Janet’s Blog

If you are reading this blog in Wellington you may recognise a certain resemblance to a sermon you have already heard. Most of the quotes are from the re:jesus website and you can obtain the Steve Turner poem there, which is obviously by Steve Turner…

Mark 1:29-39

And the whole city was gathered around the door.

 

The whole city, was gathered around the door.

 

The whole city.

 

Gathered around the door.

 

The whole city of Capernaum, apparently it’s a characteristically Marcan exaggeration, but it felt, it seemed like the whole city was gathered around the door. Later on as Simon and his companions find Jesus they say “Everyone is searching for you.”

 

Imagine a whole city gathered at the door. We perhaps find that hard to visualise, but think about a large gathering: For example the funeral for Princess Diana; or the crowds queuing and queuing through the night to see the body of the Queen mother. People who felt compelled to be there, for all sorts of reasons.

 

The Jesus we hear about in the Gospels is a very attractive character, to all sorts of people, for all sorts of reasons. He had Paparazzi and crowd control problems like you would never believe. Again and again the crowd chase after him. It seems whenever he is trying to get some peace and quiet to sort out what is going on in his head and to pray, he is followed. He even had to run away in the morning while it was still dark so that they wouldn’t follow him straight away.

 

For years one of the main searches in theology was trying to find the historical Jesus. What of that which is reported in the Gospel did Jesus actually say, where did Jesus actually live, what did Jesus actually do.

 

What is it about Jesus, which is so attractive? We know he teaches as one who has authority, we know he heals the sick, we know he has compassion on sinners, we know he offers people the opportunity to repent and to turn their lives around, we know he is a fascinating person, we know all these things.

 

Imagine that you are in Capernaum, imagine that you are in the crowd gathered around the door, imagine that you are there pressed in amongst the crowd that seems like the whole city, it’s still warm even though the sun has just gone down. What is it about Jesus that makes you want to be there, in the pressing warm crowd. Do you want to listen to him teach? Do you want him to heal you? Do you want him to heal your wife, or son, your husband or your daughter? Do you want to just touch him? Do you just feel you need to be there, somehow close to him, you need to be close to Jesus.

 

There is of course something extra special about Jesus. He is not just another itinerant preacher, faith healer or general troublemaker. Jesus is special, Jesus is God, God here on earth, God walking on the earth, God wearing clothes, God’s feet getting rubbed and mucky as he walks through the streets of Capernaum wearing sandals. God sitting in that house over there, where the whole city is gathered around the door.

 

Throughout history we have not forgotten Jesus, but we have forgotten most of the other itinerant Middle Eastern Jewish preachers of the period contemporary with Jesus. We only remember Barabas because he plays a part in Jesus’ story.

 

Jesus has fascinated through the ages.

 

It started with the disciples

 

Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Jesus’s disciples (1st century, Mark 4:41)

 

Jesus was a puzzle to Julian the Apostate, Roman emperor in the mid 300s.

 

“Jesus has now been celebrated about 300 years, having done nothing in his lifetime worthy of fame, unless anyone thinks it is a very great work to heal lame and blind people and exorcise demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany.”

 

In the 1500s John Knox said this

“No one else holds or has held the place in the heart of the world which Jesus holds. Other gods have been as devoutly worshipped; no other man has been so devoutly loved.”

 

Blaise Pascal, was a French mathematician and philosopher in the 1600s

“Not only do we not know God except through Jesus Christ;

We do not even know ourselves except through Jesus Christ.”

 

 

H.G. Wells, the British author said this

“I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very centre of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history.”

 

Albert Einstein, said this

“As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

 

Mikhail Gorbachev said this of Jesus

“Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.”

 

Douglas Adams, author of the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy said this

“2,000 years ago one man got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if everyone was nice to each other for a change.”

 

But where does that leave us now, here in Box in 2009. We believe, that Jesus is here gathered with us in this building, we believe the promise of God that when two or three are gathered in his name he is with them.

So where are the crowds?

Some may say that people aren’t interested in Jesus any more. That simply isn’t true. When Diane Duyser sold her ten year old piece of toast which had an image of Jesus’ mother burnt on it, she got a price of 28,000 dollars and 1.7 million people looked at the auction. People gather around streetlights which give shadows resembling Christ, people are intensely interested in Jesus, we don’t need the Da Vinci code to tell us that.  Simon was right when he said to Jesus “Everyone is searching for you,” it’s still true.

 

But there are not crowds gathered at the door of the church?

What would we do if the whole of Box was gathered at the door?

 “We heard that Jesus was here so we came to see.”

 

The problem is the “they” don’t believe or realise that he’s here. How has the word stopped getting about? What should we be doing about it?

 

Perhaps we need to start acting like we believe it.

I want to finish with a poem by Steve Turner,

my favourite Christian poet,

we might not agree absolutely with everything he says

but it gives some interesting food for thought.

 

How to hide Jesus by Steve Turner

 

There are people after Jesus.

They have seen the signs.

Quick, let’s hide Him.

Let’s think; carpenter,

fishermen’s friend,

disturber of religious comfort.

Let’s award Him a degree in theology,

a purple cassock

and a position of respect.

They’ll never think of looking here.

Let’s think;

His dialect may betray Him,

His tongue is of the masses.

Let’s teach Him Latin

and seventeenth century English,

they’ll never think of listening in.

Let’s think;

humble,

Man of Sorrows,

nowhere to lay His head.

We’ll build a house for Him,

somewhere away from the poor.

We’ll fill it with brass and silence.

It’s sure to throw them off.

 

There are people after Jesus.

Quick, let’s hide Him.

 

 

Psalm 24:1-6, Hebrews 2:14-end, Luke 2:22-40

 

Waiting for consolation

 

Waiting for consolation.

 

Sometimes in newspapers or on the television we see press photos of people who are waiting for consolation.

 

Usually sitting alone with their head in their hands or staring blankly ahead of them. These photos often involve the person sitting on a pile of rubble which was once their home which has bee overcome by violence, earthquake or some other natural disaster. These pictures poignantly display the magnitude of their loss, and are both extreme but entirely pertinent examples of people waiting for consolation. Even across thousands of miles and whatever cultural gulfs that divide us we know and can almost feel this person’s harsh reality, they need consolation, they wait and we never know if any consolation is found for them.

 

Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel. Did Israel need consoling? Apparently it did and Simeon was waiting for the consolation. Israel was an occupied nation. They weren’t sitting on a pile of rubble in fact the temple in which the action for today’s story from Luke takes place has not long been rebuilt. But the temple had been rebuilt by a puppet king who wasn’t even a real Jew, although he pretended to be, who ruled the people of Israel with a cruelty which even the Romans found shocking. Israel stands in need of consolation and Simeon is waiting.

What did the consolation mean for Simeon?

 

We hear in the Psalm, one of those songs of hope, which would have been sung in the temple, we hear that those who seek God’s face will receive blessing. Simeon is seeking God, and he knows that he has been blessed.

 

Simeon knows that this little baby, this is the consolation he has been waiting for. He knows that the salvation Jesus brings will be “a glory to your people Israel”.

 

A glory to your people Israel.

 

The psalm though also has more to say, how does it begin?

 

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

 

The earth is the Lord’s and so is this consolation only for Israel? No Simeon goes on to say that Jesus will be a light for revelation to the Gentiles, that’s everybody who isn’t Jewish. Simeon knows that God’s consolation isn’t only for the Jews but for everybody.

 

I wonder if today some of us here feel that we are waiting for consolation, or that we have waited for consolation, for ourselves, for a place or a situation.

 

Sometimes it’s hard to be human. Jesus knows this. The reading from Hebrews reminds us how hard it is to be human. It says how Jesus had to be made like his brothers in every way so that he might become merciful and faithful and so that he could achieve the freedom for us all which he has achieved.

 

It is only because Jesus has experienced the darkness and difficulty that lies in being human that he could pave the way for us all to be children of light.

 

We have all just lived through our annual blue Monday, apparently in Britain the third Monday in January is the unhappiest day in the year, it’s supposed to be a combination of the post-Christmas darkness, breaking our New Year’s resolutions, and having no money after Christmas etc. etc.

 

I don’t suppose Blue Monday applied in the same way in Jesus’ time but people carried their own burdens of sadness, grief and disappointment. They did feel that they lived in darkness, and Jesus was the light.

 

There are so many images of Light and Dark in the Bible and if sometimes they do seem a bit obscure we do know what they mean really, Jesus said ‘I am the light of the world’. He as an adult recognised what Simeon had said about him as a baby.

 

The reality that Jesus can turn our darkness into light is an important reality for us each as individuals. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that can be the case, that the darkness is overwhelming, maybe our faith seems just the dimmest flicker of light. God promises to be our light in dark times and dark places, and when we are struggling we need to hold on to that promise that the God who created the heavens and earth by saying ‘Let there be Light’, has promised that he will always light the way for us.

 

So we live in the light, the light to lighten the Gentiles and we rejoice that as it says in Isaiah “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…”

 

What do we do with the light that we have?

 

Handily Jesus has something to say about this.

 

14.”You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.

15.Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

16.In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

 

It is our duty and our joy that we take this light with us. In a very real way we bear the Christ-light for others, those who are not strong enough to hold their own, those whose own light has been blown out, or shines dimly in the buffeting of illness, or grief, or tragedy.

 

As one hymn says

 

I will hold the Christ-light for you

 in the night-time of your fear;

 I will hold my hand out to you,

 speak the peace you long to hear.

 

 

Today we are commissioning our Pastoral Care Team, we will hear a bit more about how this will work in few minutes. These are people who have volunteered and undergone training so that they can do this Christ-light bearing officially on behalf of the church.

 

This doesn’t take away the responsibility of all of us to undertake this role for those around us, but for these we pray for shortly there will be distinct tasks, caring and taking the light on behalf of us all. They will bear with them the light of Christ.

Jesus Christ, Simeon’s consolation, Our consolation, and the consolation of the world.

 

Everything was created through him;

      nothing—not one thing!—

      came into being without him.

   What came into existence was Life,

      and the Life was Light to live by.

   The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;

      the darkness couldn’t put it out.