuttle and he talks about the fact that the church in western society has come to view success not in terms of faithful service to Jesus but in the terms of the secular business world, success is all about the ABC’s Attendance, Buildings and Cash flow… WE talk of celebrity pastors and are told that the way to grow a church is by using business techniques and strategy rather than through prayer, love, discipleship, faithful proclamation of the gospel and service. 

Prosperity Gospel preaches that God will bless us financially if we give and obey him. Can I say that is a very pagan understanding of religion that we can manipulate and earn God’s blessing. That blessing is seen in terms of the quality of cars in the church car park, money in the bank not in terms of the amazing depth and width of God’s grace to us.  It tells people who struggle financially that their faith isn’t good enough.  Even without that how much of what we focus on in our lives is about Christ’s kingdom rather than simply the prevailing spirit of this age. 

WE live in an environment where as a church we wrestle with connection, living the gospel out contextually so that it speaks to our culture and not compromising the gospel. Where we hold to traditional forms and styles at worship that don’t speak to the world and have adopted our societies norms. 

Jesus call to the Church at Pergamum is to repent, and once again we are not told what that entails. But Jesus tells them if they do not fight to be true to Jesus then he will come and fight. The two edged sword speaks of sovereign authority and it will be used to bring Judgement. To repent in this case is to fight to become true: To resist compromise with the gospel and its values. The sword also points to the way we are to fight and resist this compromise. Remember it is also the image for the word of God. God’s way of overcoming error is the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ. AS John Stott puts it “falsehood will not be suppressed by the gruesome methods of the inquisition or the burning of heretics at the stake, or by restrictive state legislation, or even by war. Force of arms cannot conquer ideas. Only truth can defeat error.” 

Jesus then turns to give encouragement to those who overcome. Like with all the letters the reward of staying true and faithful to Christ is couched in terms that connect to the issue being faced and with the church at Pergamum it’s no different.  Jesus says that for those who overcome they will receive the hidden manna, they will be given a white stone with a new name on it, which seems rather mysterious to us.  But the hidden manna was seen as the bread that God provided for the people of Israel in the desert that was placed in the Ark of the Covenant.  While scholars have a whole raft of ways of looking at the white stone, it fits to think of white tiles that were used like tickets today to get into religious festivals. Jesus is saying that for those who overcome they are invited to a greater banquet and greater feast, the wedding feast of the lamb to feast not on food sacrificed to idols but on the very presence of Jesus Christ. When we celebrate communion we talk of it as a foretaste an appetiser of the meal that is to come when we shall sit down with Christ in eternity. Why bother going to the pagan festivals and joining their meals when we have been given an invitation to this feast. A feast we experience with the presence of Jesus in our lives each day. Pagan worship would often give their initiates a new name and here is the promise that Jesus himself will give us a new name. AS I thought about that I couldn’t help but thing of Jesus sitting down with his disciples at  the last supper and saying I no longer call you servants but friends, or Simon, being called Peter which means rock. But the name on the white stone could also simply be the name of Jesus, acknowledging that we are his.

What is the spirit saying to the church? Well as Michael Wilcock says “our soft centered permissive society can be curiously hard on those who refuse to go along with it.” It will both persecute those who do not bend and it is very seductive that we worship its idols alongside our own God. We need to be prepared to fight to be true to Christ. In the end what we are offered in Christ is so much more than what we are offered as a compromise.

Smyrna... faithful not fearful in the face of suffering (Revelations 2:8-11)... What the Spirit Says to the Churches (part 3)

John Stephen Akwari…Never stood on the winner’s podium at the Olympic Games, he never had a medal placed round his neck or a wreath placed on his head, he lived his whole life in poverty in the dirt floored hut of his home village… But he has inspired millions worldwide and his name is synonymous with the modern marathon.

 Mexico City 1968. The sun is setting and they are about to turn the lights off in the Olympic stadium most of the crowd has already left for the day. News comes through that there is still one more runner; one more competitor out on the marathon course. He is injured, hurt and staggering along but he is determined despite all he is suffering to finish the race. Little know Tanzanian runner John Stephen Akwari steps onto the world stage. A story told best in the great Olympic sports movie ’16 days of glory’

 

 

 

“My country did not send me 5000 miles to start the race but to finish it” John Stephen Akwari’s faithfulness in the face of suffering backed in this film clip by the tune of the great resurrection hymn ‘Thine Be The Glory Risen Conquering Son’ captures the essence of the letter to the church in Smyrna. A church that has persevered in the face of tribulation, poverty and slander and that Jesus is telling will face further persecution, violent detention and even death. A church that is called to be neither faithful nor fearful as it goes through these trials.

We are working our way through the seven letters to the seven churches in the province of Asia Minor, in modern day turkey, looking at what the spirit is saying to the churches, then and there and to us here and now. ‘If the first mark of the true church is love” says John Stott, “the second Mark is surely suffering. You cannot love without suffering”. Maybe in our comfortable western society we have forgotten that cost of following Jesus. But from its start and even for many of our brothers and sisters in the world today to follow Jesus is to suffer. There have been moments when we touch that kind of issue first hand I remember when I was younger our Church held a Passover dinner and the man who lead us through it talked of his orthodox Jewish family holding a funeral for him when he became a Christian. . And Jesus call to the church in Smyrna and to us is to be faithful not fearful, and we need to listen to what the Spirit saying to the churches.

Smyrna may sound like Russian vodka but is a city that sits to the north of Ephesus. It was Ephesus’ rival for prominence in the province. It was a major sea port and the main Imperial trade road through the province went inland from it. Therefore it was a rich and prosperous city.  It was known for two things; its beauty and its loyalty or faithfulness to Rome. It was the first city to be rewarded with the right to build a temple to the worship of the emperor Tiberius. Smyrna today is still standing and is the second largest city in Asiatic Turkey and known by the name Izmir.

We do not know much of the origins of the church in this city. Apart from the letter here in revelations we do have letters written by Ignatius in the middle of the second century in Smyrna and a written account of the martyrdom of the bishop of Symrna in 156 AD. The bishop’s name was Polycarp and tradition tells us that John the elder had ordained him personally as bishop.

Polycarp was a saintly man, his church had convinced him to flee but he was betrayed to the Roman authorities. In deference to his old age they invited him to recant his faith and to offer a sacrifice to the emperor, which he refused to do… he said “eighty and six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong; how then can I blaspheme my King who saved me.” He was burned at the stake. In the end as an act of mercy a soldier ran him through with a sword because the wind kept blowing the flames away from him. It gives us a picture of the extreme that the church in Smyrna is warned of and of their faithfulness.

Like all the letters this one starts with the speaker being introduced, Jesus is the one speaking to the church. In all the letters Jesus introduces himself through aspects of the vision that John has on Patmos. The way Jesus introduces himself here is a source of encouragement for the Church. Here Jesus says he is the ‘first and the last’ that he is the eternal God. In the face of difficulties suffering and persecution it is important for us to remember that the situations and suffering we face now can be seen as having a place in the eternal plans and purposes of God. It is not simply theological sentimentality to acknowledge that God has our times and situations in his hands, but a source of hope of the ultimate victory of Justice of the ultimate victory of Christ.

 

Jesus identified himself as the one who was dead and is alive again. Jesus is not just eternal Jesus lets them and us know that he has gone before, he has walked the road of suffering… of slander, poverty, imprisonment and torture, and yes even death. The encouragement that comes from that is encapsulated best in the words of the Spiritual from African American Slaves “ nobody knows the trouble I seen nobody knows but Jesus’.

More than that is the hope and encouragement in the resurrection, that Jesus overcame, that he is alive again. The hope and comfort for God’s people is that the crown of thorns is a victor’s crown. The promise for those who overcome is that they will receive eternal life that Jesus has won.

The letter outlines the present and past suffering of the Church; which seem to be a result of the reaction of the Jews in Smyrna. One of the things that Roman Society valued was civilizations more ancient than themselves. This meant that for the Jews that they were exempt from making sacrifices to the emperor as a sign of their loyalty. The early church was seen as a sect of Judaism and was originally afforded the same protection. But as Christianity continued to grow the Jews wanted to differentiate themselves from Christians. Jesus predicted in the verses that followed on from our reading in John 15 this morning that a time would come when they would put Christians out of the synagogue and would consider they were doing God’s work in killing them.

We do need to unpack some of the strong language used about the Jews in this letter. Jews who are not really Jews refers to the fact that the early Christians saw that in Jesus they had found the messiah and they were the true continuation of the Jewish faith. In Roman law for someone to be punished, imprisoned and bought before the justice system their needed to be accusers. In Jesus trial the gospels tell us people were found who were willing to bring false accusations, and Paul in the book of acts seems to have had to deal with similar issues. The Jews in Smyrna were willing to accuse the Christians …The word Satan means accuser and in this letter John is highlighting that they in their slander are acting in that role, and also pointing out that behind this is a darker evil force. But we need to note it is specific to this context and sadly this terminology has been picked up and used as anti-Semitic propaganda.

In the face of increasing suffering and persecution even to the point of death, the Church is encouraged to be faithful and not fearful. 

We as humans naturally react to fear in one of three ways… It’s the freeze, flight or fight reflexes. When we are faced by opposition to our faith be it from unkind words and unfair critiques of our faith by friends or work mates through to the kind of situations mentioned in this letter, it can cause us to freeze, to simply stop talking or living out our faith, or we can run away retreat, our faith becomes private or confined to Sunday mornings and the walls of a building, or we walk away or its to fight, to aggressively argue, maybe even to respond in un-Christ like ways.

But we are called not to be fearful but to be faithful… During the week I have been made aware of the stories of faithful people and to talk of what it means to be faithful in the face of suffering is best explained in their stories.

Maybe not really persecution but the Ebola Crisis is something that has makes people fearful, right, that causes great suffering. There has been some criticism in the west of the number of Christian medical workers in the area.  Stephen Rowden volunteers for Doctors without borders in Monrovia Liberia, his role is to manage the teams who collect the bodies of Ebola victims, they deal with about ten to twenty five bodies a day and risk becoming victims themselves. In a Radio interview with typical English understatement he spoke of "the sad case" of going into a house to collect the body of a four year child from its parents. Asked if he was a religious man he replied yes he was a committed Christian. The interviewer then asked if this was testing his faith to which he replied No “I Get great strength from my faith and the support of my family.” There is some criticism of the fact that there are so many missionary medical people involved in west Africa but no one is really lining up to replace them.

ISIS the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is also something that people are afraid of today… right… I’ve even had conversations with people who worry about it sparking a world war. We’ve heard stories of beheadings and the ultimatums to Christian populations as well as moderate Muslim populations of converting leaving without anything or facing death. What we don’t hear is the stories of  Middle Eastern Christians quietly at work in the refugee camps caring for the needs of the refugees.  Not too far away from the deadly frontlines they are there to care for the homeless and displaced. One Christian aid agency sends money to those on the ground to be able to buy locally sourced tents and food and gas stoves to give out. They share their stories…

An officer in the Kurdish militia fighting ISIS came to the Christian aid workers to see what was going on. He was suspicious of where the aid was coming from. But as the conversation continued he was impressed by the fact that the people doing the work were Christians, helping displaced Muslims…“You see the Arabs around you in the Gulf states, which claim to be religious Muslims, have not sent us anything but terrorists,” he told the ministry team members. “But you who follow Christ send love and peace and goodness to people every day.”  After a long conversation he too became a follower of Jesus and said it was the happiest day in his life.

In refugee camps tent churches are springing up. Centres of both aid and worship at one a muslim women was attracted to one by the singing and came to see what was going on. She asked if she was allowed in. She stayed and became a follower of Jesus. The next day she was back with her family and within a short period over sixty of her extended family had become Christians.    

When the aid agency how the Christian workers were coping the reply was that their faith is maturing and they are learning to be more and more dependent on Christ in new ways each day.

We to are called to be faithful and to show Christ's love and proclaim Christ's saving love.

The letter to Smyrna expresses the Christian hope in the face of suffering in a series of paradoxes. They are poor but in Christ they are rich. They face death but in Christ they will find life. Satan is accusing them and causing suffering and death, but the sovereign God is using that to test and to refine their faith. About 20% of the logos for the city of Smyrna that archaeologists have found show the laurels of the roman victory crown a sign that the city is being rewarded for its faithfulness to Rome but to those who remain faithful to king Jesus they will receive a greater crown, they will receive eternal life in Christ. The call to us as a church facing struggle and trials is to be faithful not fearful listen to what the spirit is saying to the church.

Ephesus and First Love... Remember, Repent and Return (revelations 2:1-7) Three 'R's" that Will Revitalise and Renew the Church.

I used to be called Hollywood Howard by some of my fellows ministry students because I would always make film references in class or in sermons and there are two movie scenes that sprang to mind when I read the letter to the church at Ephesus in revelations. One was the breakfast scene from the 1941classic movie Citizen Kane… The movie tells the story of fictitious newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane, it’s told in a series of flashbacks as a news reel reporter interviews people to try and make sense of Kane’s life through his famous and paradoxical dying word “rosebud”. The scene tells the story of Kane’s first marriage in a montage of the only time they seemed to spend together… breakfast…

 

 

“They married for love” says the man being interviewed but as the scene goes on we find that they seem to simply go through the motions of married life the spark is gone. The growing distance between them is graphically shown by the position and size of the breakfast table.  Business and standing up for what Kane sees as  truth seems to have driven a wedge between them. This is a good picture of how Jesus sees the Church at Ephesus, its busy, they labour to uphold the truth but there is something lacking, they go through the motions but they had forgotten their first love.

We are working our way through the letters to the seven churches in the province of Asia, which is in modern day Turkey, to see what Jesus has to say to his people. Just recently in our country who is reading our electronic mail has been a big issue, we want things to remain private,  but here John is very open in letting all the churches know what has been written to each one of them.  Each letter is very personal and close to the heart of where each community is at. But it is open to all of us. One comment on the website I sourced the clip from citizen Kane said “this is the story of many marriages” and as one commentator has said on these 'open' letters “if the shoe fits we need to wear it.” We need to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

Ephesus is the logical place for John to start his correspondence; it is the closest sea port to the Island of Patmos where he is exiled. And it is the principle city and port in the Province. It was famous for its temple dedicated to the worship of the goddess Artemis and also later as the centre of Emperor Worship, It also had a large Jewish population.  Paul goes there on his third missionary trip recorded in Acts 19. He stayed for two and a half years, giving public lectures encouraging the church and preforming many healing miracles. There was a great impact on the whole province. Paul had to flee when a riot broke out because the silver smiths were concerned that the gospel might ruin their idol trade. Paul left Timothy to build up the believers. At the end of his third missionary trip he visited and spoke to the leadership at Ephesus warning them of false teachers, wolves in sheep’s clothing.  He wrote to the church while he was in prison in Rome and also wrote to encourage Timothy. We know that sometime towards the end of the first century John replaced Timothy as the leades of the church there. Now John is in exile and writes to the next generation of believers in that place.

AS with each of the letters, Jesus is seen as the one speaking to the church and identified by one of the images used in John’s vision that we looked at last week in revelations 1:12-16. In this case Jesus is the one who walks amongst the lampstands and holds the churches stars in his hand. The letter is written by Jesus who is the head of the church and also present with them to see and to know everything that  is going on.

To start with Jesus acknowledges their strengths. They had managed to blossom in a hard place. They are hardworking, if you went to the church at Ephesus you would see that they are doing all the things that you’d expect in a church. It functions well, probably had effective programmes for the kids, good worship, even care and outreach programmes into the community. It had endured hardship; a quick look at the history of the church in Acts and we see that it was best by opposition from the pagan environment it was in. They were very good at holding on to the truth of the gospel. They tested people who came and taught to make sure they were orthodox, even those who claimed to be apostles.  Not only by looking at their teaching but the people’s lives as well:  They didn’t want anything to do with evil men.  You could imagine their liturgy and their prayers and their sermons being theologically deep and rich and true. Even Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is not written to correct any false teaching or problem but to convey a deeper understanding of the gospel.  John mentions one group in particular the Nicolaitans that we don’t know much about, except that the Ephesians were not taken in by them either.

But Jesus goes on to look at the one thing they lack, that despite all they had done and did they had lost their first love. Now scholars are pretty split over whether John is meaning their love for one another; they had become so strict about orthodoxy and who was in or out, they had become cold when it came to how they viewed each other. Or their love for Jesus;  that in seeking to be correct about belief and practise they had forgotten that at the centre of it all the Christian faith is about a love relationship with God.  I actually think it was both, in the passage from the epistle from John we used as our call to worship this morning, we see that for John the two are invariably linked, how can we love God whom we have not seen says John if we do not love one another.  Jesus had tied to two great commandments together as well. John Stott says “ Love is the true and first mark of the Church indeed, it is not a living church if it is not a loving Church”… he goes on to apply that to the Church in Ephesus “toil becomes drudgery if it is not a labour of love”  The endurance of suffering and hardship can be hard and bitter if it is not softened and sweetened by love” Orthodoxy, and truth is important as ever in our day of relativism,  can become cold, dead and grim legalism without the warmth and life and beauty with which love invests it.” We are to be about the truth but to speak the truth in love.

Perhaps the best analogy of what this means for a church comes from the city of Ephesus itself. This letter warns the church that unless they do something about returning to their first love Jesus will remove the lampstand from its place. Ephesus today is a set of ruins many miles in land. It was a harbour city at the mouth of the Cayster river, which over time slowly silted up and so the city no longer served any good purpose and was abandoned. Love like that river is the life source of the church and if it is allowed to silt up the church too will become just a set of interesting ruins.

But there is hope and John’s letter gives the Church three imperatives, three commands that will reignite and revitalise the flame of that love. It’s a bit like the three “R’s” that we talk of when we talk of going back to the basics in education… (and I've never really understood how thesee are seen as three 'r's in education circles)it’s reading, writing and Arithmetic… or more likely these days when it comes to the environment the three "r's" are … reuse, recycle reduce…”… But for Jesus it is the three 'r's' of  Remember, repent, and return or redo.

Remember says John, from where you have fallen… Remember you r first love. On the alpha marriage course one of the first exercises we invite couples to do is to write down the things that first attracted them to each other, to remember. Kris’ smiley eyes always come to mind and a beautiful young woman who loved to splash barefoot in puddles after the rain. They are not being asked to simply remember an emotion here… the feeling that you feel when you feel the feeling you’ve never felt before’ but to remember the love God has for them for us. AS John tells us in his first epistle this is love, not that we first loved God but that he first loved us and sent his son to be a atoning sacrifice. In the Old Testament, each generation is invited to remember and identify with God’s saving acts by bringing his people out of slavery in Egypt, to remember God’s love and thus to live afresh as God’s people. For the church at Ephesus and for us today it is to remember what Christ has done for us. The grace of God shown in the incarnation; becoming one of us; the grace and love of God shown in the cross; for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son… The love of God shown in the resurrection: an invitation to new life in Christ.  The love of God shown in sending the Holy Spirit: companionship with us in all life’s joys and trials. Remember that first love… God first loved us.

Repent says John. We often thing of the word repent as being to feel sorry for what we have done wrong… But just like remember is not about an emotion. John is not  telling the church they should feel sorry or guilty, rather it is a call to turn back to God. To stop going the way they are going and to come back.. John does not articulate what this means for the church at Ephesus but maybe it is summed up in the sentiment of the last line of Isaac Watts great Hymn “when I survey the wondrous cross”… thinking of what Jesus had done for us it concludes “ love so amazing so divine demands my life my soul my all.” They and we need to recapture that.

Well actually John does tell the church what it means to repent, that is that they return to what they did at first. IN the first night of the Alpha marriage course the thing that is presented as of paramount importance in making a good marriage great is that couples actually make time for each other, they set aside time for a date, time for romance doing things they enjoying doing together, because it is easy for the business and sameness and harshness of everyday life to rob them of love and the time they need to invest in their relationship. John calls the church to do what they did at first, I’m sure it didn’t mean that they stopped the things they were already doing, or that they simply had to add more things, rather it was the invitation to invest more time into that relationship with Jesus and that would flow out into community life and social justice and outreach. It’s interesting that in times of renewal and revival down through history people find that worship becomes more important in their lives; there is a passion for prayer and for spending time reading and studying the word of God. That one of the hopes we have had as a church leadership in encouraging a season of prayer and inviting people to take on the E100 bible reading challenge.  Out of those things comes a genuine desire for unity, compassion for the poor and a passion for evangelism and justice. They rekindle and re stock our love for Jesus because he first loved us and for others, because they are God beloved.

The promise that Jesus gives at the end of this letter for those who overcome draws us back to the garden, to the idea of fresh and new creation, a promise of eating from the tree of life.  In the garden Adam and Eve shared complete fellowship with God and with each other and the promise is that for those who overcome that we will have that again, that we will know that life and love for eternity in Christ.

I mentioned at the beginning that two movie scenes came to mind when I thought of this letter. Well let me finish with the second one. It is again a wonderful montage that in a four minute sequence tells the story of a lifelong romance, a great marriage. It comes from the Disney Pixar movie “Up” which tells the story of an old man Carl  who find life again after his wife Elle dies, he finds it at Paradise falls. But it starts with a wonderful montage telling the story of his one true love, a lifelong marriage to his childhood sweetheart. They go through some great times and some hard times, dealing with childlessness, financial problems, hard work and everydayness, and finally illness and death but all the way through there is a sense of deep abiding love for one another. One setting in particular plays through the montage plays through the years, the couple going up a hill to have a picnic together… To spend time, to invest in one another… Yes it is Disney but one of the great things is that for a whole generation of people who see it their most romantic film moment is about a good life long marriage.  This is a great picture of both marriage and the church that remembers and holds onto its first love. I’ll play it as we leave our service this morning… not now because I want to us to simply stop and hear what the spirit has to say to the church… an invitation to remember that first love, that God so loved us… Repent… turn again towards God…Return to doing what we first did… not out of duty but  living out of God’s great love for us.