The Sheep and the Goats; Matthew 25:31-46

The story of the sheep and the goats reveals what is important to the Lord at the last judgement, and what will happen to those who have not been regenerated by Jesus.



The passage I’m preaching from today is our first reading; the story of the sheep and the goat, what I want to call the parable of the sheep and the goats, except it isn’t a parable. Before we look at it in detail I just want to remind you about the background of this story. It comes just a couple of days before the crucifixion and is the climax of Matthew’s account of Jesus preaching.

Immediately prior to this Jesus has warned about being ready for the return of the son of man. He has warned his listeners that only the father, God, knows when that would be and they would have no warning, other than the warning he would give them now. He gives them the example that a householder would stay up if he knew when his house was going to be burgled and says “So you must also be ready, because the son of man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

Having given this warning Jesus then tells three parables, some of which you may have looked at over the last couple of weeks. One is a parable about a servant who is entrusted with looking after his masters house while his master is away , and who, not expecting him back quite so quickly abuses both his master’s trust and his fellow servants. The second is the parable of the foolish virgins who fall asleep and miss the bridegroom and the third is the parable of the talents. Immediately after this is our passage today, the story of the sheep and the goats, which runs straight on from the parable of the talents.

Jesus says “When the son of man comes in his glory, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.” So this is a continuation of the warning that Jesus has already given. In fact it’s more than a continuation of the warning, it’s an explanation of what is going to happen, and what as believers we need to be ready for. It’s not a parable, even though it’s often mistakenly known as the parable of the sheep and the goats.

So what happens in the story? Well, all the nations are gathered before the Son of Man, before Jesus, who divides the people as a shepherd divides a flock into sheep and goats. This was an image that would have made perfect sense to his hearers. Sheep and goats were commonly kept in the same flock and couldn’t easily be told apart from a distance. It took the shepherd, up close, to be able to tell them apart clearly. Here Jesus does exactly that; he divides the people into two groups, one on his left and one on his right. He likens this to dividing sheep and goats, but they aren’t sheep and goats, they are people. We often refer to them as ‘the sheep and the goats’ but this is shorthand.

Jesus says to the people on the right. “Come you who are blessed by my father: take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

The people are amazed, they had no recollection of doing this for Jesus, but Jesus replies “I tell you the truth, what you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”

And the people on the left, the goats, well Jesus rebukes and curses them and orders them to depart from him into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Because they hadn’t fed him, and clothed him. They hadn’t invited him in, or visited him in prison. When they ask when they hadn’t done these things for him, the son of man replies that when they hadn’t done them for the least of his brothers and sisters, they hadn’t done them for him. The passage ends “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” This is the last teaching that Matthew records, and we move immediately onto the Easter story.

I want to make three points here about the passage. The first point is the most controversial; it’s a warning. This passage points towards the reality of God’s judgement and God’s punishment. It points towards the reality of God’s judgement and God’s punishment.

I’ve been a member of the URC for six years. I don’t remember Hell being preached about once. I’ve been a Christian for about thirty years and I’ve heard it preached on only a handful of occasions during that time. I suspect that in times past it would have been preached on a lot more. People used to talk about fire and brimstone preaching, and maybe that’s part of the problem; maybe it was overdone or preached badly. Many people like to emphasise God’s love rather than his judgement, and many of us Christians struggle to reconcile the God of love with the threat of his judgement and eternal punishment.

However I’d like to suggest one reason why preachers are right to warn of the dangers of Hell and that is because that’s exactly what Jesus did. That’s what Jesus is doing here in this passage. That’s what Jesus was doing when he was warning people to be ready for the Son of Man, for Jesus, to return like a thief in the night. That’s what he was doing when he explained the parable of the virgins and the parable of the talents, all of which ended with those who weren’t ready for the son of man facing harsh consequences.

In Matthew’s gospel this was Jesus last teaching before the events of the last supper, his betrayal, trial and execution. It’s the climax of his teaching. It was important to Jesus, or he wouldn’t have said it, and it was important to Matthew because he wouldn’t have given these events their prominence, or indeed written them at all, if it wasn’t.

So that’s my first point, this story tells us about the risk and reality of God’s punishment. The second point is that it tells us about what will be important to Jesus at the last judgement. It tells us about what will be important to Jesus at the last judgement.

‘Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison and go to visit you?” ‘The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

This is what is important to Jesus; that we care for these, the least of his brothers and sisters, and the question is who are the least of the Lords brothers and sisters and what does caring for them involve. Now a few chapters before we have had the story of the rich young ruler. He was keen to follow Jesus, but unable to take the step that Jesus asks, giving up all his wealth to the poor. It was a big step and he couldn’t make it, but no such demands are made here. These are generally pretty very basic mercies, food, shelter, clothes, comfort.

These aren’t things that require you to be rich, or to have special equipment, or a university degree, or special training. All they require is an eye to see need and a heart to respond. The kinds of mercies described here are within the reach of all of us. They do not require great sacrifice, but they have the potential to alleviate great suffering.

This is how we have seen Jesus living his life, helping the needy, guiding the lost, giving value to the lives of people whose lives had no value to the world around them. The world was full of such people then and it is full of such people now. The poor will always be with us, as Jesus himself says, but that is no excuse to stop caring for them, because Jesus never did.

So who are the least of Jesus brothers and sisters? And why in doing things for them are we doing things for Jesus?

It’s often understood that Jesus means everybody, that Jesus sees the whole world as his brothers and sisters, and the least of them are the most marginalised, the poor, the sick, the orphaned, the refugee, and this passage is seen as a general call for Jesus followers to show mercy to them, just as Jesus did when he walked among us. That’s not wrong, please don’t think I’m saying that, but I want to suggest that Jesus means a lot more than that.

The word used for brother here is a word used in the New Testament to mean Christian. It’s a little old fashioned, but we still refer to Christians as brothers and sisters and they did in the New Testament. The least of these my brothers, are therefore the least of these, my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Now I’m not suggesting that this means showing mercy to fellow Christians and not showing mercy to non-Christians. I am suggesting that we are called to show a special regard for Christians who are experiencing physical and spiritual struggle. We are called to show that regard because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and because Jesus himself calls them his brothers and sisters. Christians in the west may experience sneers, and we may face condescension, but we don’t in general experience persecution, of if we do its very mild. But our brothers and sisters across the world do not benefit from this blessing.

Today, in Syria and Iraq, our Christian brothers and sisters are facing very real persecutions. A Christian community that has existed since the time of Jesus is being extinguished. Christians are being murdered because they are Christians, their wives and daughters are being raped, because they are Christians. Their children are being sold into slavery, because they are Christians. In Nigeria the girls abducted by Boko Haram, because they were Christians, are still missing.

The world has forgotten them. Have we forgotten them, the least of Jesus brothers and sisters? Are we still praying for them? Are we supporting aid agencies caring for refugees? Are we writing to our MPs and government ministers about it? Are we reminding a world that has forgotten these people that they still exist? “What you did for these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me”, says Jesus. “What you did not do for them you did not do for me.”

And there is another group of people Jesus might specifically mean and that is those Christians who specifically preach the gospel, who serve Jesus in proclaiming and promoting his kingdom. In the time of the New Testament this meant supporting the apostles and those with a preaching and teaching ministry. It meant not only supporting the travelling missionaries like Paul and Barnabas and Titus, but also the leaders of the local churches they founded. Those people too still exist today and they don’t just require financial support, but emotional and spiritual support too. They honour God in what they do, and when we support them it is as if we are doing it for Jesus. “What you did for these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me”, says Jesus. “What you did not do for them you did not do for me.”

It includes full time ministers like Peter but it also includes people who teach in junior church, it includes pastoral visitors, it includes elders and church officers. It includes the many people in every church who tirelessly offer encouragement and support. It includes everybody who puts their head above the parapet at work and lets it be known that they are a Christian, risking scorn and judgement in the name of Christ as a consequent. They honour God in what they do, and when we support them it is as if we are doing it for Jesus

Do we offer all these people the support that we should? Do we physically and emotionally and prayerfully support them, so that they don’t burn out and become disillusioned? “What you did for these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me”, says Jesus. “What you did not do for them you did not do for me”

Everybody who stands before Jesus at the last Judgement is either a ‘sheep’ or a ‘goat’. Are you a sheep or a goat? Because we are all one or the other. I’ll be honest, and I ask you to look into your hearts and do the same. When I look as the characteristics of both groups I see myself there in both groups. Yes I can think of circumstances when I have shown mercy to the least of Jesus brothers and sisters, but I can think of many, many times when I have turned my back on people, and over the years probably more times the latter than the former. Am I a sheep of a goat? I could be either.

And that brings me to my third point. Without the mercy of Jesus we are all goats. Without the mercy of Jesus we are all goats. I think it’s possible to misread this story as saying that the ‘sheep’ go to the kingdom prepared for them by God, because they have cared for the least of Jesus brothers and sisters, while the goats are cursed and cast into the eternal fire because they have failed to care for the least of Jesus brothers and sisters. But this flies in the face everything else the bible says about salvation. We are saved by Jesus death on the cross, not through any work of our own hands.

Jesus says that that the sheep are destined for their inheritance, the kingdom prepared for them since the beginning of the world. Now an inheritance isn’t something that’s earned. It’s a gift from someone who loves to the object of that love. When people die they leave bequests not just to their immediate family but to people who are important to them. Jesus doesn’t say that the kingdom is a reward. He says it was prepared from the beginning of the world, long before the ‘sheep’ were born and long before they did anything good or bad towards anyone.

To argue that we are saved by what we do is to ignore the rest of scripture. In our other reading today we read Pauls letter to the Ephesians. Paul say in Ephesians, “For we are saved by grace, through faith, and this not from ourselves, it is the gift of God. We are not saved by works, by the things that we do, so that nobody can boast about what they have done.

The good works mentioned in the story of the sheep and goats are not the cause of salvation but the effect of salvation. As Christians we become like Christ . In the letter to the Galatians, Paul tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control . Good works in a Christian’s life are the direct overflow of these traits, and are only acceptable to God because of the relationship that exists between the saved and their Saviour, the sheep and their Shepherd

The core message of the Parable of the Sheep and Goats is that God’s people will love others. Good works will result from our relationship to the Shepherd, Jesus. Followers of Christ will treat others with kindness, serving them as if they were serving Christ Himself. While “goats” can indeed perform acts of kindness and charity, their hearts are not right with God, and their actions are not for the right purpose – to honour and worship God.

One day we will stand before Jesus and be judged. Will he see us as his, or recognise that we are not? How do we avoid being seen as goats?

I suggest that we start by recognising that we are goats and then we ask God to forgive us. I suggest that it is only God who can turn us into sheep. I suggest it is only God who can take the tiny amount that we can give him and turn us into people who love, people who can see need and respond to it so unthinkingly that we won’t even remember doing it, people who honour God in all that we do, because we honour even the least of his brothers and sisters. In the grace of God.

Lord when we look into our hearts, we shudder at the neglect we give to each other, to the world, to you.

Forgive us Lord, we pray. Change us we pray so that we become more like you. Help us to honour you in all we do and say.

In Jesus name.

Amen

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Sutton Coldfield

Happy New Year; Mark 1:1-8

As we approach Christmas we should ready ourselves for Jesus by repenting and asking for forgiveness.



Can I start by wishing you a belated happy New Year, which started last week? Happy New Year I hear you cry? He’s ahead of himself isn’t he? Well, I’m not being entirely facetious. Last Sunday was Advent Sunday, which is the start of the Church’s year. The Church’s year runs from Advent, through Christmas, and eventually to Lent, Easter and Pentecost. There’s then a gap of several months, of what the church calls ‘ordinary’ time, before the process starts again next Advent. This allows us to walk with Jesus as it were through the events of his life and ministry until their climax at the events of Easter. So as we are in Advent, at the beginning of the year. Happy New Year!









At New Year we often re-evaluate our lives and think about the changes we need to make. Usually these includes promises to ourselves about how we will eat less and do more. It’s a good thing to do and it’s useful to pause and take stock, but I’m going to suggest that now, at the beginning of Advent is a good time to do that spiritually.



There a reason why the churches year starts in Advent and not at Christmas. You might think that Christmas would be the logical place to start; the beginning of Jesus life, but the reason is that we need to prepare ourselves for Jesus coming. We prepare for Jesus coming from two perspectives. We prepare for Jesus arrival as a new-born baby in the Christmas story, but we also prepare for Jesus second coming, his return in glory. But because we have no idea when that might be, that’s the perspective that it’s easy to overlook.



Each church year, which starts in Advent, concentrates on one of the three synoptic gospels, Mathew, Mark and Luke. Last year we followed the gospel of Matthew, and this year we are going to work through Mark’s gospel, and it’s Mark’s gospel that we are starting today. It’s a reading of new beginnings, because Mark’s gospel is thought to be the oldest gospel and because it’s about the beginning of Jesus ministry.



One of the things that’s striking about Mark’s gospel is that it doesn’t mention Jesus childhood or the nativity at all. Over the next few weeks we will be reading all those familiar Christmas stories about Jesus birth, but none of them are from Mark’s gospel. In Mark’s gospel Jesus appears as an adult, just after today’s reading.



Mark’s gospel doesn’t start with the story of Jesus birth. It starts with a statement of who Jesus is; “This is the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God”. It immediately quotes from the Old Testament, announcing God’s messenger and telling people to prepare the way for the Lord. Mark then introduces John the Baptist, appearing in the desert and baptizing and preaching.



Mark’s quote is from the book of Isaiah, we had it read in full as our first reading. The book of Isaiah taken place when the people of Israel are in exile in Babylon. Mark is making a parallel between two situations. In one the people of God are in exile in Babylon, a foreign land, but their exile is soon to come to an end. In the other situation, the situation to which John was talking, the people of God are in the land of Israel, but they are still in bondage and their God seems far away. In both, the solution is the same. God is coming to their aid. “Tell the people they have suffered long enough, their sins are now forgiven…Prepare a way for the Lord in the wilderness. Clear a way in the desert for our God”



God is coming, but the people need to respond, they need to prepare the way for the Lord and make straight paths before him, and the rest of this passage is about how to do that. So this passage in Mark is partly about God and partly about how we respond to God.



John the Baptist appears in the desert, baptising and preaching. The good news bible has him saying “Turn away from your sins and be baptised; God will forgive your sins”. More traditional versions use the word repent, “Repent and be baptised”. So we prepare for God by repenting. This is where Mark starts his gospel. Not at the stories which describe Jesus childhood, but with John’s call to the people to repent.



Now the good news says ‘many’ people from Judea and Jerusalem went out to hear John. They confessed their sins and were baptised. But the bible actually says ‘all’ or ‘everybody’. Now that’s possibly just artistic exaggeration, but there’s another possibility. I think it’s worth reflecting what a cross section of Jewish society this must have been. This wasn’t the poor, rather than the rich, or the religious authorities rather than sinners, or servants rather than masters. It all without distinction, rather than all without exception. It’s poor and rich, master and servant, religiously observant and sinner. Everybody needs to repent to know God, even John the Baptist, who knows he’s not fit to even tie up Jesus sandals.



Everybody heard the same message; you need to prepare for God by repenting. It’s a call that is quite familiar to us, but it must have been something of a surprise to John’s audience. They were Jews. They were used to seeing themselves as God’s people. God’s special people, and they were, but John was still saying to them “God is coming, and you need to be ready for him. That begins with you acknowledging you need him. It begins with you acknowledging that you are living your lives in a different direction to the direction God wants you to live. God is right and you are wrong. It’s only when you repent and turn from your sins that you can begin to follow Jesus.”



And this illustrates the difference between regret, remorse and repentance. The difference between regret, remorse and repentance.



Prisons are full of people who regret what they have done, but feel no remorse and regret most of all that they were caught doing whatever it was that they did. I’m sure Andrew Mitchell regrets losing his temper with PC Rowlands at the Downing Street gates last year. What’s not to regret; it was a career altering moment, and not for the better. I’ve no idea whether he feels any remorse for his behaviour. Regret doesn’t require you to think what you did was wrong, just that you wish it had never happened.



Sometimes, though not always, regret leads to remorse. Remorseful people not only regret what they have done, but acknowledge that it was morally wrong too. But it’s more than just an intellectual acknowledgement. You don’t think remorse, you feel remorse, and that feeling can range from mild discomfort to profound, debilitating distress. Unrelieved remorse can be a terrible, terrible thing. Judas Iscariot died a remorseful man. “When Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse” Remorse didn’t save him though, it drove him to his death.



I remember watching a documentary a few years ago about the troubles in Northern Ireland. It was about ten years after the conflict ended. One of the men being interviewed was a former protestant paramilitary who had killed, who had murdered, a close catholic friend of his at the height of the troubles. This was years before, but he was still twisted up inside, still ashamed of what he had done, still felt guilty and remorseful for it. As the end credits went up it was revealed that after filming the programme he had taking his own life. The pain, the guilt and shame, the remorse had been too much for him. Remorse didn’t save him and it didn’t lead him to God. Like Judas, remorse drove him to his death. The tragedy was that he never came to understand that the love of God, would have forgiven even his appalling act.



We aren’t called to regret, and we’re not called to remorse. We’re called to repentance, and repentance is more than just regret or remorse. We’re called to repent and be baptised. Remorse is more that an intellectual acknowledgement that we have done wrong, it’s a feeling, and repentance is more than a feeling; it’s an action. The good news translates repentance as “Turn away from your sins”. It means we have to acknowledge that we have sins and we have to consciously turn from them. It means we have to ask for forgiveness from God.



That’s what John is saying here. Firstly, turn from your sins, secondly, be baptised and, thirdly, God will forgive your sins, and that’s the joy of repentance, we are turning to a God who already loves us. He doesn’t love us because we are good, he loves us despite the fact that we are not. It’s only when we turn to God acknowledging what we are, not what we pretend to be, that God can begin to work in us, and with us, and through us.



Repentance is an action, not just a feeling. It’s a total change of mind and direction, away from our own beliefs and values, towards God’s. This is underlined by the baptism offered by John. The people of Judea and Jerusalem confessed their sins and John baptised them in the river Jordan.



Baptism means to plunge or immerse, and no one had ever baptised the way that John was doing here. There are two Old Testament practices that John seems to have adapted. The first was a kind or ritual washing that people would undertake when they had become ritually impure, for example temple priests had to ritually wash themselves after they had come into contact with a dead body. Ritual washing is still a part of Jewish and Moslem worship, but people do it to themselves, and most significantly it’s temporary. It doesn’t last. People need do it time after time; whenever they have become ritually impure.



The second way that immersion was used was when a gentile converted to Judaism. This was done once, because you only convert once, but it wasn’t performed on people born as Jews, because as a Jew you were kept clean through the sacrifices that the priests offered for you in the temple.



John’s ritual combined these practices into a ritual that was performed once and once only, and was carried out on Jews, not only Gentiles. In all cases it symbolised the washing away of sin. This is what was so central about what John the Baptist was doing. He was telling people to repent, and as an act of repentance, an act of turning from sin, he was telling them to be baptised. The baptism symbolised both the repentance of the person being baptised but it also symbolised the forgiveness of God. Unlike the ritual washing it’s permanent



John called on people to repent. He baptised in the river Jordan, but thirdly he pointed people towards Jesus, because without Jesus these things were not enough. There is nothing magical about being immersed in water. John says; “The man who comes after me is much greater than I am. I am not good enough even to bend down and untie his sandals. I baptise you with water, but he will baptise with the Holy Spirit.



I was struck reading this passage how these eight verses in Mark summarise the good news about Jesus Christ. In a very real sense this passage here sums up everything not just in Mark’s gospel but in all the other gospels. The rest of mark’s gospel and the other gospels tell us more about the values of Jesus and the Father, and it goes into much more detail about the cost of forgiveness to God, it tells us about the cross, and it tells us about the joy of reconciliation with God, but in many ways the gospel is “Repent and be baptised and God will forgive you” and that’s all here in these eight verses.



So where does this leave us. At the beginning of the sermon I wished you a happy new year and encouraged you to prepare yourself for Jesus birth and his return. It’s going to be a busy few weeks, my wife tells me. There’s cards to write, presents to buy, meetings with family and friends to arrange. I pray that we might all have a joyful Christmas but I pray also that we might all meet with Jesus over Christmas. I pray that with quiet gratitude for all that he has done for us, and with great joy at what he is going to do with us we might meet with him. I pray that we might bring all the rubbish in our life, all the regrets we still carry, all the remorse for past mistakes and foolishness, all the guilt and shame we still so often feel, and surrender it to him. In Jesus name. Amen

Holy and loving God,

we have dwelt in darkness

and preferred it to the light.

We have been proud of our accomplishments

and despaired over our shortcomings.

Smooth down the mountains of our pride,

and lift up the valleys of our doubts.

Open a path in the wilderness of our lives

that we might find our way to you again.

Refine us and prepare us once again

for life in your kingdom.

Now and forever

Amen

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Stafford

When we pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s we should remember we are created in the image of God.

Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Yes or No. I was reminded reading todays bible reading of Jeremy Paxman interviewing Michael Howerd, or indeed any politician of any party. You can almost hear the hectoring command “Answer the question minister, yes or no?” Have you ever been asked a question where the only answers are yes or no, and you are damned if you say either of them.

This passage which we are looking at today is exactly that type of question. As we have heard, it was deliberately asked to trick Jesus. To put the story into context, in chapter 21 Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph and casts the money lenders out of the temple court. Later in the chapter he is questioned by the temple authorities regarding whose authority he did these things.

Jesus then tells three parables; the parable of the two sons, the parable of the tenants and the parable of the wedding banquet. All of these parables are critical of the Pharisees and temple authorities. In chapter 21 verse 5 we are told that when the chief priests and Pharisees heard these parables they knew he was talking about them. They wanted to arrest him but they were afraid of the crowd, because the people held that he was a prophet.

So this question is the Parisees response and it’s quite a clever one, they planned to trap Jesus into condemning himself; they sent their disciples to ask him a question which was impossible to answer without consequence. They flatter Jesus, compliment him on his integrity. They ask him his opinion, who doesn’t like to be asked what their opinion is on something, and then they ask their killer question. “Tell us then teacher. What is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Yes or no. Answer the question.” Actually I added the last bit, but I thinks it’s implied by the text. This was a question with only two answers. Yes it is lawful to pay the tax, or no it isn’t.

So what was the tax they were talking about? There were a number of ways that Rome taxed its subjects but the one they were talking about here was the poll tax. It was a flat rate tax of 1 denarius payable by everyone who wasn’t a citizen of Rome. Some Jews were citizens of Rome but the vast majority weren’t. Like most flat rate taxes it hit the poor more than the rich.

The tax was one denarius, one day’s pay for a labourer, and this was a society where many people, most people, were labourers. It’s hard to draw an exact comparison because today’s society is very different, but a day’s work on the minimum wage today is about £60. Not massive, but not insignificant either. So this was an unfair tax, a tax on a conquered people, but most of all it was an ungodly tax.

Why was it an ungodly tax? Well the tax was payable with a silver denarius coin. This coin had the image of the Emperor Tiberius Caesar and the inscription Tiberius Caesar, August son of the divine Augustus. Both the image and the inscription were blasphemous. The image because for religious Jews all images were blasphemous. The second commandment is “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything” The word for idol is the same as the word for image. To create an image was to create an idol. The inscription was blasphemous because it proclaimed Tiberius to be the son of God.

So this is the test. It’s a simple one, and there’s no right answer. Jesus can say “Yes, pay the tax”, but that will destroy his credibility with the crowd who think he’s a prophet. Once he loses the protection of the crowd, the chief priests and the Pharisees can do what they want with him. Or he can say “No, don’t pay the tax”. The crowd will love him, but the Romans will arrest him as a rebel and probably execute him. Either way he is finished. “Yes or No Jesus. Answer the question”

Well the bible tells us that Jesus knew their evil intent and asks them for one of the coins used to pay the tax; a silver denarius. There, in the Jewish temple, one of Jesus own questioners produces one of these blasphemous silver coins, and Jesus asks them who the image is of, and who the inscription is of. “Caesar” they say. So Jesus says “Give to Caesar, what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” And everybody is amazed at his wisdom and leave him alone.

Now I wonder what the Pharisees made of that. The bible tells us that they were amazed, but I suspect that they were amazed that he had got out of their trap. He hadn’t said Yes or No. I don’t think they were amazed at the profundity of his teaching because I don’t think it was ever a serious theological question. There is a danger that we do the same. That we see it as a story about Jesus cleverness, not as teaching.

I think that’s a mistake. I think Jesus is giving real teaching here. As is so often the case with Jesus, his teaching is both more gentle than the Pharisees and more demanding. I want to make three suggestions, three points, which we might take away with us. Points which might help us to understand how to apply what Jesus says here.

The first point is that Jesus is saying we should be obedient to governments put in authority over us. We might think this is obvious but it wasn’t obvious to God’s people at that time. Jesus doesn’t have a problem about paying tax to the Roman Empire and part of the reason is that Jesus knows times are changing.

Just before the passage we are looking at now Jesus taught three parables. It was these parables which the Pharisees took particular exception to and which led to them trying to trap Jesus. All of them were about the kingdom of God being taken away from those who were expecting it and being given to a people who weren’t expecting it but would produce its fruit. The old order of God’s people being a specific race in a specific location was coming to an end and a new order, of God’s people being in everywhere and from every race was going to begin. God’s people would be a minority in countries which did not owe their allegiance to God.

Paul expanded that point for the early church in his letter to the Romans, because the early church had exactly that problem. Paul says; “Let everyone be subject to the ruling authorities, for there is no authority except which God has established.” In other words God is sovereign. God is in control. God is king.

And it’s not that different today. Society is less and less tolerant of Kingdom values. Many Christians are pacifists, and many of those that aren’t are sceptical of the wars that seem now to be fought in our name. Many Christians deplore the fact that society seems to take less and less care of the weak and vulnerable.

To use just one example, many are concerned about the greater and greater acceptance of euthanasia. What is to happen to society? What persecution will we face in the future? Well Jesus says pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Paul says “Let everyone be subject to the ruling authorities. God is sovereign. God is in control. God is king. Let’s take comfort for that.


So this brings me to my second point. The first point is that Jesus is saying we should be obedient to governments put in authority over us. The second is that all our money is God’s including the bit we give Caesar. All our money is God’s including the bit we give Caesar. We give to Caesar, we pay our taxes, because Jesus tells us to.

There’s a danger that we think of our money like this. This you give to Caesar, and this you give to God, and they are quite separate. We can look at what we have earned and we can say, “Well that’s the money I’ve paid in tax, and that’s the money I’ve given to God, to church, to the charities I feel particularly called to support, so everything else is mine. I’ve paid my dues to the state and I’ve paid my dues to God.” I’ll be honest, my instinct is often to feel like that. It’s human. It’s also the mistake the Pharisees made.

The Pharisees tithed, that is they gave ten percent of everything to the temple. We know that the Pharisees were very strict about tithing because Jesus himself acknowledges this. He says to them, “You give a tenth even of your spices, but you forget the more important matters of the law –justice, mercy and faithfulness.”

This was Jesus criticism of the Pharisees. They were absolutely exact in making sure that they gave their ten percent, but they missed the greater importance of justice and mercy and faithfulness and they missed the fact that that they could be more generous than just giving ten percent.

It’s a bit like the passage about forgiveness. Do you remember where Peter asks Jesus how many time we should forgive? Seven times? Jesus replies “No not seven times. Seventy seven times”. In other words, don’t try and keep count. Forgive and forgive and forgive. Make a habit of forgiving. If we set a specific target of what we should do for God we risk sitting back in complacent self-satisfaction if we achieve it. But kingdom values don’t work that way. Jesus commended the widow who gave a mite, the smallest coin available, because it was all that she had. All that we have because God has given it to us. It’s all God’s money, the bit we give Caesar and the bit we give back to God.

My third point is this. Jesus response to pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s is based on the fact that it has Caesar’s image on it. In essence he is saying “Pay back to Caesar the thing with Caesar’s image on”. Now the bible uses the word image in two senses. One was in a negative sense as in ‘graven image’ something to be avoided, it carries implications of idolatry. Don’t make ‘graven images’ but the bible also uses it in a positive sense, when something is made in the true image, the image of God.

What, of all the things that God created, is the one thing that scripture tells us is created in the image of God...?

.........You are. You are. And I am, and every human being. “For God created mankind in his own image.” Whatever your race, or your sex, or your religion, whether you believe you are created in his image, or even whether you believe in God at all, you are created in the image of God.

Just as the silver denarius that Jesus held in his hand in Palestine all those years ago had the image of Tiberius Caesar stamped on it, so you have the image of the Lord God almighty stamped on your heart. What we give to Caesar, what we pay in taxes is only a part of our responsibility and response to God. The Pharisees thought that Jesus had come up with a clever response to their question, a way of saying “Yes and No” without offending either crowd or Rome. But he was doing more than that. He was doing more than saying all that you have is God’s, he was saying you are God’s. Give your whole self to God. In Jesus name. Amen

Preached on Sunday 19th October





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We are called to forgive, but we can only do so through the Grace of God and if we know how much we are forgiven

Text; Matthew 18: 21-35

The story we heard in our second reading is a story that cuts to the heart of Christianity, to our relationship with Jesus and to the kingdom of God. It comes at the end of the second half of Matthew 18 and we need to start by putting our reading into the context of what Jesus has just been saying.

Jesus has just been talking about the way that members of the kingdom of God deal with disagreement among themselves. From verse 15 he sets out the way that believers should behave when they come into disagreement. It’s quite simple. If your brother or sister sins against you, go and show them where they are wrong, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, Jesus says, you have won them over. If that doesn’t work take two or three other people along. Not to threaten them, but so that “every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses”. If even that does not work, the whole church needs to be involved. Only if the believer is still refusing even to listen to the church should the ultimate sanction be made; only then should they be treated as an outsider and excluded. The emphasis here is on reconciliation. Exclusion, excommunication, is very much a last resort.

But there’s a danger about taking all this at face value. What Jesus says here seems to assume that it’s just a simple matter of following these principles and trusting that people are intrinsically reasonable and will recognise when they are in the wrong. Peter asks a very astute question, right here at the beginning of the reading we are looking at today. “Lord, how many times shall I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

I just want to pause here a moment and acknowledge what a brilliant question this is. This isn’t a stupid question and Jesus doesn’t rebuke Peter. Peter has cut right to the heart of the matter of reconciliation; that there is no reconciliation without forgiveness. Peter recognises that; his question is purely practical. How many times should I forgive? Seven times?

Seven is not a stupid number. If someone is persistently wronging you, it takes a lot of heart to forgive them seven times. A community of people who made a point of forgiving those who have wronged them seven times would be a pretty loving community and a pretty good role model for the world. But Jesus says no; not seven times, seventy seven times.

What’s the difference between seven times and seventy seven times. Well in a nutshell, if we were called to forgive seven times, there is a danger we’d try and keep count and our focus would be on us, and how good we were being by forgiving at all. In forgiveness terms, forgiving seventy seven times is tantamount to unlimited forgiveness. Lest there is any doubt about that Jesus tell the parable that we call the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.

A man owes a king an absolute fortune; ten thousand talents. A talent was the largest unit of currency available at that time, worth about 16 year’s wages for an ordinary labourer. That’s one talent, and the servant owed 10,000. That’s zillions.

We don’t know why he owed so much money, but he did. The king asks for it back, as he is legally entitled to do. The servant is in the wrong and he cannot pay. Because he cannot pay, all that he has is taken from him, and he and his family are to be sold into slavery. The servant is utterly ruined, and with nothing to lose he begs the king for mercy, for time to pay back a debt he simply can’t repay. The king is filled with pity, cancels the debt entirely and releases the servant.

There is nothing grudging about the enormous debt being written off. The king isn’t just a bit sympathetic and he doesn’t just agree to some kind of terms. He is filled with pity from the bottom of his heart and his forgiving of the servant is an act of unbelievable generosity. His forgiveness is not partial or conditional, it is in full, complete and unconditional. Had the king said, “Well I can’t let you off the whole debt, but I won’t have you all sold into slavery, however you’re going to have to work hard for me for the rest of your life” He would still have been generous, he had no obligation even to say that. but the king goes far, far beyond even that, forgiving the debt in full. It is lavish, extravagant, exuberant forgiveness.

Not so the servant, who only a few moments later, faces a fellow servant who owes him a much, much more modest debt, about three month’s pay. Unlike the first debt this debt, though not small, is repayable. None the less the first servant, who only a few moments before was forgiven so extravagantly a debt that would have ruined him for ever, chooses instead to have the second servant thrown into jail. What shameful ingratitude. When this is brought to the attention of the king he is furious. ”You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Shouldn’t you also have had mercy on your fellow servant, even as I had mercy on you?” and he hands him over for punishment.

I want to draw three points from this. My first point is that real forgiveness is not cheap. Real forgiveness is not cheap. Sometimes we use the words “I forgive you” too glibly. If it’s not too hard to forgive it’s probably because it’s not real forgiveness. If I hadn’t turned up this morning, you’d probably have forgiven me. You are good people. It would have been irritating, annoying. You’d have come out in your best clothes and wasted your morning, but on the other hand you’d get to have your lunch earlier. At the end of the day it wouldn’t really matter.

On the other hand if I was your church treasurer and I took money that you had sacrificially put aside for God and I stole it from you, that wouldn’t be so easy to forgive; I would have betrayed you personally. If I used my position of trust to abuse the most vulnerable members of this church, I don’t think that would be easy to forgive at all. Real forgiveness is not easy and it is not cheap.

A few years ago I watched a TV programme about forgiveness. The studio audience was made up of people who had been the victims of appalling acts. The parents of murdered children, people who had lost loved ones to the IRA, the victims of rape and of child abuse, people who had suffered life changing injuries at the hands of others. These were real victims. Some were Christians, most weren’t. The non-Christians were generally angry at the very suggestion they should forgive and it was easy to understand why, it was. It was made worse by their perception that forgiveness devalued their loss; that to forgive was to say that their loss did not matter. As Christians we need to recognise the real hurt and anger that people, including Christians feel.

So my first point is that real forgiveness is not cheap. My second is that God gives us the power to forgive if we turn to him. God gives us the power to forgive if we turn to him.

When I first became a Christian I read a book called The Hiding Place, by Corrie ten Boom, which had an enormous influence on my becoming a Christian. Corrie was a middle aged Dutch woman who lived with her unmarried sister Betsie and their elderly father, in Amsterdam during the Second World War. Devout Christians, they hid Jews but were eventually betrayed, imprisoned and sent to prison. Corrie’s father died the night of their imprisonment and Betsie died shortly before the end of the war.

After the war Corrie committed herself to working with the most marginalised group in post war Holland; former Dutch Nazis, preaching God’s love and forgiveness. One day she met a man she remembered from prison, who had been a particularly cruel guard. Despite all that she had taught about forgiveness she found herself utterly unable to forgive a man who had treated her so badly. She forced herself to shake his hand and her testimony was that at that moment she became filled with a sense of God’s love.

God knows how hard it is to forgive sometimes. He doesn’t just tell us to do it, he gives us the strength to do it when we acknowledge we need it, and when we pray for it. Do you struggle to forgive something horrible from your past? Turn to God, trust in him, ask him for the power to forgive.

A few moments ago I spoke about the TV programme I watched about forgiveness. I spoke about how non-Christians were angered at the thought of forgiving those who had wronged them and about how even Christians struggled to, although they knew it to be important. Part of the reason they were able to even begin to forgive was their understanding that they had been the recipients of God’s forgiveness. And this brings me to my third point. We are able to forgive because we know God has first forgiven us. We are able to forgive because we know God has first forgiven us.

The problem with Peter’s suggestion that we forgive those who’ve wronged us seven times, although superficially generous misses this point. It tempts us to focus on ourselves and to keep count of how often we have forgiven others, but that’s not what we should focus on. Our human goodness, such as it is, is simply not enough to maintain the consistent forgiveness that we need to give in a fallen world.

The focus shouldn’t be on how much we have forgiven others; it should be on how much we have been forgiven by God. Our focus should be on him who has forgiven us so much, and who carried our sins on the cross, on Jesus Christ. That’s where the first servant went so wrong. It is almost impossible to understand how a man who had been forgiven so much could respond by forgiving someone else so little, and so soon after. We can only conclude that somehow, amazingly, he lacked insight into how much he had been forgiven and how little he had deserved it. When we choose to be grudging in our forgiveness of others it is because, like the first servant, we don’t really understand how much we’ve been forgiven.

Do you know how much God has forgiven you? Do I really understand how much God had forgiven me? Do we really understand how much God forgives us each day? How many wicked thoughts, unkind words, acts of ingratitude, moments we consciously do things we know to be wrong in God’s sight, moments we choose not to do a good thing because it’s inconvenient or because we simply don’t think of it. I’m not suggesting we should dwell on our sins themselves, but we should be sufficiently aware of them to have some idea how much forgiveness we have had for them. Without being aware of how much we have been forgiven we won’t be able to forgive others when we need to.

God wants us to forgive, it’s at the heart of the gospel. God has forgiven us far more than we will ever forgive others for. God doesn’t want to tell us off for being ungrateful when we struggle to forgive the very real hurts that have been inflicted on us. He wants us to forgive because forgiveness is God’s will for a hurting world. Forgiveness is what makes reconciliation and healing possible. Carrying the burden of unforgiven wrongs, of anger, damages us. It can lead to ill health and even early death. It damages our relationships with our wives and husbands, with our children, with everyone around us. It leads to bigotry and it leads to wars.
We are the servants in the story of the unforgiving servant and God is the king. We have been forgiven a debt we could never have repaid, and we have been forgiven from the depth of God’s heart. We have a choice. It is whether to be like the first servant and squander that forgiveness or to be like the king and forgive, and forgive, and forgive

Forgiveness is how we live out our witness as Christians. The passage we are looking at isn’t primarily about forgiving our enemies outside the church; it’s about forgiving our brothers and sisters within it. Jesus said, “By this will people know that you are my disciples; that you love one another, that you love one another”. If we do not even show love; including a quickness to forgive, to our brothers and sisters within the church, who will believe that we have anything to say about love to the world at large.






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Our forgetful God

I drove down to the shops for some last minute Christmas shopping today. The weather was dreadful, the traffic heavy and I had to take a detour. In an attempt to get back on the right road I took an unfamiliar turning and was surprised to recognise where I was.

Last summer I had a row with my wife and girls. Boiling with anger I went for a run and had taken the same route as I took this morning. I can remember being there, I can remember being very angry, almost the angriest I can ever remember being, but for the life of me I can't remember what I was angry about.*  What ever it was about, and it seemed important enough at the time, has long since been swallowed up in the deep, loving relationship I have with my wife; God's greatest gift to me after salvation.

I wonder if this is what it's like for God. Many Christians believe that, when God forgives our sins he also forgets them. The bible tells us that love doesn't keep a record of wrongs (1Corinthians 13:5) and, in Jeremiah, the Lord says,

 "For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:34). 

How an all knowing God might forget  anything is a mystery (presumably it is an act of his own will). I've always seen this forgetting by God in dry theological terms. How can God forget anything? Today I saw it in personal ones. Why would God want to remember the forgiven sins of those he loves?

*As I remember it, I was wholly in the right and everybody else wholly in the wrong, but my judgement on these things isn't perfect.

The full counsel of God

I‘ve come to feel that bad theology is unbalanced theology and that unbalanced theology is bad theology. Much of the challenge of practical theology is holding two or more apparently contradictory beliefs in dynamic tension; the true doctrine being the totality of both beliefs rather than the compromise between them. 

Let me give a non-controversial example. Christians believe that Jesus was fully God and fully human. These statements are apparently (though not actually) contradictory. The tendency when struggling with such seeming contradictions is to come down on the side of one half of the equation and minimise, if not ignore, the other. However both statements are true. Jesus is not less than fully divine (He's not half a God) and he's not less than fully human (If he was he could have been the sinless second Adam). To preach one and not the other is false doctrine.

None of this is controversial theology, at least among evangelicals. I'm using it to illustrate what I think is a more universal truth, that true doctrine is often the product of balancing two different (or even contradictory) beliefs, and biblical error, even heresy, almost always the consequence of getting this balance wrong. 

I've been reminded of this point this week. Yesterday I listened to a good Reformed sermon entitled The World is not our Place on the text; Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.  (Hebrews 13:13-14 NKJV)

The gist of the sermon was that we are not of this world because we follow Jesus and Jesus was not of this world; he was, and continues to be, rejected by it. The sermon refuted the idea that the role of Christians is to 'restore' society, arguing that in the face of sin, society won't be properly restored until after Jesus returns. The sermon didn't condemn Christian charity or compassion, indeed it argued that most public provision of health care, education and social care had roots in eighteenth and nineteenth century Christianity (and particularly evangelical or non-conformist Christianity at that), but it also argued the result of these good works wasn’t a restored ‘Godly’ society, built on Christian principles, but a society in many ways more godless than the one that had gone before. 

All of this I thoroughly agreed with. It leaves me deeply uncomfortable when churches put more emphasis on, say, the world’s ‘green’ agenda than preaching about sin, redemption and the shed blood of Jesus Christ. However I was still left feeling uncomfortable about the sermon. There seemed to be a missing 'application' in there somewhere. The sermon didn't give any practical examples of practical Christian compassion that were more recent than the nineteenth century and the emphasis of the sermon seemed to be on the need to withdraw from the world rather than engage with it.

What I wanted from the sermon was an application which helps me live in the world without being ruled by it. Reflecting on this, I was reminded that Jesus is, as always, our great teacher. If Jesus had been overly worried about being compromised by the world he would never have been born into it, and we would still be lost in our sins. The world rejects Jesus; Jesus doesn't reject it, and he doesn't turn his back on those that walk upon in.

So how did Jesus keep himself from being contaminated by the world? Firstly I think by always being clear that his relationship with the Father came first. This was reflected in his values and his habits. we can see in the teaching he gave his disciples about prioritising the seeking of the kingdom of God[i], we can see that in the forty days he spent in the wilderness[ii] and we can see it by the cross, where he was obedient to his Father, even to the point of death. His wasn't a spirit of fear; he trusted his father to keep him safe.

The life of Jesus wasn't a life rejecting the world. The shortest verse in the bible is Jesus wept[iii], when he wept for his dead friend Lazarus. Jesus compassion to those around him was real, and deep, and painful to him. He was a man of grief, acquainted with sorrow[iv], and I don't imagine it was the grief and sorrow of self-pity. He met and ate with sinners and reached out to them in love.

When asked what the greatest commandment was he replied, 

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind[v]….., and the second is like it; Love your neighbour as yourself[vi]"[vii]. 

We need to do both to be followers of Jesus.

---

[i] Matthew 6:33

[ii] Matthew 4:1-11

[iii] John 11:35

[iv] Isaiah 53:3

[v] Deuteronomy 6:5

[vi] Leviticus 19:18

[vii] Matthew 22:37-39

An Afternoon in the Garden

I had the afternoon off today and
managed to spend the latter part of it in the garden for the first time this year. This is my third summer in the house (Mrs H was here for about three years before we met). The first summer was something of a dead loss gardening wise, but last year I hit the ground running. Bill paid for a new fence which meant that we could dig out the borders and beds, and we planted out a number of perennials. At the end of the summer I ruthlessly hacked back overgrown bushes; too late in the year to plant anything in the newly cleared space.

Last autumn I planted fifty tulip bulbs without telling Mrs H, which are now in full bloom. The garden is full of promise and the window boxes are reattached to the walls. Sadly we are planning to move house and we will not reap the benefits of all our hard work. At least we can take the tubs, windowboxes and hanging baskets with us. I hope to be able to have a greenhouse at the new address, but Mrs H's tulips will have to be left behind.

Picture from last year's garden