Luke 4:16-30, 1 Corinthians 13

Do you remember this children’s song?
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Simple enough, but when he was new to the song one of our sons insisted that the last line was ‘life is part a dream.’ That’s the way he heard it and he was very sure he was right.

It is so easy to get a different meaning to what is intended. How many times have two people heard the same speaker then disagreed about what was said?

This is just a couple of examples of how easy it is to get things confused, muddled and wrong. In 1st Corinthians 13, Paul says we do this all the time for we see things dimly and our knowledge is far from complete. I read that 1st century Corinth was a major manufacturer of bronze mirrors. Highly polished metal reflects well but it might not be perfectly flat and it might not be perfectly smooth or it might be just a little tarnished and of course bronze is always a bronzey colour, so the reflected image is not perfect.

And that’s how it is with us. We think we know it all and we have trouble admitting we don’t know the half of it. We are very keen on right answers, but how come our right answers are not the same as those of the next person? We jump to conclusions and only later find we’ve jumped to confusions. We conjur up in our minds a picture of someone or something, and then when we go there or meet the person we find it was not what we expected.

Imperfect – is most true of our perceptions and knowledge of God, our Creator. What we have is no better than a dim image in a bronze mirror.

But Paul says things are going to improve. “When what is perfect comes, what is partial will disappear.” When will this happen? At the completion of God’s programme, when Jesus returns and we all move into the next phase of existence, the new heavens and the new earth, the perfection of creation.

In other words, in the next life. We don’t know a great deal about it but we do know that after we die those who love God and Jesus are assured that we live on with God in an ideal environnment that is perfect in every way. And totallly different from what we experience here and now.

In this life we are never satisfied; in the next we will be satisfied.
In this life we are always striving; in the next we will be fulfilled.
In this life we are constantly adding to our knowledge; in the next we will know completely and confidently.

That’s all very well but what about now?
In this life we must humbly acknowledge that we don’t know it all; and hunbly acknowledge God as the source of all knowledge.
In this life we must stay open to increasing and updating our knowledge; and seek to get all knowledge from God.
Hence it is necessary to seek a close relationship with God now and do everything we can to keep getting closer to Him.

Today, we stand at the beginning of the year. I like summer holidays – it means my year is only 11 months long – For me, at least, the year is effectively just beginning. Did you make any New Year resolutions? I didn’t. And yet I have made more progress in the last month in losing weight and getting fit than in any other time in living memory. The thing now is to keep the gains made. Maybe that’s a kind of resolution. Or maybe it’s a goal. Don’t we set goals at the beginning of the year? Things we hope to achieve in the next 11 months?

Have you set personal goals for yourself? What might our church goals be? What particular things will see us growing in Christ and serving him in love this year? We’re going to have to have a good talk about these things on Tuesday night at Session meeting. Our home group might be a good place to start. How about we meet next Sunday, here, at 7:30 pm?

Jesus had goals. People had expectations of him, but he had his own expectations. When he spoke in the synagogue in Nazareth he outlined his personal ministry. Unfortunately the people weren’t hearing what he was actually saying so he spoke to them about their expectations of him. In doing so, he reinterpreted what they thought they knew. And they didn’t like what they heard. He told them he wasn’t there to satisfy their curiosity or answer all their questions – he wouldn’t tell them outright that he was the Messiah. Much as they wanted him to. Nor would he neccesarily heal all their ailments. Much as they wanted him to. He told them he wouldn’t impress them with wonderful deeds so that they could claim him as their man from Nazareth. Much as they wanted him to.

He told them he was there for all people, not just the Jews. They didn’t expect that – and didn’t like it either. He explained that God had always been there for all people. They didn’t like that either. It contradicted what they thought they knew.

Despite their amazement that the man they’d watch grow up in their company was such an eloquent speaker, so knowledgeable and so obviously a powerful man of God, they were so put out at having their notions contradicted, so rattled in their convictions, that they tried to get rid of him permanently.

We could be at odds with Jesus too, but much better to take the humble approach, like Peter who said, “We aren’t leaving you, Jesus, you have the words that give eternal life. And we believe and know that you are the Holy One who has come from God.” (John 6:68,69)

Yesterday I was asked whether this year would be a different year to previous years. The short answer is that I am expecting it to be different. For some time now I have been aware that we live in a time of cultural transition. Most people describe it as moving from the Modern era to a post-modern era. But what does that mean? And what difference does it actually make? The challenge for me, and many Modern Christians, is to make the gospel comprehensible to post-modern people. I have struggled a lot with that. I really don’t know how to do it.

Over the holidays I have read this book: ‘A New Kind of Christian’ by Brian McLaren. I enjoyed the book, it was fascinating, stimulating, challenging and encouraging. Then on the last page something jelled for me. It is of the essence of the faith and I’ll try to explain it to you.

The essence of Christianity is not in theories or philosophies or even theology. It is not rules and regulations nor the statements of theologians or even what we believe. These things are all important. But the essence of Christianity is the lives lived by the people who follow Christ; the particular way we relate to and treat God and other people. The word for this is incarnation. Rather than give us endiless lists of instructions and motivational lectures, God gave us Jesus – the ultimate incarnation. Jesus is God incarnate among people. We are Jesus’ body meaning that Jesus’ followers incarnate Jesus on earth. Let me read the paragraph from which the Holy Spirit spoke to me: [p.163.]

Here the author wonders “if there will even be a postmodern systematic theology. I wonder if [the postmodern] generation will focus more on the creation of  Christian cultures that embody our faith in ritual, art, liturgy, community, and mission – maybe more like the celts in the first millennium or like parts of the African American church in the last century. That’s not to say that we don’t need theologians to work with words, but it is to say that believing as we do that the Word became flesh, the focus of our words should be the creation of communities that embody our good news – in dance, in cooking (remember the Passover?), in crafts (maybe quilting will come back – or perhaps Web pages will be our modern quilts!), in forms of commnity, in mission endeavours, in music, in painting and scuplture, in architecture and landscape design, in friendship, in solidarity with the poor and forgotten. It’s exciting to think about, isn’t it?”

This speaks of a comprehensive culture that is better able to connect with post-modern people than anything I’m more familiar with. It describes what I’ve felt for some time has been missing. I shall develop this ideas over time and be more specific as well. Let me finish by being specific about the things I started with.

We probably all have different things we want to see happen this year. It’s not the content – the specific things that we have in mind – that matters most. It’s following Jesus, doing his things, living his way – that’s what matters. And will we see the outcomes we are looking for for ourselves and for our church? If they’re just our ideas or if we try to do them on our own, not a chance. If we’re working with Jesus doing Jesus’ things then most surely we will see them happen. Jesus is big enough to achieve anything he sets out to do. We just have to trust him and walk with him.

And remember that Jesus is big enough to accomplish in our lives anything he and we desire.

We finished by listening to the song, ‘Big Enough’ sung by Ayiesha Woods (Gotee Records).