All too frequently we have been reminded of the fragility of life – through the actions of political power play by Russia over Crimea and the shooting down of a passenger airliner in Ukraine; there have been the actions of religious fanaticism at the hands of ISIS in Iraq and Syria; and the abduction of teenage school girls in Nigeria (some two hundred and nineteen of whom are still missing) at the hands of Boko Haram; and the lone-wolf Islamicist action in Sydney this month.
Our world. In 1932, John Buchan (created Lord Tweedsmuir in the year he was appointed Governor-General of Canada) wrote a perceptive book entitled, A Prince of the Captivity. As the narrative develops Buchan identifies the political and economic complexities of Britain and Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. At one point he prophetically touches on the rise of German nationalism at the very time Hitler grabbed power. Using the language of the ‘Iron Hand’, his hero said: “The Iron Hand movement was on the face of it just an organization of ex-soldiers,… partly benevolent and partly nationalist. There were thousands of members who only joined to keep up the fellowship of the trenches. But there was an inner circle to it which was playing a bigger part in politics, and an innermost circle which meant real mischief… Peace in the world was the last thing they sought, for their only hope lay in a new and bigger ferment…” Buchan clearly understood the world in which we find ourselves – a world where we find enormous good, but where extraordinary evil wants to do its worst.
Discernment. It is into such a world that Jesus enjoins his followers, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents andharmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Jesus wants us to be aware of the nature of our world. He wants us to be discerning about the motives of people around us, especially those who might seem to be with us and yet who, deep down, are utterly opposed to peace and goodwill.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
At the end of Matthew’s Gospel we have his statement, “All authority has been given to me…” and his commission: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them… and teaching them all I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:16, 18f). “Go and make disciples…” – not simply converts, but men and women whose lives are being enriched and honed by God’s Word in the cause of Jesus Christ. Governments, economics, education and the rule of law have their place, but the call that transcends all is the challenge to change minds and hearts – to address the soul. For, we are more than the sum of our parts. We are spiritual beings, created with the potential to know God and glorify and enjoy him forever.
This is the challenge the Anglican Connection has taken on – one, by God’s mercy, we will continue to develop in 2015.
Never alone. The great thing is that we are never alone. Jesus said, ‘I am with you the whole of every day, until the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). In his Christmas Speech in 1939, as Britain entered a year of fierce onslaught, His Majesty, King George VI concluded with this quotation:
“I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.”
Writing in the Weekend Australian Magazine eleven days ago, Nikki Gemmel noted that Christmas carols are slipping away from our culture. She commented that this is a loss, for ours is ‘the age of loneliness; of fear and flinch’. Significantly, she further noted, ‘There’s a spiritual hankering that will always persist. The hankering for guidance to raise children within a moral framework is deep within the human spirit, and the atheists haven’t provided anything substantive to step into the breech. Religion will not disappear. It still shapes our world.’ (Weekend AustralianMagazine, December 13/14, 2014)
Assuming Nikki Gemmel’s observation is correct, a question worth asking ourselves and others, especially at Christmas, is this: ‘Is there a stand-out religion?’ If so, what is it like?
TRUTH
Writing in his Letter to the Colossians, Paul the Apostle commented on the way that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ had changed the lives of his Colossian readers, as indeed it was changing lives and growing throughout the world. Significantly, he wrote of the gospel as the word of the truth. ‘You Colossians came to know the grace of God in all its truth’, he was saying. He could have left out any reference to the word truth, but he didn’t.
As we think about this, we can say it is true in a counter-intuitive sense – the statements it makes about God and men and women are beyond human invention and imagination. No one of us would have invented a God who was prepared to come as a baby, born into a humble home for our benefit. None of us would have dreamed of a God who, in the cause of rescuing a faithless world, would die an unjust and awful death. Nor would we conceive that such is God’s justice that the death of his one and only Son was the only way he could break the bonds of sin and death for us. A gospel like this can’t be contradicted. Christianity is a good example of GK Chesterton’s observation that ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’.
Furthermore, the gospel is true in an historical sense – the accounts of the birth, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are not an invention. Luke is insistent he was accurately narrating events witnessed by eye-witnesses (Luke 1:2), events that fulfilled promises made by prophets over a period of five hundred years (for example, 2 Samuel 7:12-13; Isaiah 9:2-7).
Third, the gospel is true in an experiential sense – when we put our trust in Jesus Christ who is at the centre of the gospel message, we discover that our faith is not a hoax. It is a genuine experience.
WHY WAS JESUS BORN
The answer is found in the names and titles given in the announcement at Jesus’ birth: “To you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour, who is the Christ, the Lord.” We might like the titles, Christ and Lord, but we baulk at Savior. ‘We don’t need saving,’ we say. But the fact is we do. Here is the heart of Christianity. This is the religion we all need.
Carols. And when we know this Christ, the Lord, as our Savior, we will want to sing the great music of Christianity – including the carols. Indeed, we will want to hear again and sing out the majestic words of the ‘Halleluiah Chorus’ of Handel’s Messiah: ‘King of kings, and Lord of lords, and he shall reign for ever and ever… Halleluiah! Halleluiah!’
May you know the rich joy of the coming of Jesus Christ, our Savior this Christmas.
Only ten days to Christmas and Sydneysiders were shocked and horrified by the hostage-taking in Downtown Sydney in Martin Place. Our hearts go out to the families of the two hostages who died. The evil that shook the world on 9/11 has now reached Australia.
In dark times like this we find the advice of political leaders and the voices of commentators intent on being helpful, only take us so far. Indeed, when we are confronted with such events, we find that the words of the Bible speak into our lives with wisdom and power.
VENGEANCE
Retaliation? So it is when we turn to Paul’s Letter to the Romans that we read:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all (12:17).
In Romans 12:14-21, Paul sets out four counter-cultural prohibitions expressing the same theme in different words: retaliation and revenge are absolutely forbidden to the followers of Jesus.
Yes, there is a place for the punishment of evil-doers in the law courts, as Paul goes on to say in 13:1-4. But in personal conduct we’re never to get our own back by injuring those who have injured us. Non-retaliation was a very early feature of Christian ethics.
Paul’s ethic is not simply negative for his injunctions include a positive command. We are not to curse but to bless (12:14). We are not to retaliate, but to do what is right and to live in peace (12:17-18). We are not to take revenge but leave this to God; meanwhile we are to serve our enemies (12:19, 20). We are not to be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.
We are called upon to do what is right – good things – in the eyes of everybody. After all it would be inconsistent to refrain from evil if at the same time we’re not actively doing good.
So, in verse 18 we read: If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. To refuse to repay evil is to refuse to inflate a quarrel. But this is not enough. We also have to take the initiative in positive peace-making, even if it is not always possible. Sometimes other people are either not willing to live at peace with us, or they lay down a condition for reconciliation that involves an unacceptable moral compromise.
JUSTICE
This does not mean that justice will not be done. Paul continues: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’It is God’s work to avenge, not ours. He will judge, and he will judge justly. The reason personal retaliation is forbidden to us is that judgement is God’s prerogative, not ours.
In the final verses of this remarkable chapter (12:19-21), Paul balances two ideas. We are to leave any necessary punishment to God and get busy in serving our enemy’s welfare. So, we read: “Vengeance is mine says the Lord…” but then, “If your enemy is hungry, feed them…” Our personal responsibility is to love and serve our enemy according to their needs, and genuinely to seek their highest good – thus heaping coals of fire. The coals are intended to heal, not to hurt, to win, not to alienate – in fact to shame them into repentance.
Pray. When you feel angry, pray. Turn the anger into prayers to the one majestic God who is not only all-powerful, but merciful and good, just and victorious.
Paul draws a vital distinction between the duty of private citizens to love and serve the evil-doer, and the duty of public servants – law-makers and judges – as official agents of God’s justice, to bring the evil-doer to trial, and if convicted to punish them. Both principles are seen operating when Jesus died on the cross. On the one hand, ‘When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate’. On the other, ‘he entrusted himself to him who judges justly’.
John Stott comments:
‘It is even better to be positive, to bless, to do good, to seek peace, and to serve and convert our enemy, because if we thus repay good for evil we reduce the tally of evil in the world, while at the same time increasing the tally of good. To repay evil for evil is to be overcome by it. To repay good for evil is to overcome evil with good. This is the way of the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.’
In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 there was much discussion on the subject of evil. While most people agreed that it exists, there was a strong opposing voice, especially from the world of academia. However, in the light of the recent killings conducted by ISIS (or ISIL) as well as the kidnapping of teenage girls in Nigeria and other atrocities committed by Boko Haran, most of us agree that evil does exist.
DOES EVIL EXIST?
When we turn to the Bible we learn that evil not only exists but that it originates in a personal force described by Isaiah as the Day Star, son of Dawn (Isaiah 14:12). This doesn’t mean that God created evil. Rather, it tells us that there was and is the potential within God’s good work for evil to arise. At the outset of Jesus’ ministry, he was tempted and supremely tested by this Day Star, Satan, who attempted to use all his deceitful craft to break the relationship between Jesus, the unique Son of God, and God, by getting him to disobey God.
The temptations of Jesus show us that we live in a world where two kingdoms are in conflict – the rule of God and the attempted rule of Satan. Indeed Satan (which means accuser) keeps a record of all our failures before God. And because we have failed to keep God’s commands – to love God and to love one another – he insists the penalty must be paid.
CS Lewis brilliantly portrays this idea in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Edmund had betrayed Peter, Susan and Lucy, and Aslan too. The witch demanded Edmunds’s life. “He has broken the laws of the deep,” she insisted. “He is mine. His life is forfeit.”
And, in his justice, God cannot refuse Satan’s demands for human life.
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
However, the good news for us is that Jesus not only demonstrated his greater power over the forces of evil, but he found a way to address Satan’s prosecution. In Colossians 2:15, Paul says that when Jesus was crucified, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them… Augustine, the Bishop of the North African port of Hippo spoke of the cross as the devil’s mousetrap. Through his death Jesus has provided the just means of our forgiveness. God’s righteousness has been perfectly satisfied once and for all.
When we pray, But deliver us from evil we see that there are at least two levels of meaning. We are praying that God might deliver us from the temptations of the evil powers – for Satan prowls around us like a lion (1 Peter 5:8). We also are asking for God’s protection against the evils of this world. But there is something else we tend to overlook: we are asking God to deliver us from the prosecution that Satan will attempt to bring against us on the final day.
The more I have thought about these themes the more I consider that Thomas Cranmer had this in mind in the prayer for God’s forgiveness that we find in the Communion Service:
Almighty God,… have mercy upon you; pardon and deliver you from all your sins…(BCP).
Yes, we need God’s forgiveness. But we also need to be delivered from all the charges that stand against us.
‘Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again’ forms part of many a liturgy. But how many of us really believe that there will be an end time when Jesus Christ returns? And, if we do believe it, how many of us live as if it is a reality?
Last Sunday, November 30, was the first Sunday in Advent, the season that calls us to focus not on the first coming of the Christ, but on his second.
It seems strange, even ironic, that we think about Christ’s return in the lead up to the celebration of his birth. However, we need to think about this. In our busy lives we tend to forget God’s great and ultimate purposes. Indeed in our western culture it is all too easy to focus on the festivity of Christmas and lose sight of the fact that it is just Part One of the Jesus narrative.
By focusing on the return of Christ before the celebration of his first coming, his incarnation, we are reminded that there is to be a final, awesome instalment to life with his return in all his majestic power and glory. And the truth of what is yet to come is grounded in what has already occurred. The birth of Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection all point to the authenticity of his words when he spoke of his second coming.
Thoughts about the return of Jesus Christ bring us back to the Prayer he gave his disciples. The Lord’s Prayer is a simple but profound prayer around two important petitions. The first is addressed to God as Father – asking for the honoring of his name and the triumph of his kingdom in great glory. The second includes God’s giving us now some of the benefits of the world to come – including provision for our daily needs. Further, in asking God’s forgiveness of our sins (as we in turn forgive those who sin against us) we are reckoning on our need to be prepared for the final day of judgement – setting our affairs in order with God and those around us, while there is time.
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION
Which brings us to a further ‘we’ petition: And lead us not into temptation…
We must be careful to read these words in the wider context of the Bible. So, in James 1:13 we read:
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.
As Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (p.105) points out, the meaning is, ‘Do not permit that I fall into the hands of sin, iniquity, temptation, and anything shameful.’ Jesus’ words can be translated, ‘Let us not succumb to temptation’. It is not a plea to be preserved from temptation but a preservation in the course of temptation. All of us are tempted – as was Jesus. What we need is God’s mercy, discernment and strength to overcome the temptation.
Consider the three temptations Jesus endured at the outset of his ministry (Luke 4:1-13). On each occasion Satan used Scripture to tempt him. Each time Jesus’ response rested on his knowledge of the Law (he quoted Deuteronomy) and the Writings (he discerned the devil’s misuse of Psalm 91). In each instance Luke makes it clear that Jesus had recourse to two sources of strength – God’s Spirit and God’s word. In 4:1 Luke tells us that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. Thus, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, was equally dependent upon using his mind and understanding of God’s word to counter the devil’s temptations.
GOD’S PROMISE AND GOSPEL HOPE
We find a sobering but encouraging promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. Let it be our prayer in this Advent Season that God’s Spirit and God’s Word working within us will enable us to find our way out of the mire of temptation.
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