The King on a Borrowed Donkey (Luke 19:28-48)

One Sunday after church I took James out for a driving lesson and we ended up heading out to Auckland airport, and as we were going along George Bolt drive, a high-speed motorcade came towards us from the airport. There were police on bikes, that stopped at every intersection to ensure that the vehicles behind them could move through without stopping. There was a police car with lights flashing so motorists would pull over and let them speed by. The motorcade itself was three large black SUV’s with blacked out windows. You couldn’t see who it was in the cars, you couldn’t see which vehicle they were in or which one contained, my over active imagination assumed, heavily armed security people. It was quite a sight, it felt like being in a movie not on a Sunday drive in Auckland, it was unsettling to think that in New Zealand such measures were necessary for a visiting dignitary. 

I wondered what kind of welcome this person would get when they arrived at their destination…red carpets, warm handshakes and greetings, amidst the flashing bulbs of a media scrum, or if they were an unpopular politician, the chant of protesters and yet more police to keep the peace. They would get the grandest of accommodation and the best of service.

I checked the newsfeeds to see if there was someone important coming to New Zealand but there was no mention of anyone. Maybe if it had been someone big there would have been more fuss more ceremony, tighter security and more coverage. Just remember back to Bill Clinton’s visit in 1999 for the APEC summit in Auckland, or the Royal visits that so many look forward to and cherish. All the trappings show us how important and significant these people are… there is a paradox in that to how Jesus enters Jerusalem, and his welcome… He comes humbly riding on a donkey, a borrowed donkey at that…  

Today we come to look at Jesus entry to Jerusalem, amidst the crowds of pilgrims coming for the Passover festival. We are looking at it from Luke’s perspective. For close to a year now we’ve been following Jesus journey to Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel, a journey that takes up the central third of the gospel. I know I said we’d finished that series last week with Jesus parable of the ten Mina’s but the journey really finishes here as Jesus enters the city. It finishes here as Jesus goes to the temple, and drives out the merchants. It finishes here as he teaches and the crowds are attentive to his words. It finishes here as the religious establishment want to have Jesus killed and they put into effect the events that will lead to the cross, Jesus death and his resurrection.

Luke’s account of Jesus entry into Jerusalem, is told in four sections marked by different geographical indicators of Jesus final journey up from Jericho to Jerusalem and on into the very temple itself. The focus of this passage is very much on Jesus himself, it’s full of Old Testament witness to who Jesus is, and it picks up themes that have been running through the gospel: That Jesus is God’s chosen king, but his kingdom is totally different than the realms of this world and how are we supposed to respond to Jesus, there is both worship and acclaim and disrespect and rejection in this passage.

We are told Jesus went ahead, going up to Jerusalem, and he approaches the villages of Bethphage and Bethany  on the Mount of Olives. The mount of olives is mentioned twice in Luke’s account because in Zechariah 14:4-5 it talks of God’s messiah coming from the east from the Mount of Olives. The scene here focuses on Jesus sending his disciples to go and get a colt, that had never been ridden from one of those villages. He tells his disciples if they are asked what they are doing to tell the person who asks the Lord needs it… and they will be given it. This is what happens.

The motorcade that James and I saw had been meticulously planned and practised and there is the feel of some prior planning going into the mission to get a donkey for Jesus. We know from John’s gospel that Jesus visited Bethany on a regular basis. In first century, Jewish customs if a rabbi needed something he could ask and it would normally be lent to him. But the emphasis in this section is not on Jesus strategic planning but his prophetic insight and the fact that what is about to unfold is part of God’s plan. If the planning has gone on it is God’s divine plan. Jesus has on three occasions in his journey to Jerusalem told his disciples that in Jerusalem he would be rejected betrayed and killed and in the final part of Luke’s journey narrative that he would rise to life again on the third day. What is about to unfold is not a tragic end to a good ministry, political intrigue and the happenstance of history, it is God’s purpose and God’s plan, right down to the minute detail of providing a donkey.   

The disciples bring the donkey to Jesus and they throw their cloaks on it and in front of it on the road. Jesus ridding on a donkey is fulfilment of scripture in the book of Zechariah 9:9 the prophet says

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king comes to you,
    righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey,
    on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

This act is to show that Jesus comes as God’s chosen king. The placing of cloaks in front of the donkey reinforces the Picture of Jesus as King as in 2 Kings 29:13 we have the coronation of Jehu as king of Judah and it tells us that cloaks were laid before his bare feet.   

But the donkey also speaks to what sort of king Jesus is as well. This is not the conquering hero coming into the city at the head of a victorious army, claiming the spoils of war and demanding the accolades of the people. Commentator Darrell Bock says “the humble animal denotes not a messiah of power but of humility and service.”  That this is at Passover signifies sacrifice for forgiveness of sin. God’s king and God’s kingdom stands in sharp juxtaposition to the realms of this world. Down through history attempts to use political or military power to instil the Kingdom of God have led to tragic consequences. The crusades, the Spanish inquisition, parts of the reformation, with civil war and revolt.  In recent times aligning the Christian faith with this party or that government or putting our hope in this candidate or that candidate, has done more wrong that right. We must ask ourselves  is Jesus the humble king of peace, and see his kingdom come as he did in humble service, care and compassion for the least and the lost, and the display of the churches reflection of Jesus righteous and just character. Not demanding influence and power but siding with those with influence and without power.

The story moves on and we move closer to Jerusalem. Again we see Jesus coming from the Mt of olives and down into the last valley before the city. We are told that the disciples begin praising God for all the miracles they had seen. As the city draws near their belief in Jesus as the messiah  turns into worship and thanks to God. I preached on psalm 124 at the Edmund Hillary retirement home on Thursday. Psalm 124 is one of the psalms of ascent, which gives thanks to God for his help in a series of trials and sufferings, described in a wonderful array of vivid images. The Psalms of ascent were used by pilgrims coming to Jerusalem and I can imagine a psalm like that one sparking the disciples to think of all God’s help they had seen in Jesus signs and wonders. It prompts them to use the words of another Psalm associated with the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a royal psalm, Psalm 118 ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! ‘peace in heaven and glory in  the highest’.

  if you are wondering where the hosannas are in Luke's account. Luke's quote of Psalm 118 focuses on Jesus aas King and the hosanna's in the psalm are right before he starts to quote. Like wise the palm fronds are not mentioned but again they are in Pssalm 118 as they follow on from this quote by talking of a procession with palm fronds to the altar in the temple.

There response to Jesus is to praise God for all the things they have seen and heard, to acknowledge Jesus as their king. That their hopes for the future are in Jesus and who he is. They don’t fully understand it yet, there will be big doubts and hard times ahead, God’s purposes will look a lot different than how they had hoped for, but their response to Jesus is faith and worship. The same response we are called to make. There hope of Heavens peace and glory, are our hopes, reconciliation with God and his justice and righteousness to reign.

But we also see in the middle of this rejoicing the voices of opposition that have been with Jesus all along. There are no police barriers or security guard to keep them away. Pharisees come to Jesus  and tell him to stop his disciples saying the things they were. The Pharisees you see may be spiritually blind, but they are not dumb they know what these words mean, they know that Jesus disciples are hailing him as king and messiah and saviour. They do not recognise him as such, he does not fit their image of what the king and messiah would be.  Jesus reply here does not quells their anxiety rather it fuels it. Jesus really in an open affirmation of his divinity says well if the disciples stopped, then creation itself would cry out, and acknowledged who Jesus is. The Pharisees hearts maybe like stone when it come to Jesus but the stones beneath their feet would tell of Jesus.  This is the wonderful task and privilege that you and I are given to tell and share of what we know of Jesus and give praise for God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. Creation the psalms tell us speak their praise but it is left to you and I to speak and declare the truth of Jesus to a world that needs to know.

The journey moves on. In verse 41 it tells us that Jesus approaches Jerusalem, as he comes up out of the last valley the whole city comes into sight. Jesus response is to weep, in this last stretch of the journey we’ve seen Jesus act as a prophet and as a king, now he acts in a priestly manner. He shows God’s care and love for the city and it’s people. He laments that the city and its people, represented by the Pharisees in this passage, have not recognised who he is, have not realised that the peace they seek has come to them in the person of Jesus Christ. They had a chance to embrace a different way of living a different way of dealing with the powers who were occupying and oppressing their country but they missed it.  He uses a whole raft of military imagery, ramps being raised against the walls, siege, brutal conquest to speak of the consequences of not recognising the time of God’s coming to them. It’s a very accurate portrayal of the Romans destruction of the city in 70AD in response to a Jewish revolt seeking their independence from Rome, their own understanding of the Kingdom of God.    Jesus as priest tries in here with the Passover as he has come to Jerusalem not only as its king but to offer a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. This is the true salvation and peace that Jerusalem was looking for…

The narrative then changes location again and Jesus enters the temple, cleanses it of the merchants and money lenders and starts to teach. You know that’s a sermon in itself…

You know I don’t know who was in that motorcade that flashed past us that Sunday afternoon. I don’t know where they were going or what they were about. It’s just the image that is stuck in my mind. But in Luke’s account of Jesus entry to Jerusalem we are invited to see who Jesus is. The Jewish scriptures show us the significance of his every action here. We see Jesus as prophet, king and priest. AS the gospel goes on we see where Jesus is going, his betrayal, his death on the cross and his being raised to life again, and ascending to the right hand of the Father, we have seen what Jesus is about and experienced in our lives as well as we have known his grace and love and calling and purpose.   We are invited to join the disciples in giving him praise, being attentive to his word, hearing it and obeying it. We are challenged about rejecting him and how that road leads to judgment.  Today I simply want to finish by inviting us to first be still and think in our own minds how we want to respond to Jesus as king. Then I am going to invite us to stand and join our voices with Jesus disciples and the children mentioned in John’s gospel and the people of the kingdom of God to sing hosanna ‘god save us’ lets be still, lets pray.

the borken trap psalm 124

Leslie Allen calls Psalm 124 ‘the broken trap’ after the imagery of a bird managing to escape from a snare or net set for it in verse 5. Managing to fly away free, that wonderful picture of freedom that is evoked by a bird in flight.

 It’s an interesting Psalm, a rare psalm in that it is a communal psalm of thanks, everyone giving thanks to God for his help and presence in the past for the whole of God’s people and declaring confidence in the LORD to be our help in present predicaments and future uncertainties.

In its title its ascribed to David but like so many of the Psalms we don’t have any situation in his life to connect it too. In some manuscripts, it does not have that accreditation to David   and Scholars say in terms of its language it fits in well in a later period, a song of triumph for the exiles returning from Babylon, even thought they’d been through the hardship od defeat, exile and living as strangers in a strange and often hostile land, God had kept his word and was restoring them to Jerusalem.  There is something about that not knowing, not having specifics to tie it down to, and its own use of so many different metaphors and a vivid array of different images of danger and trouble that make it so accessible to us. It’s a psalm of ascent and groups of pilgrims from all over the world coming to Jerusalem could fit their own experiences of God's help in times of trouble and suffering and difficulty to this communal psalm. It’s a psalm that can be easily become our Psalm, our song of thanksgiving for God’s presence. Our Psalm as we add our stories of God’s help, rescue and salvation to those of God’s people down through the ages, and give thanks and affirm our trust in God .  

It’s an honest Psalm that says that (to use the words of John 16:33) in this life there will be trouble, we face difficulties, temptations, suffering and disasters, on a national scale a communal scale and a in our individual lives, but we are not to be afraid in those things we can also know and experience God’s presence and aid.

It’s open enough to speak of God’s saving presence on the grand scale; freeing us from sin.  Delivering us from going down to the pit, which is one of the uses of the idea of being swallowed alive.  It has the idea of being spared judgement, as it evokes the Korah rebellion in Numbers 16, where Korah and some other Levites rebelled against Moses and Aaron  and they were swallowed by a fissure opening up, the rest of the Israelites were pleased that God was with them. As we approach Easter we remember Jesus coming as one of us to our side and through his living and dying and being raised to life again, breaking the trap of sin that would bind and hold us captive in its cruel clutches, freeing us to new life in Christ. It invokes Psalm 40 finding Jesus that solid place to stand amidst the mire clay or a torrent and flood.

It’s open enough that we can identify it with the things that we each face in our lives. I grew up in West Auckland and When I read this psalm I couldn’t help but think of the big wet we’ve just had where people out west found themselves in flash floods and a big sink hole opened up under New Lynn… We lived in Titirangi and it was easy to look down on new lynn and think it was a bit of hole anyway…(sorry Westie humour)   You may identify with troubles and situations that you have experienced where its felt like it was going to swallow you whole, or you were going down under the weight of it all, or trapped and unable to break free… or torn by the teeth of criticism and scorn. We often have pictures of big monsters when we think of being torn by teeth but did you know that chihuahua’s are Mexican hunting dogs. Those yupping nipping Dogs, used to kill deer and other animals, in a pack they would nip and yup and worry their prey, giving it no rest, till it was worn out and couldn’t get away, trouble can often be like that pack of chihuahua’s right, trivial things that are like a pack, nipping at our heals, one after the other and not giving us any rest. but the psalm invites us to see and to tell of God’s presence and God’s help. As a communal psalm it invites us to be encouraged and strengthened by what God has done in other people’s lives as well as ours. To be encouraged by the testimonies of people who have been where we have and can attest to God’s presence and help.

Finally we are invited to see God as our help. The psalm says our help is in the name of the LORD. It’s not that we can say in the name of Jesus likes it’s a magical formula, and abracadabra mumbo jumbo thing to make it alright, but rather for the Jewish mind set a name summed up the whole character of a person or in this case the very nature of God. God is our help because of who he is. In 1 john1:9 it says that we can have confidence that of we confess our sin that God will forgive us because God is faithful and just. Israel could have hope even when they were in exile and as Jerusalem was inflames because the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. The psalm talks of God as the maker of heaven and earth, so acknowledged his power and might, but also his provision and care. 

So the psalm invites us not only to give thanks but use that remembering of God's aid and presence to give us faith and trust for the things of today. Faith and trust in the God who has helped his people in so many situations and ways in the past. Who in Jesus came to our side and our aid and is with us till the end of the age.  

Investing in the Kingdom of God (Luke 19:11-27)

The scenes we saw around the US presidential elections this year were unprecedented. They showed the deep, deep divide in ideologies in western society. Crowds coming out onto the street chanting

 “not my president”

“not my president”

“not my president”

Wanting Donald Trump un-president-ed if you will. Protests on the night of the election and protests during and straight after his inauguration and continuing unrest…

“not my president”

“not my president”

And of course he’s not my president. However I share the concerns of many people around the world about Donald Trump’s Presidency and this rise of not just US first but “us first” nationalism.

I don’t want to get into that debate today…But as I came to the parable that Jesus finishes his journey to Jerusalem with I couldn’t help think of that chant ‘Not my president’, “not my president” because Jesus uses a similar situation of a noble man who went to be crowned king being opposed by his subjects who hated him, to talk about the kingdom of God: To prepare his disciples for what was about to happen and how we should live as we await his return. How we should live with Jesus as our king.

We’ve been on this long journey with Jesus, the journey to Jerusalem, a journey that takes up the central third of the Gospel narrative, way back in chapter 9:51 Luke tells us “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem”. It’s a journey that has focused on Jesus teaching about what it means to follow him in the Kingdom of God. The passage we are looking at today is Jesus final teaching before he arrives at Jerusalem.  The scene is set by Luke telling us he was near Jerusalem and in verse 28 we move onto Luke's account of Jesus entry into the city. Maybe it would have been great if Jesus ministry had finished with the words ‘the son of man had come to seek and save the lost’ that we looked at last week, on that positive affirmation of his ministry, but it doesn’t Jesus tells a challenging and somewhat chilling parable, difficult to understand, but impossible to ignore. seemingly full of injustice and revenge but full of grace and generosity as well.

To understand this parable and apply it our lives we need to look at it in context. Both in the context of the gospel, with what has gone before and what is to come, and in the context of first century Palestinian politics.

There is a direct correlation with what has gone before. Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable while “they were listening to this”  that refers to Jesus  conversation with Zacchaeus and his declaration that today salvation had come to Zacchaeus’ house, he too was a son of Abraham.”  There is the expectation with words like that and signs like the blind beggar receiving his sight that the Kingdom of God was going to come when Jesus arrives at Jerusalem, that he would be crowned king and all the expectations for Israel would come to pass… There was that hope that Jesus would “make Israel great again”. Jesus moves to counter that.

 

It rounds off a section in the gospel about who can enter the kingdom of God. It ties up the ministry that Jesus has had as being willing to invest the gospel into people’s lives and seeing it bring either  left and not allowed to prosper like with the rich young ruler, or give a good return like it did in the livesof the blind beggar, who followed Jesus, and Zacchaeus who stayed where he wasto live out a transformed life. Then there will come a time when how we’ve responded to that gospel will be revealed and assessed.

But it also points to what is to come. That while Jesus is going to Jerusalem to inaugurate his  Kingdom that it will be a difficult process, there will be opposition, his kingship will be rejected, he will die, he will have to go away and but will come back as king. While he is away those who are his servants will be intrusted with what he gives them, a mina is about the equivalent of 100 denarii or 100 days, 3 months wages. You can work that out with what you make a day. It’s not chicken feed, and they are then asked to go about their masters business. When we use the word slave we think of slave labour and forced field work, but in Roman times it was common place for servants to look after their master’s business and free them up to be involved in the public realm. In the Old Testament Joseph as a salve is put in charge of Potiphar’s household and all his possessions.  Jesus parable of the shrewd manager has a servant in charge of all his master’s financial dealings. In the film Shindler’s list about unlikely hero war profiteer and shady businessman Oscar Shindler who saved thousands of Jews in the Second World War, the character Izhak Stern played by Ben Kingsley is a Jewish slave labourer who manages all Shinler's business and eventually becomes his conscience and it’s Izhak Stern with Shindler who goes about the work of redemption, buying back Jewish lives with the Money Oscar Shindler has made.

For Jesus listeners this parable would also have had real life parallels, like I tried to draw with the reactions to the US elections. Judea was a client state of the Romans, so for someone to be acknowledged as king they had to go to Rome to get the authority of the emperor. After Herod the great died, that the Herod who was king when Jesus was born his son Herod Archelus had to go to Rome to be made king of Judea, but he was so unliked that a delegation from Judea went to Rome to oppose him. Because of this he was not made king but rather given a lesser title and less power. When he returned, he made sure that he dealt with the people who had opposed him. (click) Archelus is mentioned in Matthew chapter two as the reason that Joseph didn’t return to Bethlehem but went to Nazareth in Galilee, after Herod died. Coins from his short period of rule have been found, it maybe why there is connection between the minas and his political story in Jesus parable. Anyway He didn’t last long, which is why by the time we come to Jesus passion there is a Roman governor in Jerusalem.  Archelus’ brother Herod Antipas became ruler of Galilee and Peraea and is the king Herod who had John the Baptist killed and was involved in Jesus crucifixion.   But this background meant that Jesus listeners would realise that there can be a long gap between being the King and then starting to reign. It also gave them an understanding of the fact that it was not a simple process and those who were opposed to Jesus as king were going to try and block that.

 It also gives some context to the last part of Jesus parable as his listeners were used to the reality that when a new king came to power the old opposition was removed. Jesus parables are not allegories by the way, we can’t make direct links between each element. There isn’t a direct correlation with the beheading of his enemies by the noble man who became King in the parable, with Jesus. But there is a sense that in Jesus death and resurrection a new kingdom was established. The old order was removed, the old temple worship finished with the fall of Jerusalem to the Roman’s in 70 AD.

That’s a lot of background. How does that connect with us? What does it mean for us today?

Firstly we find ourselves in that time between the inauguration of God’s Kingdom, with Jesus life, death, and resurrection, and its consummation, the time that we are told will come when all will acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.  We live in that tension, already but not yet, we know God’s reign in our lives but there will come a time when it is complete. Kris and I met at Bible college, what is now Laidlaw, and the technical theological term for the idea that the kingdom of God has come but we are awaiting its fulfillment is called inaugurated eschatology… the end times have started. Kris and I got engaged, and with the other engaged couples we formed what we called the inaugurated eschatology club, we were all ready… but not yet. The process of getting married had started but it wasn’t consummated.   What do you do in that time? Well one of the things we did was we invested in our relationship to give our marriage the best chance it could to succeed. We invested in the new reality we were in.

The parable says that is what we are called to do by Jesus as well. We are called as God’s servants to invest in the new reality we find ourselves in invest in this Kingdom of God.  What does that look like. Well in Matthew’s version of this parable the coin in question is called a talent and so historically people have seen this as using the gifts God has given us for Jesus. That’s a good starting point. But all the way through Luke’s gospel we are invited to see very thing we have is a gift from God. Luke is the economic gospel, Luke’s emphasis on how much we understand and know God’s generous over the top grace is shown in how deep it reaches into our pockets. In this parable with this coin we don’t recognise as much as the talent is the challenge that it fact about how we use and invest all the resources God has given us.  It speaks of the gospel as well our talents and gifts, and our finances, our homes open in hospitality.

In Jesus we have a best picture of what that looks like. Jesus invests what God has given him into other people, meeting he poor the marginalised the lost at their point of need and bring grace and the presence of God into those situations. In the blind beggar and the short tax collector Zacchaeus we see it worked out as well. The Blind Beggar, goes about telling everyone what god has done for him and through that others give God praise. It’s about investing the Jesus story, the gospel that has changed us in other people’s lives.   Trent is a pastor at a local church and is a member of the Maungarei Ministers association, and I love his passion for the gospel. He came to Christ out of a back ground of drug addiction, drug dealing and gang affiliation. He has a passion for evangelism, telling people about what God has done for him and what God can do for others for you.

Zacchaeus is different as he experiences God’s grace you see his life becomes about justice and righteousness, he sees gives half his money to the poor and he makes restitution for all the wrong he has done. You can guarantee that the tax system and tax burden in his Jericho got a lot more just after that conversion experience. He became about God’s kingdom as good news for the poor and a just society. Steve who I hope to have share in our service later this year is a retiree, who when he retired from the police had a burning question… why… why was their child poverty in New Zealand? So he went to a low decile  school (that's one in a low sociao economic area for my overseas readers) and asked what the need was, and from there he has started breakfast clubs in seven different schools and uses his skills and talents and contacts to see children in poverty in New Zealand get the best chance they can to get through school and on in life. he cares for their families and through his ministry he tells them and shows them that God cares to.

One of the challenges of this passage is the servant who hid his coin, because he thought that his master was a hard man who wanted to reap what he didn’t sow. Our understanding of God can often stop us from risking investing in the kingdom of God. Like the rich young ruler it can turn us away sad. We can live afraid of offending God, or that if we risk and fail well God is going to reject us but I think that third servant had his coin taken away because well he never really let the gospel sink in and touch his heart and change his life… He didn’t know the over the top generous lavish grace of God that we have seen all the way through Luke’s gospel.

Did you notice how the parable starts with ten servants and finishes by telling us the story of three servants. Like most of Jesus parables in Luke such things leave room for us to find ourselves in the story. We stand amongst the servant who we don’t know about  whose use of what Jesus has given us isn’t yet presented to our King.

I want to finish with the encouragement to invest in God’s Kingdom… The reward is great, and with the help of the holy spirit the return on the investment is wonderful. Where is a good place to start? There are times when I feel I’ve never really achieved much and then someone will share with me how a sermon or a word has helped or encouraged them or I’ll hear from a old youth group member whose doing wonderful things for God, I even had someone tell me that I inspired them to get involved in leading worship at their church… I laughed and said “If I could do it anybody could…”That actually makes me see God at work in all the time and effort I’m prepared to invest. Our  starting point is the same as Jesus did… to invest in one person one place and see how God can use that to bring transformation.

It’s when we are prepared to make that investment that people will see and hear…

Jesus is my president

Jesus is my president

Jesus is my king

And we will hear well done good and faithful servant.

A real God who really cares, and really acts in the reality of life... (A Prayer based on Psalm 23 and 40)

At Church we are learning 'king of love" by the band 'I Am They'. It's a wonderful re imagining of the old hymn 'the king of love my shepherd is'. Psalm 23 has been associated with funerals in our culture and while it is appropriate and comforting, it is good to have it in a form that is able to be part of joyful celebration of God's lifelong faithfulness.

In my devotions this week Psalm 40 was part of the readings and as I sat down to write a prayer for Sunday these two Psalms came to mind. In them it is easy to see a great list of the great blessings and benefits that the Lord lavishes on his people... and as I wrote them down it seemed a bit ingenuous simply to list them like you would a shopping list or a to do list at the start of the day... I thought that behind those words is the reality of a real God, who really listens to our prayer, who really cares and who really has and continues to act and move in the reality of life. Thus this prayer.

The spaces  between lines in the second half are important as they invite us to stop and contemplate how our stories intersect with God's story and how the gospel story has rewritten our lives. Hopefully they make this list of oft used words become a giving thanks for what God has indeed done in our lives.

Please feel free to use any part or all of this prayer if you find it helpful.   

Loving God,

We come to thank you this morning and give you praise,

We acknowledge all the things you have done in our lives

Your creation, provision, leading, guiding, protection

And your abiding presence in those ebbs and flows of life

From deep dark death shaded valley floors

to the comfort and rest of green grass meadow and still water by

and even to the wondrous achievements of mountain summit

in all these things we acknowledge your goodness and grace

We were sinking into a bog of our own sin and brokenness

But you reached out, pulled us out and gave us a solid place to stand

Jesus Christ, who lived, died and was raised to life again, is our saviour

Jesus Christ, who lived, died and was raised to life again, is our rock!

We were singing the same old words to the same old tune, going no where

But you have given us a new song, words of life and freedom songs

You invite us to attune ourselves to you, and tell of your goodness

It seems almost ingenuous to simply list your goodness to us like this

Because behind the words we use is the real truth of your faithful love

A real God, who really cares, really acts in the midst of the realities of life.

We all have our own stories,

 our own sorrows and joys

Our own successes and failings

Our own pains and shame

Our healings and being made right again

Our own "turning aways" and "wandering offs"

Our turning back and your welcoming home embrace

Our own chains that would bind and hold us captive

Our moments of liberty and freedom in you

Our own moments of doubt and despair

Our awakening to faith and knowing you are here

the real truth of your faithful love in our lives

A real God, who really cares, and really acts in the midst of the realities of life.

So this morning loving God

We simply say thank you for who you are and what you have done in our lives

Glory be to God, father son and Holy Spirit

Amen

Faith in the face of trouble (Psalm 123)

Psalm 123 has been called a communal lament, the Jewish blues, it’s a cry to God in the midst of pain, suffering and distress.

It’s captured in the repeated cry of have mercy, have mercy in v 3.

It’s expressed in the repetition of the word endured in verses 3 and 4… we are going through the mill. We are laughed at, mocked and look down upon, written off and treated with contempt. There seems to be no end to our troubles.

It has also been described as a communal psalm of confidence, a statement of faith and trust in the face of adversity.

Where the psalmist’s eyes are not focused on the trouble before him but look to God. Look to God and sees that despite all the evidence to the contrary, God is still enthroned in heaven, that God is still sovereign.

That looks to The Lord our God till he shows his mercy. Not that God is simply way up there and in control but also that God sees and God cares and God is way down here with us as well and able to act on behalf of his people.  Trusting that it is in God that there is a way forwards, a way through, there is future hope and hope for the future.

It’s a wonderful psalm, because in these four short verses, in this lament and in this confidence, it kind of sums up, the life of faith. Looking too and trusting and being prepared to serve God, wrestling with and facing down all sorts of troubles that would threaten to shake that confidence.

It’s a Psalm that leads us into the Easter story.  In our New Testament reading this morning we see Jesus express and epitomise that faith of an attentive servant, the psalm talks of and which we find hard to connect with in our society. “I have come to do what I see the father do and say what I hear the father say” says Jesus. I look to God and I live out what I see God doing.

Then in the second half of this psalm we hear the mocking cries of Good Friday, at the cross, he could save others why not himself, Go on if you are God’s son call out and come on down. Contempt made manifest in cruel blows, crown of thorn, public humiliation.  A dark situation where there seems to be no way forwards. But Jesus eyes are fixed on God, being prepared to  endure the shame of the cross as Hebrews 12 puts it. Trusting that God would show his mercy. A confidence shown in the words “it is finished”, into your hands do I commend my spirit. A confidence and trust that God would show his mercy, in that God raised Jesus to life again. That there is the offer of forgiveness and new life for all. As that Old African amercian preacher says “ It’s Friday ( and life can feel like Friday) but Sunday is coming”.

It’s a psalm that invites the pilgrim to Jerusalem and us to have the same faith and the same hope.

It invites us to adjust our gaze, we can stare at the issues and the problems in our life and in our world… the ebb and flow of history that is playing out before us… and we can find ourselves caught up in that and daunted by its enormity and its immanence. But the psalms starts not with the problems but with an affirmation of trust and praise. It invites us to look to God, look to Christ the author and perfector of our faith, the beginning and the end.

In the Lord’s prayer which Jesus gave us as a template for our prayer lives it starts with the acknowledgement of God, and his glory and seeing his purposes and justice and reign first. It invites us to fix our eyes on God and then we trust him for provision of daily bread forgiveness and reconciliation and protection.

It’s a psalm that invites us to turn and to trust. Abraham Lincoln summed up this psalm in his own life when he said “ I have been driven to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for the day. ”

But it is also the hope and the refuge that Jesus offers us as well… To know God is sovereign and is with us and for us and can be trusted for a way forwards.

to Seek and save the lost: the blind beggar, the short tax collector and us (luke 18:35-19:10)

Every where you go these days you have tag lines and mission statements telling you what the company or store or service or even church you are going to is all aboutand how it diferentiates itself from other organisations just like it. Some of them are good and helpful but other leave me wondering...

I came across an interesting App this week. It was a mission statement generator… you put in various keywords and it would turn them into a mission statement… Here is a couple it randomly produced.

"It is our mission to continue to authoritatively provide access to diverse services to stay relevant in tomorrow's world."  ..does that grab you… does it make things clear?

“Our challenge is to continue to seamlessly engineer quality meta-services as well as proactively synthesize best-of-breed infrastructures.” Wow that’s inspiring!

I think it’s supposed to be humorous and lampoon the way corporates and organisations articulate what their purpose is…  Columnist Minda Zetlin said the app takes verbs and nouns and adjectives and rearranges them into your typical mission statements delightfully full of meaningless corporate-speak.” They don’t say a lot but they use a lot of fancy words to say it… in that process real mission and vision can get lost. But not with Jesus…

We’ve come to the end of Luke’s narrative of Jesus journey to Jerusalem. It started way back in chapter 10 and it’s taken us most of a year to work our way through this central third of the gospel. Jesus finishes his ministry before he enters Jerusalem by giving what could be seen as his mission statement… “the son of man has come to seek and save the lost”… This does not come out of a corporate rebranding exercise, or an organisational restructuring process, or trying to differentiate oneself from the competition, but it comes straight out of two encounters with real people whose lives are transformed by meeting Jesus. It does not come out of an academic exercise or commercial reality or organisational necessity but from Jesus personifying the very heart of God in showing God’s love to a blind beggar a short tax collector and through his death and resurrection showing that same love to you and me; to us. ‘The son of man has come to seek and save the lost.’

Right at the start of his ministry recorded in Luke 4 Jesus stood and read from the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue of his home town… ‘the spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has Sent me to proclaim good news to the poor, recovery of sight for the blind, release for the prisoner and freedom for the captives and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Jesus concluded by saying this scripture was being fulfilled in their hearing. This was the mission that God had sent Jesus to do.  Now as he draws near to that missions ending we see all that incorporated in ‘the son of man has come to seek and save the lost’.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at this last section of Luke’s Jesus journey that focuses on how do you enter the kingdom of God and how do you respond to Jesus. It starts and ends with a parable Jesus tells to correct peoples thinking about the kingdom of God.  The parable of the two men who went up to thetemple to pray the Pharisee who thought he was righteous and looked down on others and a tax collector who knew who his need for God and asked for mercy, Jesus said the tax collector had gone home justified that day; put right with God. Then the parable about investing in the kingdom of God that we will finish this series with next week.  Then we had two encounters that showed a negative response to Jesus. The disciples tryingto keep the children away from Jesus because they didn’t think they were important, and the rich young ruler, who wanted to hold on to what he had and wouldn’t trust totally in Jesus, so went away sad. Today we are looking at two positive encounters that show how people respond to Jesus and are welcomed into the kingdom of God. Sandwiched in the centre of these two sets of encounters Jesus again talked of his death and resurrection. In the middle of these encounters is the central way in which Jesus would seek and save the lost.

We are used to looking at the blind beggar and the short tax collector separately, but today we are going to look at them together.

Firstly, both find themselves on the outside, and outcast. The Blind beggar is separated from his community, because of his disability, we see him sitting on the side of the road, he is outside Jericho. He is an example of the poor and marginalised, without family to help him, with no hope except for the alms of those passing by on their way to Jerusalem. There was also a religious stigma attached to his disability, that somehow this maybe God’s punishment for wrongdoing and sin. It is unspoken in this passage but in other places in the gospel it rears its head again and again. The man born blind in John 9… is a good example, the Pharisees write him off as being steeped in sin at birth. But Jesus never sees people like that. Zacchaeus, our short tax collector, is ostracised by his community, as a chief tax collector he not only was a quisling a traitor working for the Romans, but also would have been seen as undoubtable dishonest; making his money from unfair taxes, and getting richer and richer by extracting commission from those who worked under him. The fact that Zacchaeus couldn’t see Jesus in Jericho was not because of his stature but his disliked status. The crowd should have parted for this prominent man but they didn’t and wouldn’t.

We don’t like the term lost these days it implies that people are on the wrong path, have wilfully wandered off and gone astray, have no sense of direction or purpose for life.  for some that is an apt description. Many of us have found ourselves in dark places in our lives with no sense of how to get out. But in the gospels lost has more a sense of being missed, of missing. The parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin, and the lost son, focus not on the lostness of the coin, the sheep and the son but on the missing of the shepherd, widow and father. It says they are of value and loved by God who then set out to go and find and bring back, who looked longingly for the first glimpse of return to run and embrace. When we used to go shopping as a family one of the kids would keep and eye out for me. Because I could wander off on my own errand or be distracted by something, and they wanted to make sure I didn’t get lost and they could guide me back to the rest of the family. Elder care they called it. But a good example of how lost is used here, as missed.

While the blind beggar and Zacchaeus are missing they are not missed by Jesus. In both instances the crowd wants to keep them away from Jesus. The beggars cry for help is meet with hushing and be quiting and Jesus is too busy and too important for you. Zacchaeus is literally stone walled from seeing Jesus and then he is written off with muttering and being labelled as unworthy and a sinner. But they are not missed by Jesus. He hears the beggar’s call over the crowd and he sees the tax collectors enthusiasm over the crowd, literally over the crowd because he is up a tree… Jesus responds to their desire to meet him and their need for his grace.

It shows us that Jesus way of looking at people is so different than our own. In the eyes of the crowd  both these men were not worthy of Jesus, but in Jesus eyes he sees them in their poverty and in their humanity and brokenness and in their desire for God’s touch and help and reaches out to them. In our eyes we may not think we are worthy of Jesus, but he looks with different eyes and see who we really are and can be in relationship with him. We may look at those around us and make judgment calls on them, but we need to see them with the eyes of Jesus as precious and missed by God if they were not there. I went and listened to one of my heroes of the faith Shane Claiborne on Monday, and you guys missed such an uplifting encouraging challenging evening, one of the things Shane talked about was his sorrow that in a recent survey in all fifty states of the Us. America Christians were known primarily for their opposition to gay’s, for being self-righteous and stand offish and a whole lot more negative things. He lamented that they were not known as Jesus wanted us to be by our love. Do we see people through the eyes of Jesus. He also said that in New Zealand that we are such a post Christian culture that people don’t really have that preconception of Christians and we can forge a new consciousness of what we are like to the community around us.

Jesus responds to both the blind beggar and the short tax collector at their point of need. He asks the blind beggar what he wants and the blind beggar responds in faith. I want to see. He is an example for us of faith. It would have been easy to be pressurised by the crowd to ask for something simpler, food or money, but from what he has hear of Jesus he knows that he can ask for his sight. He calls Jesus the son of David, that is a messianic understanding of Jesus. The blind beggar is the one who sees Jesus for who he is and responds in faith. With Zacchaeus Jesus does not ask him what he wants rather he invites himself back to Zacchaeus’ place for a meal.  While it is Jesus who is receiving hospitality, it is Jesus who is being hospitable to Zacchaeus, welcoming of him as a son of Abraham. Zacchaeus we know also is ware of Jesus special place in God’s plans, when we finally have Zacchaeus speak he addresses Jesus as Lord.

Jesus still meets people at their point of need and brings transformation.  For the blind man it was sight and belonging again to God’s people who he had been estranged, for Zacchaeus it was also welcome back and a chance to be reconciled. They are both saved in the situations they find themselves. Jesus still meets us where we will come to him with faith, at our points and places of need. Jesus love calls us also to meet people at points of need in their lives with Gods love, be it their need for healing, or friendship or inclusion and welcome. People caught in their poverty and pain, both physical and spiritual, caught in life styles which separate them from their community and God.

Finally, both men find their lives transformed by encountering Jesus. There faith takes them from where they are and moves them on. We are told that the blind beggar follows Jesus, as I was proof reading my sermon I discovered It originally typed the blond beggar, he leaves where he is and joins those with Jesus. His life changes because he know focuses on telling people what Jesus has done for him and praising God. We see that people rejoice and praise God when they hear and see what has happened. But he goes from being a beggar to being a disciple.

Zacchaeus does not leave and follow Jesus, however his response to Jesus is to spontaneously do what the rich young ruler had not been prepared to do. Zacchaeus, gives half of his money to the poor, and uses the other half to pay back four times what he owed to anyone whom he had stolen from, which is the severest penalty for reimbursement in the Jewish law. He has received the generous gift of grace from God in Jesus and know he responds with generosity to others. It’s not the way he earns his salvation but rather how he demonstrates that salvation. Zacchaeus stays where he is, that is a difficult place for him, he has pressure from the romans to be a tax collector and he has suspicion from his neighbours, but he stays where he is to live out his transformed life, maybe he’ll have to down size his house, but he stays to witness to God’s goodness in that place.

Jesus comes to seek and save the lost means that he comes to bring transformation into our lives. That we no longer live under the bondage of our brokenness, lostness and blindness but rather we live out the transformed life he offers in knowing him. Be it in being prepared to follow him to new places or where we are and where it is hard, but we are called there to live out the kingdom of God. Telling of who Jesus is and what he has done for us and living that out in seeing what we have as being given by God to be used for his kingdom.

The Son of Man has come to seek and save the lost. To find who is missing and bring them and us back to God to know God’s goodness and grace and to live out of that. To seek and save the lost the blind beggar the short tax collector and you and me.  Is not just a mission statement, an easily remembered tagline but the very heart of God, the very motivation that led Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem and to the cross and which is so wonderfully made full of abundant and eternal life in the resurrection. It’s the Journey and mission that Jesus invites us on as well. The bind beggar, the short tax collector and you and me; to seek and save the lost.

Mission Impossible: The eye of the needle and the cross (Luke 18:11-34)

In the passage, we had read out this morning, there are two symbols that speak of impossible missions, or mission impossible, to quote a 1970’s Tv show and movie series: the eye of the needle and the cross. The first is a symbol that with man it really is impossible to enter the kingdom of God and the other is that what is impossible for us it is possible for God.

Lately I understand more and more how the eye of the needle can be a symbol of mission impossible. AS I’ve got older my eye sight has got worse focusing on a needle to get the tread through it, has become mission impossible.

Jesus uses it as a saying about entering the kingdom of God ‘that it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God’. A saying that shocked Jesus disciples then and now. A saying that possess questions about Jesus and wealth.  A saying that begs the question who can be saved? 

The other symbol is the cross, as Jesus had talked about entering the kingdom of God being impossible for human beings, he pulls his disciples aside and tells them again of his coming suffering, death and resurrection. Our hope is not in who we are or how much we do or do not have or are willing to give up, but in who Jesus is and what he has done for us: God’s mission impossible in Christ.

We are working our way through Jesus journey to Jerusalem in Luke’s gospel, it’s a journey that takes up the middle third of Luke’s gospel, and the narrative of that journey focuses on Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God. It’s a journey that leads us into Easter as it is journey that leads Jesus and us to the cross.

The last part of this journey focuses on how we enter God’s kingdom and respond to Jesus. It started with a parable about two menwho went to the temple to pray. A Pharisee who thought he was righteous and looked down on other people and a tax collector who knew his need for God’s mercy, and Jesus said it was the tax collector who went home justified; put right with God. Then we see that lived out in a series of four encounters with Jesus, two that have a negative response, the disciples trying to stop the children coming to Jesus, and the rich ruler, who starts by calling Jesus good but then goes away sad. Then two positive examples; the blind beggar and the short tax collector Zacchaeus. Then the whole journey is finished with another parable to correct peoples thinking about the kingdom of God. (click) Right in the middle of this Jesus pulls his disciples aside to tell them of his immanent death and resurrection. In the middle is the central ingredient for entering the kingdom of God. What Jesus has done for us, God’s mission impossible in Christ.

Today we focus on Jesus encounter with a man whom Luke tells us was a ruler, most likely a leader in the synagogue, and who we later discover was very rich. In Matthew’s account his age is also mentioned as Matthew tells us  that he was a young man. That why he often referred to as the rich young ruler.

He asks Jesus, “good teacher how may I inherit eternal life?”. we need to unpack that, because we  can see it as simply asking about life after death. The word we translate eternal can also be translated age, so he is asking how can he inherit the new age. In How Jesus responds to this man we see that Jesus equates it with the kingdom of God, that he had come to inaugurate.  In Jewish thinking this was a time that they equated with the prophecies in the Old Testament about the reestablishment of Israel. As NT Wright summarises it ‘ a time when everything will be fresh and new, free from corruption, decay, evil, bitterness, pain and fear. A time of new opportunities, new joys and delights, because heaven and earth would be joined together and God and his children would live together.’ It is the present-day hope of the rule of God, which has an eternal element because it is lived in relationship with the eternal God. Christian’s have the same hope best captured in the Lord’s prayer “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.  

In Jesus response, we see that he is more concerned with the man calling him ‘Good’ this is a title that can only be used of God. Only God is totally Good. There are many people who are willing to acknowledge Jesus as a good teacher, a great ethical teacher, but that does not bring the transformation and change Jesus calls for, it is only when we see Jesus as God’s son and Lord, that we are enter God’s kingdom.

Jesus then goes on to talk about keeping five of the commandments, don’t commit adultery, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, and honour your mother and father… they are not the commandment that are about relating to God but are about how we relate to the people around us in light of who God is, they put the Kingdom of God in terms of right relationship to others. Remember for Luke how much we love God is shown in how much we love other people. That is often shown in how deep that love reaches into our pockets.

The commandments are about setting the boundaries of that right relationship, they are there to limit evil and wrong and harm. Only the middle one, don’t steal, deals with wealth.  The Rich young ruler can honestly tells Jesus he has kept those commandments since he was a boy. He is talking about all his adult life since he was thirteen and had his ‘bar mitzvah’, so became responsible for his own actions.

Jesus then asks him to do one last thing. Sell all he has and give it to the poor, because there is better treasure in heaven, and that he should come and follow him. This is a gracious invitation to discipleship, Jesus always offers a sincere invite to all, he spends so much time countering the Pharisees because his hope is that they too may know God’s grace. In Mark’s Gospel it tells us Jesus loved the rich young ruler.

  Neither is Jesus asking this man to do more than his other disciples, remember when he called them they left their nets, boats and followed him. They had their livelihoods and identity and even family responsibilities and relationship tangled in those nets. Peter, as the spokesman for the twelve, responds to this encounter by asking Jesus what about them haven’t they given everything to follow Jesus. And Jesus assures him they will be rewarded in this life and the next. As we’ll see next week when Zacchaeus meets with Jesus his spontaneous response to God’s generous grace is to use his wealth to make amends for wrong doing and give the other half to the poor.

The man we are told, becomes sad because he is very wealthy. All the way through Luke’s gospel there is warning about the danger of wealth. In the parable of the sower, the worries and concerns of this life are like weeds that grow up and chock out the seed of faith.  Jesus warns that you cannot serve two masters God and money you will love one and hate the other. The rich young ruler finds himself in that dilemma.

One of the dangers of wealth is that it can become more important than the people round you. We saw that In Jesus parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In the Old Testament, there are two traditions one is that Wealth is a blessing from God. That G od allows people to become wealthy. The other is the challenge of the prophets, like Amos, that God’s people are to care for the poor and the needy. We are blessed to be a blessing to others, we are blessed for the sake of all God’s people. It’s one of the big challenges in the world today, where so much of the worlds wealth is in the hands of so few… It’s a challenge to us Christians in the relatively rich west when we are confronted by abject poverty in the developing world and that is entrenching itself in our country and city and community.

IS Jesus anti wealth? Well I looked for an exciting illustration to try and explain this passage, and I’m sorry but instead I ended up on a government immigration website. I wanted to know if the New Zealand government allowed dual citizenship, and the answer is yes it does. You can be a citizen of New Zealand and a citizen of another country at the same time. A foot in each camp. There are some countries however who will make you renounce your New Zealand passport before you become a citizen of their country. The rich young ruler wanted a dual citizenship, he had so much of his identity and security and status invested in the kingdom of this world, in his wealth, that he wasn’t prepared to give it up to become a citizen of the kingdom of God. To trust solely in God, to have the faith of a child and know he was totally dependent on God. There are a lot of things that can hold us back and turn us away sad as well. What you could call minor idols that we might want to cling on to. Our society is full of them. In an Alpha testimony that Nicki Gumble shared, a young man who was an ardent atheist came to alpha to discredit those unthinking Christians, he had confidence in his own belief system. He did the alpha and when he finished Alpha he said he was captivated by Jesus.  A few months later when he was baptised he talked of now being free, ‘he had been a slave to his society, a slave to his peers, but now he was free’. There are many things that can hold us back from Following Jesus.

For the crowd round Jesus, this rich young ruler would have been a definite candidate to be a follower of Jesus to make it into the kingdom of God. When they hear him say ‘ its easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich person get into the kingdom of God’ and that the rich young ruler  goes away sad they are disturbed and shocked “who can be saved”. He kept he commandments, he was blessed with wealth, he was a ruler in the synagogue, if he can’t and wealthy people can’t then who can? It’s mission impossible.

Jesus response is that what is impossible with man is possible with God’.

As I said before the disciples are worried and they ask Jesus for reassurance as they had given up everything to follow Jesus. Jesus assures them that anyone who gives up home and family for the sake of the kingdom of God will receive many times as much in this age and in the age to come, eternal life. the mention of giving up family and receiving that back speaks to us of being a family together in Christ, that we are that family together, we are there for each other in times of joy and in times of hardship. As we’ve left our place for Jesus there is the promise that he will be with us and welcome us back to his father’s place when our journey and mission are complete.

Finally,  Jesus calls his disciples apart and talks to them of what will happen to him when they go to Jerusalem. Here is God’s mission impossible. Here is how people may be saved. Here is how people may come into the kingdom of God. Here is God’s plan for our salvation.  Here is God’s plan all along foretold in the prophets and scriptures that Jesus would go to Jerusalem he would be handed over to the gentiles, he would suffer, be spat on and insulted flogged and finally killed. But on the third day he would rise again. It is impossible for us any of us to enter the kingdom of God. But the good news is that it is possible with God.  That in Jesus death on the cross, our sins can be forgiven, he will take the guilt and punishment for them. In Jesus rising from the grave we may find new life, we will be find ourselves coming into the new age, finding eternal life in Christ. God’s mission impossible in Christ.

In the passage, we had read out this morning, there are two symbols that speak of mission impossible: the eye of the needle and the cross. The first is a symbol that with man it really is impossible to enter the kingdom of God and the other is that what is impossible for us is possible for God.

We need to respond. We can stand trying to get our stuff, whatever it is, through the eye of the needle or we can turn to Jesus and the cross, knowing our need for him and with a childlike faith be prepared to give it all up and follow him.