Categories: uncategorized
Date: 07 January 2012 16:37:17
I asked for ideas on the sermon I am giving tomorrow. I thought I would share the sermon on here. Know reading sermons is different to hearing them, but thought I'd share it with you anyway.
9/11, The Day John F Kennedy got shot, The radio broadcast in September 1939 when the outbreak of war was announced to the nation, the moon landing and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The media and historians describe all of these as landmark moments; points in history when everything changed and things can be said to never be quite the same again after.
In our personal lives we have these type of watershed experiences too. Events take place that in some way change our lives forever. In my own life I think of the day I left school, the day I got married, giving birth to my daughter, the day my mum died and several more I could name.
The move from one year to another is way we mark changes. Sometimes the year will be very much the same as the last one but at the end of some years we can clearly see that major changes have occurred.
In international terms 2011 was described as one of these years which changed everything for ever. The Arab Spring and the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and the ongoing civil war which it led to in Syria. As we enter 2012 we might know there is change coming but there will still be an element of uncertainty.
As we reflect this morning on some biblical watershed moments I want to pause and remind you that whatever 2012 holds God is with us. His Spirit is there to sustain us through whatever changes occurs, however great or small.
Turning now to the bible some of the examples of these watershed moments are the day Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of the Pentecost, the conversion of Saul who became Paul and so I could go on.
These are all important events but I want to look at two events today which can be considered to make all these other great moments in personal life or history pale in comparison.
The first of these events was quite literally world changing; it is God’s creation of the world.
Now we don’t know how it happened exactly – it is something which scientists are still searching to explain as those of you who have been watching what has been happening with the Hadron Collider in Cerne will know. Scientists there are looking for the Higgs Boson which they describe as the God particle. What we do know about the creation is that however it happened God took what was before and changed it into something new – a world with day and night. He took something formless and empty and infused it with life.
Verse two of Genesis one tells us that the Spirit was present and that within this moment of change lay the deep mystery of God in all His unfathomable greatness.
God the father and God the Spirit were there and as the gospel of John tells us Jesus – God the son -was too. In Genesis we learn that all life, our very existence, flows from this moment of transformational change.
As in our lives when change happens the unexpected and disappointing can occur; mixed in with the beautiful, exciting and pleasing.
God created man with free will and the world has suffered as a result of mankind choosing to misuse this choice God gave him. Mankind choosing to do what he wanted and going against God’s way of doing things damaged that world which God had created perfect. It was this which meant Jesus had to come to earth, God in human form.
The Christmas story which we celebrated last month revolves around the watershed moment when Jesus was born, but in Mark chapter 1 and Matthew chapter 3 we read about another historical point of transformation.
Mark 1 verses 9 to 11 tells us how the world changed again, forever. It says, “At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
It was in this moment that it became clear who Jesus was and what his purpose was. It is in this transformational moment of baptism that the gospel truly begins. It is within this baptism, when God the father, God the Spirit and God the Son come together that the rescue plan to put creation back together as it is intended begins. In this moment we discover that Jesus is the Son of God or as it would have been to Mark, the true King of Israel.
This watershed moment, no pun intended, is one where God the creator reveals that Jesus is his son. When heaven is torn open it is a moment which is highly symbolic. It is when God ends mans separation from him, which has resulted from the misuse of freewill which we referred to earlier and the beginning of a new connection and communication between heaven and earth.
In both this reading and our one in Genesis God the creator takes the situation as it was before and changes it into something more positive and life giving.
Particularly with the baptism of Jesus it is not the act itself which changes everything but the symbolism within it. The importance is in what it represents. This is just like alot of the transformational events I mentioned earlier. Yes, something happened with each one but their real importance lies in the way that they represent some kind of change from what went before.
But what does that all mean for us today? What is the relevance for our lives today, 2000 years after Jesus baptism and 14 million years after the God transformed the earth forever in that moment of transformation when earth began?
The importance is actually the same for us now as it was when they happened. Without them we would not have life. If God had not decided to create the earth with day and with night and with the atmosphere surrounding it we would not have life. However it actually happened the fact which these verses remind of us of is the planet we live on, the eco-system which gives us life, the world responsible for sustaining our lives would not exist.
I don’t know about you but however tired I am feeling and however much I am wondering why I need to come and worship sometimes reflecting on the wonder of that act of creation makes me stop and understand why. You might be somebody who is tired, who has given the church many years of service and to some extent you may be wondering why you have bothered. You might be thinking about how much you have given and be wondering why you have invested all of the time, money and emotion. You might be looking around the circuit at dwindling numbers in many congregations and wondering why we keep going? You might even be asking yourself whether it is time to call it a day and be one of the many who has just stopped bothering with church. Well, these verses give us the answer as to why – we keep going because we worship an amazing God without whom we would quite literally be nothing.
We, as Christians, know that God created our world and surely something that mindblowing alone should lead us into enthusiastic worship. We come here week on week not because duty deserves it, not because we were bought up to or because we want to meet our friends. We come to worship God – father, son and spirit who created this world and who quite literally gave us life.
Now I know it can be easy over time to lose sight of this and for coming to church to become routine but this morning and at this time of new year I want to encourage you to think about it afresh. I want to encourage you to see worship for what it should be rather than for what it has become if you are tired and feeling like you are ready to give up. I want to encourage you to see it as an opportunity to come and sing praises and share in prayers of thanks and adoration to an amazing God who is quite literally awesome. A God who cannot fit into the boxes week seek to put him in, a God whose greatness we see all around us, whenever we look up at the ever changing skys with clouds floating across them, with stars twinkling in them and with sun shining brightly.
But, you might be sitting there thinking that is all very good but why how can we truly worship God when we see so much suffering around us? Why should we worship this God when we see people dying, when we see people killing each other, when we see the marriages of people we care about breaking up around us, when we see pollution and when we see children dying because they don’t have enough to eat?
In answering that I want to begin by saying I cannot understand or explain alot of the suffering we see in our world. I sit watching tv and events like the tsunami in Japan last year or the earthquakes in New Zealand and I don’t know why they happen.
I have seen friends and relatives die of cancer, when they have never smoked and have lived healthy lifestyles. I have had to hold my crying daughter when she was told of the sudden and unexpected death of one of her 12 year old friends and I have had no answer as to why. I have had no answer to give when one of my friends facebooked me soon after her husbands death and asked why he was taken, leaving her without her husband and her two teenage children without a father. I have no answer to give as to why those things happen. All I know is that just as our hearts break and our tears flow when we see and hear of these things Gods heart breaks too. These things are not they cannot be his will.
But at other times I can explain the suffering. When I sit and watch the news and see stories such as the young Asian student killed at Christmas or the murders in Horden I know it is because of sin and mankind misusing the freewill which God gave us as a gift. When I see marriages break up because of adultery or because of selfish attitudes which fail to honour and serve the other person I know again it is because of the misuse of that freewill. Similarly with the starvation I see. I know it is because of greed and because of war. And I know whilst these things still occur God did something to change the world and make it more as he had originally intended when he created it.
He sent his own son Jesus, a man who was the beloved son of God the father, to be God in human form. God, in all his forms knew that the choice Jesus would be faced with. God knew Jesus would chose to die a painful and awful death for us on the cross. The baptism we heard about is a symbolic moment where this love of God is revealed to us.
It is a moment when Jesus’ true identity is revealed and we become aware that God sent his own son – who was there at that moment of creation into the world to redeem us and to ensure that the bad choices we all make can be forgiven. It is in this moment we too see that we are not destined to be separated from God forever, but rather through his immense love and grace we are able to be part of that perfect creation which God intended when it is realised when Jesus comes again.
Again this brings a new sense of awesomeness to worship. When we come to prayer and offer our prayers of confession and receive the assurance of forgiveness and reconciliation it is only possible through this coming of Jesus who was God’s beloved son.
When we come to worship it is to give our thanks and praise, our worship to this amazing and immense God, father, Son and Spirit who cares about us and our suffering enough to come in human form and face a cruel and awful death for us. It is this God who cares more than we will ever be able to understand who we bring our prayers of intercession to.
So this new year which may or may not contain one of those historic and transformational moments let us remember the importance and symbolism of those which God was involved in. And then let us come to worship to praise, worship, confess to and receive forgiveness from, and bring our prayers of concerns for others to this God who created the world and then sent his beloved son into that world to repair our relationship with him.
Let us take a moment to reflect in silence on that wonderful God and bring our personal prayers to him.