St Peter's 150th anniversary

MATTHEW 16:21-28

This weekend we celebrate St Peter’s 150^th anniversary. Congratulations.

It also happens to be Alison’ and my 17^th wedding anniversary today.

I do like the story of Pastor Jones who had heard that Ralph was celebrating his 50^th wedding anniversary, and so he decided to take advantage of using Ralph as a sermon illustration. He asked Ralph to come on stage and share some insight into how he managed to live with the same woman all those years.

Ralph turned to the congregation and said, "Well, I treated her with respect and spent money on her—but mostly I took her traveling on special occasions."

The pastor asked, "Trips to where?"

"For our 25th anniversary," Ralph answered, "I took her to Beijing, China."

The congregation nodded and murmured in appreciation. When things quieted down, the pastor said: "What a terrific example you are to husbands, Ralph. So, tell us where you're going now for your 50th anniversary?"

Ralph replied, "I'm going to go there again and bring her back."

Well anniversaries give us the opportunity to look back with thankfulness, and to look to the future trusting in God.

I guess when a church building reaches a particular age – and 150 is not bad – we need to recognise that in some ways the building is bigger than us. There is a heritage that we need to work with, just like a carpenter working with the grain of the wood.

And I am so grateful for the heritage that we do have here. A church building that is simple in design, uncomplicated, not fussy, that was built to be in the centre of the community to serve the community, and that is focussed on the reading and preaching of the word and the place where we gather to celebrate the Lord’s supper.

And I am grateful for the person in whose name this church building has been dedicated: Simon Peter – the disciple who first declared that Jesus really was the Son of God, and who went on to become the first president of the church.

And today I would like us to go back, not 150 years, but 2000 years – and look at that incident and also what happened afterward.  It is an incident when Peter makes the great confession, and then makes the great mistake: both of which we can learn from (can be found in Matthew 16:13-28)

 Peter’s great confession.

Jesus has asked his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” They tell him: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah. And then he asks them: “And who do you say that I am?” And it is Peter who answers: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”.

In other words he confessed that Jesus is not only God’s king in God’s world, but that Jesus is the unique expression of God on earth, the presence of God on earth. He is, as Paul says, ‘the visible image of the invisible God’.

And then Jesus says, ‘I tell you are Peter (which means rock), and on this rock (Peter)  I will build my church’. And people argue whether Jesus means he will build his rock on the confession of Peter, or on the person of Peter.

But we do not have to decide. When Jesus changes Simon’s name and calls him Peter, what he is doing is linking Peter and his confession. Peter, in his role in the church, cannot be separated from his confession. Indeed, when Peter starts preaching someone other than Jesus Christ, preaches something that has not been revealed, he ceases – as we saw in our passage - to be Peter and becomes satan.

And when we as a community, who worship in a building which bears the name of Peter, preach Jesus, the Son of God, we are Petra, the rock, on which Jesus has founded his church. And when we as a community, cease to preach Jesus, the Son of God, and start to preach something else: our building, ourselves, what makes us feel good – we preach the words of satan.

This church has been known for its confession of Christ.

Its very existence stands as a witness to Christian worship.

Its name points people back to Peter and through him to Jesus

And for 150 years people have come in through those doors and confessed that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is Lord and Saviour

And for 150 years people have come in through those doors and worshiped Jesus, the Son of God, listened to Jesus, and received mercy and comfort and strength and purpose and grace from Jesus.

And for 150 years people have gone out through those doors and lived in the name of Jesus, under the Lordship of Jesus for Jesus.

And for 150 years people have gone out through those doors and declared to the world that Jesus is the Son of God

Some have not gone far – in fact just as far as where the double roundabout is, where they stood in the open air and preached – although it is sad that it became known as hell fire corner, rather than Jesus corner or salvation corner or resurrection corner. And a mission church was established.

And some have gone much further in the name of Jesus - most recently to India, to Ethiopia, and to Tanzania.

And it is with great joy that we today echo the words of Peter, and of those who founded this church, and of those who have worshipped in this place – and affirm the confession that Jesus, the Jew who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago, is the Messiah: God’s king come to claim God’s world, and that he is the Son of the living God.

Peter’s great mistake

When Jesus tells his followers that he is to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die (and to be raised from the dead), Peter tells Jesus that that must never happen to him.

Peter’s great mistake is THE great mistake.

It is the mistake that glory, praise, greatness and power is to be achieved through the things of this world – through self-assertion, money, influence and physical strength

It was Satan’s mistake. He saw glory and he tried to grab it.
It was Adam and Eve’s mistake. They wanted to become like God and they tried to grab it. 

Jesus says: That is not my way. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (v24)

What does that mean?

The call to deny ourselves is not a call to a stricter asceticism; it is not a call to give up everything that is precious to us; it is not a call to feel guilty whenever we do something because we enjoy it. If it were saying that then we could always deny ourselves more. In fact a life of total self-denial in this sense would be pretty short: I would not eat or drink.
This call to deny ourselves is the call to put Jesus first: first before possessions, career, family and life. It is not necessarily a call to a greater asceticism, but to a greater devotion and obedience. It is about saying 'I will obey Jesus even if it means that I have to be crucified'.

And the call to take up our cross is the call to live as people who have been condemned to death by this world. A man carrying his cross was a man who had been sentenced to death. To take up our cross is to live as dead people to this world: dead to the trophies of this world, dead to the demands of this world, dead to the ways of this world. 

Paul writes in one of the most important verses in the New Testament about what it means to live as a Christian, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20

And as a community, which bears the name of Peter, we need to remember that we too are called to deny ourselves, to take up our cross and to follow Jesus.

The great mistake that so many church communities make is the mistake of seeking the trophies that this world offers - reputation and status and wealth - using the things of this world: celeb endorsements, high profile leaders, media management,  the latest technology and the current fashion or style.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t make use of those things. I am just saying that if we think that those things will buy us success and glory, we have made the big mistake. 

True success and glory comes when a community and a people deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Jesus.

This is not really the food and drink of birthday parties. It is hard stuff.

But it is so important. 

True glory never comes to a person or community when they seek their own glory. Glory comes when we give glory to God and we give glory to others.  

True praise never comes to a person or community when we seek praise or praise ourselves. True praise comes when we forget self and praise God and praise that which is worthy in others.

True greatness does not come through fame or reputation or achievement. True greatness comes when we learn to serve. It comes when we walk into a room of other people and do not think, ‘Here I am’, but ‘Here they are’. It comes when we pray for others in the name of Jesus, when we give to others in the name of Jesus and when we serve others in the name of Jesus. It comes when we kneel down and wash the feet of another. 

True power is not measured in terms of the age or size of our church building, or in the number of significant people we have in our congregation, or in the wealth of our people, or in the number of our staff, or in the size of our band, or in the number of events in our programme, or in the ability of our ministers, or in the quality of our miracles.  True power, the power that matters, comes when people give themselves in self-sacrificial love.

And the more that we are prepared to love others sacrificially – whether they are members of the congregation, visitors, people in the wider community – the more we will grow in true power

I came across a very powerful illustration of what this means. I quote, "At the close of a long day of speeches and music to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the coming of missionaries to the part of Africa that we know as the Congo Republic, an old, old man stood before the crowd and insisted on speaking. He soon would die, he said, and if he didn't speak, information that he alone possessed would go with him to his grave.

He said that when the missionaries arrived, his people thought them strange and their message dubious. The tribal leaders decided to test the missionaries by slowly poisoning them to death. Over a period of months and years, missionary children died one by one. Then, the old man said, "It was as we watched how they died that we decided we wanted to live as Christians."*

Those who died painful, strange deaths never knew why they were dying or what the impact of their lives and deaths would be. But through it all, they didn't leave. They stayed because they trusted Jesus Christ."

And, of course, the single greatest act of  power: the defeat and destruction of evil and death, came from the greatest act of loving self-sacrifice: the self-sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross.

So on this, our anniversary, we give great thanks to God for the men and women who had the vision and then made possible the building of St Peter's. We give great thanks for the heritage of this place: rooted in the teaching of the bible. We give great thanks for the men and women, some of whom we remember, many of whom we don’t, who have worshiped and served and been sent out from this place.

And my prayer for the future of St Peter's is that 

1. We will remain faithful to the great confession. So that when they ask, 'What is St Peter's all about', they answer, 'Oh, those are the people who believe that Jesus is the Lord, the Son of God, and they are the people who live as if Jesus is Lord'

2. This will be known as a truly great church: not great in the eyes of the world, but great in God's eyes - so that when the real story of Bury St Edmunds is told - the story that God sees, the story that will one day be revealed - people will be able to say, 'Yes, those were the men and women, girls and boys, who denied themselves and put God first, who lived as dead people to this world, who were faithful to his word, obedient even when it hurt, who went on trusting God even when he seemed absent, who allowed the Holy Spirit to work in them and who gave themselves in self sacrificial love. They really were - and are the great ones'.

 

 * Leith Anderson, "Mystery Martyrs," Men of Integrity, (January/February 2004)

Self-denial and following Jesus

Matthew 16:21-end

It’s a well known passage, and there is so much here. But this morning I would like us to look at a single verse in our passage.

Jesus said, 'Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me'.

It is one of those verses that we think we ought to understand, but when we look at it more closely we realise that there is far more to it than we first thought.

So there are three things that we need to do:

1. To deny ourselves

I guess that this is the first step of commitment. If we commit ourselves to something then it means giving up other things.

The athlete training to win the gold will deny themselves the beer and the kebabs and the nights out with the lads, in order to keep fit and to get up in the morning to go for the two hour session in the gym.

The soldier preparing to go to war will deny him or her self comfort and ease in order to train so that they stay alive.

The young lawyer in the city will deny themselves any pretence to a social life, in order to devote 16 hours a day to work, and that goal of the partnership.

The weight watcher will deny themselves that second helping because of their desire to be able to see the scales

And the more important the thing that we are committed to, the greater will be the act of self-denial.

Parents will sacrifice themselves for their children

Sergei Nechaev was one of the early Russian revolutionaries. He is known as the man who wrote who wrote the Revolutionary Catechism in 1869. The first article goes: “The revolutionary is a dedicated man. He has no personal feelings, no private affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is subordinated towards a single exclusive attachment, a single thought and a single passion – the revolution.” (Quoted by Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy, Pimlico 1997: 133).

Nechaev is saying that because the revolution is so important, if a person wishes to be a revolutionary, they must deny themselves completely

And Jesus here is saying that if we wish to be his disciple, to follow him, then we must be willing to deny ourselves. We must be willing to put him first – before everything else

I have really struggled with this, trying to work out what it means in practice.

It is very easy to hear the call to deny ourselves as a call to a stricter ascetism. But it is not about that. It is not about fasting more, giving more, praying for longer in more uncomfortable positions. It is not a call to beat ourselves up or to feel guilty whenever we do something for our own enjoyment. It is not a call for us to withdraw into some strict coenobitic existence - to become a hermit.

If it were a call to a stricter ascetism, then when would we stop? We can always deny ourselves something more. Indeed, if Jesus is calling us to a life of total self-denial, then life would be very short.

The call to deny ourselves is not a call to a greater asceticism, but to a greater devotion, a great obedience.

There is a similar passage (Matthew 10:38-39), when Jesus sends out the 12 to preach and to heal. He says there, 'Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me'.

Jesus is not saying that we are to reject mother or father, son or daughter. He is saying that we are to recognise who is bigger than son or daughter, who gave us son and daughter, who loves son or daughter even more than we do; and he is saying that we need to put him first, to put love for him, before even our love for them.

So when Jesus says that we need to deny ourselves in order to follow him, he is saying that we need to be willing to put him before ourselves and before those things that we consider to be important: whether family or career or happiness or possessions.

There will be times when discipleship, obedience to Jesus is going to be very costly. There will be times when what I want is not what Jesus wants. And those are the times when I need to deny myself and put him first.

Peter has just learnt that. Obedience for Jesus means going to Jerusalem to be killed. Peter says to Jesus, 'That must never happen to you'. Jesus rebukes Peter and then says, 'You do not have in mind the things of God, but human things'.

And for us, increasingly, there will be a clash between what I want, and what reality TV, or the chat shows or the soaps tell me is acceptable and OK, and what Jesus wants. And today, there are many areas where the values of Christianity directly challenge the values of society: to name a few - what it means to be a success, how to become great, what sort of standard of living should I expect, how much do I give away, faithfulness in marriage and celibacy outside of marriage, respect for those in authority, and issues of justice, mercy and forgiveness.

The call to deny ourselves is not a call to a greater asceticism (although for some it might be). It is the call to put Jesus first before ourselves.

JC Ryle says, "The self must be daily crucified; the devil must be daily resisted; the world must be daily overcome. There is a warfare to be waged, and a battle to be fought. Never was there a truer word than the old saying, ‘No cross, no crown’".


2. Take up our cross

When we think of the symbol of the cross, we think about it in the light of Jesus' crucifixion.

For the Christian, living after the death and resurrection of Jesus, the cross is the symbol of obedience, of self-giving and of a love that conquers evil and death.

Jesus knew that he had to go to the cross. But his disciples did not. And when he said this, he had not yet gone to the cross.

For his listeners, a person who was carrying their cross was a condemned man: he was going to die, and who was going to die in pain and in shame. The cross, for them, was a symbol of death and shame. It was also a symbol of foreign occupation. Only the Romans crucified their criminals - and they reserved it for people who were not Roman citizens.

So when Jesus says to his disciples, and through them to us, that we must take up our cross, he is saying something about us choosing to live as people who have been condemned by the ruling powers - elsewhere the bible talks about the elementary forces of this world; and he is saying that we must be prepared to live as people who - as far as this world is concerned - are under the sentence of death.

This is not about involuntary suffering, although it might be about our attitude to involuntary suffering.

To take up our cross is about choosing to give up rights, ambitions and hopes for this world in this world. For people who have taken up their cross, the preservation of our life here is not high on the agenda. And it is also - and this is radical and needs to be heard correctly - not only about the giving up of our rights in this world, but about the giving up of the responsibilities that this world places on us.

So, for instance, we neither have the right to be rich, nor the obligation to become rich. Before the summer, some groups of workers were taking strike action for more money. In my more perverse moments, I sometimes think that Christians should be out there striking for less money. Paul talks about how he has learnt to become content with what he has. We do not have the right to be significant as far as this world is concerned, and nor do we have the responsibility, the requirement to become significant: we do not have to achieve great things in this world; we do not have to be extraordinary or unique. Paul in Romans commands us not to - 'conform to the patterns of this world'.

To the person who has taken up their cross, the rights, the rewards and the requirements of this world mean nothing.

The call to take up our cross is an invitation to freedom: not absolute freedom, as we will discover: but a freedom from the 'ought’s' and the 'should’s’ and the 'must's’ of this world.


And that moves us on to the third part of this verse:

3. To follow Jesus.

Baptism is a picture of all this - especially when a person is baptised by being immersed into the water.

In the baptism service we renounce the devil, we repent of our sins, we turn away from evil to Christ.

That is the denying part.

In the baptism service we are washed with water - and in many churches that is done through immersion - it is a symbol of death: that we are dying to ourselves and to this world.

That is what it means to take up our cross.

But then we come up out of the water to a new life.

And this is about following Jesus.

Paul says in one of the most important verses describing the Christian life (Galatians 2:20): 'I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me'.

We have chosen to give up our rights in this world, in order to have the right to become children of God.

We have chosen to give up our responsibilities in this world, in order to take on the responsibility to follow Jesus in this world.

We are invited to live by the Spirit of God and not by the spirit of the age. We are called to be controlled not by the law of the land, but by the law, the ways, of God (which incidentally tell us that we must honour world rulers). And through the Spirit we are to be controlled by faith, hope and love.

So we are called to deny ourselves (to put Jesus first), to take up our cross (to live as dead people to this world) and to follow Jesus.

The warning of these verses is that if we are not willing to deny ourselves and to take up our cross and to follow Jesus, if we are not willing to die to this world and the things of this world, then we will lose our life

The promise of these verses is that if we are willing to die to this world and to the things of this world, for Jesus, then we will find life.

Children of the kingdom and children of the evil one

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

This is a challenging parable. It is not challenging in the sense that it is hard to understand. It is actually very clear, and Jesus tells us what it means. It is challenging in what it teaches us.

The good seed stands not for the Word of God, but for the 'children of the kingdom'. The bad seed stands for the 'children of the evil one'. It is, in this world, very hard to tell them apart. The commentators talk about a weed called darnel, which is virtually indistinguishable from wheat, until the ears form. It was actually a crime under Roman law to sow darnel among wheat as an act of revenge.

So these two: the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one live together in God's world; they grow together in God's world; and it is only at the end of time that they will be separated.

There are a number of very clear - and quite difficult - principles in this story.

1. We are not all children of God.

Of course, to Jesus first hearers this would have sounded very obvious. They thought that as Jews they were children of the kingdom, and that the Gentiles were not children of the kingdom.

To us today, when often we hear talk about the universal fatherhood of God, this is very challenging. One of the most popular hymns that we sing begins with the words, 'Dear Lord and Father of mankind'. We say, 'We're all children of God.'

But that is not what the bible teaches. It is not what Christian tradition has taught. In fact, the bible teaches (and it is very clear on this) that even though we were created to be children of God, by nature we are not children of God. By nature we have become children of the evil one. Yes, we have been created by God: each one of us. Yes, we are unique and special. But no, we are not naturally children of God.

The amazing thing is that even though we are not by nature children of God, every single person is a potential child of God. John is so clear on this, when he writes at the beginning of his gospel (John 1:12): 'To all who received him [Jesus], who believed (put their trust) in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.'

So we are not all children of God. We need to become children of God.

That teaching can be misused. It often has been. It has been used to justify slavery, bigotry, racism and even genocide. And we need to move straight on to the second principal.

2. The decision who is and who is not a child of God is not one for us to make.

It has to be left to God at the end of time. The servants in the story ask the owner if they should pull up the weeds: 'No', he says, 'because you might pull up wheat as well'.

The history of the church is littered with the debris that comes when people try to establish a 'pure' church, a ‘believers’ church. They have tried to include the true believers and exclude the false believers.

But we can’t do it.

i) We will never be able to fully see into a person's heart

ii) We cannot see the end. Someone who seems to us totally beyond the reach of God turns to him at the end

Of course there are times when, as the church, we need to uphold church discipline. There are times when we have to say to a man or woman, 'what you are doing is incompatible with church membership’. There may also be times when people are excluded from fellowship or communion. But that does not mean we are in any position to condemn them as children of the evil one. No, in fact we are told that the reason for church discipline is in order to lead people to repentance.

Indeed, the principle of love, a love which ‘always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’ (1 Corinthians 13:7), and a love which is the fundamental hermeneutic principal of the church, leads us to work for and hope for the best for all people.

Only God knows a person’s heart and only God knows the end. So it is only God - who delegates his authority to the Son of Man (there are many parallels in this passage with Daniel 7) - who can judge and who can separate.

3. There will be separation.

On the last day, ‘he will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil’ (v41).

Jesus in Matthew’s gospel speaks a great deal about judgement and separation.

This judgement will be based on whether we stand by Jesus or stand against him. It will be based on whether we stand beside the least of his brothers or sisters when they are in need, or whether we ignore them. It will not be about whether we called Jesus ‘Lord’, but whether we lived with him as Lord. It is not about believing in him with the back of our head; it is about whether we have followed him, trusted him, obeyed him, loved him and served him. It is about whether we have received him or rejected him. Judgement will rest on whether he knows us or does not know us, whether we are his or not his.

And I am talking about us, you and me. I am not talking here about other people: 'those who have never heard', ‘those who have been good Muslims or Hindus’, and so on. They're not the issue.

I'm talking about us: you and me who have heard. Coming to church is a dangerous thing to do. You cannot claim that you have not heard. We have been offered forgiveness and life. We have been offered the opportunity to follow Jesus. We have been offered the opportunity to become a child of God.

We are not in a position to judge whether someone else is a child of the kingdom or a child of the evil one. As I’ve said, the principal of love makes us always believe the best. But we are called to judge ourselves.

Let me repeat. It is not about how good we are, although our works will be judged and that which is good will stand; it is about which direction we are facing. Are we living for ourselves: for my family, my career, my safety and comfort, my hobby or cause - the key word is my - or are we living for Jesus, with Jesus. Because Jesus has promised that 'whoever comes to him, he will never turn away'.

4. There is a glorious destiny for the righteous.

Tom Wright, who I quote a fair bit, quotes a famous sermon from CS Lewis, who I quote even more often! In this sermon, Lewis declares that 'every human being, man, woman and child, you meet is someone who, if you saw them now as one day they will be, would either make you recoil from them in horror or would strongly tempt you to worship them'.

The righteous, we are told, will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

Remember the transfiguration: Peter, James and John go up a mountain with Jesus. And suddenly they see Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, talk with him and reflect his glory. They were given a glimpse of what the Kingdom of the Father will look like in its glory.

I spoke a couple of weeks ago at an evening service about heaven. You can find it on the website, in a sermon on 2 Peter 1:13 If you think heaven is an other worldly place where we sit on clouds and play harps, please think again. Our Christian hope is the resurrection of the body: it is not about us going to another place. It is about heaven coming down to earth, and all that is rubbish here being gathered up and thrown out. There will be no cause of sin, no self-centredness that listens to the lies that tell us we can live without God, and there will be no evil. It is about this world being as it was meant to be. It is about us being what we were meant to be. It is about being with Jesus, being with Jesus’ people and about being like Jesus.

And as for the wicked .. I really do think that we should be very careful before we presume to pronounce on the destiny of 'all who do evil'. The passage here talks about them being gathered up, ‘thrown into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’.

Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego were thrown in the fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar. They came through it because one like a son of man was with them. Those who threw them into the furnace were burnt up.

We leave the destiny of the children of the evil one to the God of love, of justice and of compassion.

So four principles

1. We are not all children of the Kingdom

2. We are not to presume to judge who is and who is not a child of the Kingdom

3. There will be separation

4. There is a glorious destiny for the righteous

So what? I suggest three things

1. We need to judge ourselves.

Am I a child of the kingdom, or a child of the evil one? Do I pray, 'Your kingdom come?' or 'My kingdom come'? Have I come to Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Have I received him? Have I chosen to follow him?

Jesus said, 'Whoever comes to him, I will never turn away'.

2. We do not judge others.

We cannot presume to judge the eternal destiny of others.

I am not saying there can be no church discipline. There has to be, and the bible is clear about that.

But even if there is church discipline, even if there is discernment about what is and what is not godly, it is not our job to decide who is weed and who is wheat, who is a child of the kingdom and who is a child of the evil one. That is Jesus' job at the end of time.

3. And this is the emphasis of the parable - we need to be patient. The owner says, 'Let both [wheat and weed] grow together until the harvest'.

We look and see evil around us. We long for God to sort it out, to weed it out. And so we try to do so, our way - building the perfect church, crusading against the infidel, burning the heretics. They've all been tried.

We need to leave it to him. He will do the weeding, but he will do it in his way and in his time.

Prayer

Matthew 6:5-8

It is very easy to turn prayer into yet another of those things that we do in order to make ourselves feel either good or at least not bad, or to make others feel good about us, or to impress God.

It is easy for prayer to become one of the most self-centred things that we do, and also one of the greatest burdens that we impose onto ourselves.

I hope that in these few short minutes as we look again at Jesus' teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:5-8, we will glimpse just how gloriously liberating prayer can be. It can set us free from self and free from the need to 'perform' in prayer.

Prayer is not always a blessing.

In the story that Jesus told about the Pharisee and the tax collector, the Pharisee went to the right place. He addressed the right God: he addressed God, the God of Abraham. He said, 'God I thank you that I am not like other people. I thank you that I tithe, that I keep the law, that I am very devout, and that I am not like sinners'. Jesus says, 'He may be addressing God but he is not praying to God. He is praying to himself'.

Prayer for him had become a curse

I remember watching a programme about Madonna. She was asked if she prayed. She said, "Yes: Before I go on stage, I get my crew around me and we pray, 'God, make them love me'."

But before we condemn that prayer, we need to compare it with our prayers.

So often we use prayer as one of the weapons in the armour of our self-centredness. Prayer is about me and for me. It is either about how I might manipulate the world so that it is better for me or for the people I love; or it is about how I might feel good.

And when that happens, prayer becomes a curse. In the words of Dallas Willard in his book on the Sermon on the Mount, The Divine Conspiracy, 'the ego swells and the soul shrivels'.

The religious leaders of Jesus' time used prayer as a way of impressing people. They prayed long, eloquent, and very orthodox prayers in public. They prayed to be seen and they were seen.

I sometimes find myself at the beginning of a meeting thinking: 'How am I going to pray in a way that will mean that I live up to people's expectations of me as a 'spiritual' leader?' Or I have to say grace at an official function: 'How am I going to pray so that they think me spiritual and witty and down to earth and erudite?' Or at a prayer meeting I think, 'I'm the vicar. People expect me to pray. But I don't know what to pray’. So I find myself making up words in order to impress. And I hear myself praying, and I think, 'You are not talking to God. You are talking to the people around you'.

And even when we are on our own and pray: it is very easy to feel inadequate or guilty. "I didn't do it right. I didn't pray for long enough. I didn’t say the right words. I spent most of the time thinking about my sister, or about what we were going to do on holiday". Actually distractions in prayer are usually quite helpful - perhaps that is what you should be praying for, asking God to bring his light and wisdom into that situation, so that his will should be done.

And often when I do consciously start to pray for others or for situations, I get overwhelmed: I think of them and the situations, a little voice says, 'You should have done this' or, 'You need to do that'. Instead of releasing burdens to Father God, I pick them up. So - and now I really am making a confession – When I am on my own I very rarely pray for other people or situations, unless those people or situations are already there on my mind.

I’m always really impressed by people say, 'I pray for someone every day'. That is lovely. But it does make me feel guilty. I feel I ought to do the same. But I don't think I pray for anybody everyday - not even my children. And actually I am not sure it matters, because Jesus prays for them everyday, and I pray that his kingdom will come.

Well, let’s look at these few verses, because they are very helpful.

1. They tell us that prayer is basically heart work, unseen work.

I've spoken about this before. The use of the word 'seen' and 'unseen' in these verses is fascinating.

If you pray to be seen you will get your reward in the seen world. If you pray to impress others, then you probably will impress others. You have your reward.

True prayer is about praying unseen to our unseen God, who rewards us - and the implication is that he rewards us with unseen rewards.

This does not mean that we must never pray in groups or with other people. The key thing here is motive: Are we praying to be seen? If the answer is, 'No, we're praying because we wish to seek God', but it so happens that we are seen, then so be it.

When King Darius ordered that nobody was to pray to anyone apart from him, Daniel did not pray with his window open facing Jerusalem, in order to be seen. He prayed, with his window open facing Jerusalem, because that was how he always prayed and he wasn’t going to change.

Jesus himself encourages his followers to pray together. But we need to remember that when that happens, we do not meet together to impress each other, but to encourage one another and to lay our burdens and our concerns at Jesus' feet.

And the good news is that what matters to God is not what we think of our prayers, or what other people think of our prayers, but the cry of our inner being to God for mercy.

It was the tax collector, who hid himself in a corner, beat his breast and prayed, 'God have mercy on me a sinner', who was heard.

2. They tell us that our Father in heaven knows what we need before we ask him.

Our Father in heaven knows that we need approval and recognition. He knows that we want to be loved. He knows that at times we are sick with anxiety for ourself or another person, or that we are worried about money. He knows that we long that our children grow into a liberating intimacy with him.

And prayer is not a telling God what we want him to do for us: 'God make them love me'. Prayer is an expression of real gratitude and praise to Him, and a releasing of those deep burdens onto His shoulders. 'Father I am worried about what will happen to the children and young peoples work in the church, but I am handing it over to you. Father I'm worried about our financial situation, and I hand it over to you'.

And the great thing is that God knows what we need even when we do not. Often we just don't know. When we are stressed there can be so much going on in our head that we do not know what to think. When we are depressed it is as if part of our mind has switched off, and we simply find ourselves unable to pray - with no vision and no hope. And so often we do not have the faintest idea about what we should be praying for.

But it doesn’t matter. Because God knows.

So I've begun to realise it doesn't matter that I'm not very good at praying for people or things; it doesn't matter that I personally can't do lists (I think that those of us who tend towards perfectionism will always find lists difficult - because they will never be comprehensive enough); it doesn’t matter that when I pray my words are pretty pathetic and mixed up.

Sometimes I think that is why God gives people the gift of tongues: a heavenly language, maybe a baby language - so that when you do not know what to say in English, you can say something and let the Holy Spirit pray in you and through you! It is why written prayers can be so helpful. It is why some of the greatest prayers are the simplest: 'Come Holy Spirit' or the Jesus prayer. It is why Jesus gave us the Lord's prayer. It is why people do resort to lighting candles or drawing pictures. They can all be different ways of crying out to God through the bedlam of thoughts that at times threaten to overwhelm us.

These verses teach us that it doesn't matter how we pray, because prayer is not about following a formula; it is not about what other people think of how I pray; and it is not about whether my words are up to scratch.

It is about an intimate relationship with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loves us; it is about something that goes on at the unseen level; it is about bringing our thanks and burdens and concerns to him; and it is about praying that his kingdom will come.

But more of that next week.

Wedding address

Colossians 3:12-17

Congratulations.

A great passage to choose, because it begins with God's 'yes' to his people: "Holy, dearly beloved, chosen".

God has given us so much: he has given us this life and love and each other. And even though we have walked out on him and badly messed things up, he has not walked out on us. He has given us Jesus Christ his Son, forgiveness, new life, hope of heaven. He has given us 'All things'.

And this 'yes' of God to his people is the starting point of all healthy relationships

1. It sets us free to love

Paul writes, "Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience"

Because God has said 'yes' to us, we can say 'yes' to each other. We don't need to prove ourselves.

I remember hearing a couple interviewed who had reached their 80th wedding anniversary. It was a record. He was asked the secret of the success of their marriage. He replied, "Two words .. Yes, dear".

But he is right. The secret of a healthy marriage is that it is built on both partners saying to the other, "Yes, dear".

It is about a commitment to each other - to build up and not to pull down (illustration of Rugby player and dodgy footballer; 'If you wish to be married to a princess, treat her like one'; honeymoon story)

And this is a commitment bigger than feelings: it is there when the feelings are there, but it is about a commitment even when the feelings are not there.

It is a 'yes' that gives itself to the other.

People say that marriage is about give and take: no, it is about give and give and give and give, and when you have given everything that there is to give, you give again.

It is about giving time: time to be together, to do what the other person chooses to do, to go where they would go. And yes it is about taking time to be romantic and intimate.

It is about giving emotional support: being there for the other, being open with the other - especially in the dark times. Many of us can be like vacuum cleaners that are never emptied. We take into ourselves all the rubbish, but never allow ourselves to be emptied out. And we eventually clog up. It really is all about 'communication, communication, communication'

It is about giving encouragement: 'You look good', 'you did that well'. Not taking the other person for granted

It is about giving yourself. In marriage, you cease to belong to yourself. You belong to the other person. They are quite literally, 'your other half'.

2. This love of God for us, this 'yes' of God to us, sets us free to forgive

"Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.

and Paul continues, "Forgive as the Lord forgave you". It is when I realise just how much I have been forgiven that I am set free to forgive.

Forgiveness is foundational to good relationships, and marriage is the ideal place to learn to say sorry and to forgive.

I don't know how you are with conflict.

Some people are eskimos. They freeze each other out.

Some people are cowboys. They throw cups of tea across the room

It doesn't matter that we get angry. What matters is what we do with our anger.

Someone said of their marriage: "We don't have rows. We collect grudges. We stockpile them in preparation for the domestic armageddon".

The bible says the opposite: "Do not let the sun go down on your anger"

And Ogden Nash reinterpreted the teaching of the bible on forgiveness:

"To keep your marriage brimming

with love in the marriage cup,

whenever you're wrong admit it,

whenever you're right, shut up"

How do we live this way? How do we remain rooted in the the 'yes' of God.

Paul gets practical and urges three things

1. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts

Let that awareness of the love, forgiveness, acceptance and purpose of God control your heart. We talk about letting Jesus come into our hearts. I'm not quite sure how you imagine that: my heart is a lump of muscle in here - but we know what it is saying: ask him to come and live in us, and to control our thoughts, our words and actions. That is the basis of real life.

2. Let the message of Christ dwell in your minds

Get to know and hold on to the good news of the love of God, of the presence of Jesus, of his word and his guideline for living.

Grow in your understanding. Remind one another of it. Meet with God's people. Encourage one another. Grow in obedience.

3. Give thanks

Give thanks to God for his 'yes', for each other, for the gift of the other. Thankfulness drenches this passage (v15,16,17)

Give thanks in the good time and the difficult times; when your prayers are answered and when it seems that your prayers are not answered.

Why? Because we are told that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose .. and that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

The Christian hope

2 Peter 1:12-21

If I gaze into the crystal ball and tell you that in ten years time you will receive £200million pounds, what would you say? Would you believe me? What would you want me to do to prove that it was true? If you did believe me, would it make any difference to your life now?

Peter, in our reading, wants to remind those of us who listen to him that there is something amazing that is going to happen in the future. Far more amazing than being told you will receive £200m in a few years time. The amazing thing is this: that one day, it may be in our life time, it may well not be - but it will still effect us; one day Jesus Christ - the Son of God - will return to this world in glory and in power.

We don't know what it will be like. It will not be the end of space and time, because they were created by God and are good, but it will be the end of space and time as we know it. It will not be the end of heaven and earth, because they were created by God and are good, but it will be the end of heaven and earth as we know it.

Later on in this letter, and especially in chapter 3, Peter gives us a glimpse of the day when it happens. He writes (3:13), "But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells". It will be a place where things will be right. People will do the right things in the right way at the right time with the right people for the right reason. We will be right with each other, right with ourselves and right with God.

It is not about floating on clouds and playing harps. It won't be like that. I cannot think of anything more boring. Actually I can: an endless church service with endless sermon or endless singing. It won't be like that either! Boredom will be the last thing in this new heaven and earth. It will be a place of of laughter, of play, of work, of creativity and of responsibility, of new adventures; a place of constantly broadening horizons: there will always be more to know and to discover and to learn. There will be things to anticipate and to get excited about. There will be new things that make us nervous. There will be a myriad of new experiences, new adventures, new achievements, new places to go (I have no idea how we will travel) and new sensations. There will be music and football and dancing and rugby and beauty. There will be new people to meet - and each person we meet will be unique and totally free and fascinating and wonderful and they will bring to us something that makes us astonished at how we managed to live without them; and because we have eternity, we do not need to rush away - there will be time to be with people, to do things, to grow the old friendships. And to others, we will be the most amazing and unique and wonderful person that there could be. There will be this sense of intimacy, more profound that any current human experience, that we belong to others and that they belong to us, and that we belong to God and that he belongs to us. And as for the muck that is in us, the sin that wants to make us the centre of things and messes with and uses other people and things to satisfy our own desires; the sin that drags us down in guilt and despair and a sense of worthlessness - it will be gone. There will be no place for evil or mockery or abuse or violence. We will be set free to love and to live, as we were meant to love and to live. And we will grow older, but our bodies will not grow older as they grow older in this world - we will just grow stronger and wiser and bigger and freer. And there will be joy and there will be wonder and there will be praise that bubbles up from our deepest deepest being.

If your idea of heaven is clouds and harps or church services - then could I suggest two books that you could read. The first is called 'The Shack', by William Young; the second is 'The Last Battle', and in particular the last few chapters, by CS Lewis.

And right at the centre of this new heaven and new earth will be a person. This is the vision that we read in Revelation. It will be the person who made it all happen, without whom we would be excluded and who holds everything all together. This person will be like us, just like us - or perhaps it would be more correct to say that we will be like him, just like him. He will be very different from how he was when he lived on earth. 2000 years ago he had a body like us. But in this new heaven and earth, his body will be transfigured: he will be awesome and radiant.


Is it all pie in the sky? Is it all wishful thinking?

That is what many would tell us:

• It is what Karl Marx said, when he said that 'religion is the opium of the people' - a drug to keep them subservient
• It is what some of the teachers in the church to which Peter was writing were saying. They were the scoffers about whom Peter writes in ch 3:3-4: "Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."

But Peter says there are two reasons why we can be convinced that this is not wishful thinking:

I'll take them in reverse order

1. Because it was what the prophets in the Old Testament spoke about.

They spoke about the day when the Lord would return. They spoke of the coming day when all that is evil would be judged and condemned, and when the Kingdom of God under the rule of the anointed one, would be established: Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:6-9; Ezekiel 47; Daniel 12; Joel 3; Amos 9. The list is endless.

And Peter says, These prophets were not the equivalent of our science fiction writers. They were not crystal ball gazers. The promises they stated were not the product of a wild imagination. They were speaking as God told them to speak:
Peter writes, v20-21 "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

And he talks about this promise being like a small light that shines in the darkness (v19).

In our previous house in London we often had trouble with the pilot light on the boiler. You know what a pilot light is. It is that tiny light that is burning, so that when you turn up the power, the whole thing explodes into life. Our pilot light didn't work, so that when we turned up the power, nothing happened. The whole thing was dead.

Well, says Peter, the words of the prophet are the tiny flame in the boiler. If it is there, if those words have rooted themselves into us, then on the day when Jesus returns, they will flood our body with life.

The message of the prophets, says Peter, is completely reliable.

But the second reason, Peter says, this is not pie in the sky is

2. Because we saw the glory of Jesus (vv16-18)

"For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. He received honour and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased." We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain."

I could say so much about this - but I'm not!

Peter is writing of the time when Jesus had just told his disciples that some them would not die until they had seen the Kingdom of God come with power.

A few days later Jesus takes Peter, James and John up the mountain and they see Jesus transformed, talking with Moses and Elijah. It was a glimpse of Jesus in his glory. It was a picture of Jesus, Lord of space and time. It was a glimpse of the new heaven and the new earth.

And so Peter emphasizes: We did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power - we saw it. And he is clearly talking about the transfiguration as an anticipation of the second coming of Jesus.


Our Christian faith is not just based on words, but on events: events that happened in history. Events that were witnessed by people like Peter.

We can experience the truth of Christianity for ourselves as we walk with Jesus Christ. As we put our trust in him, so we discover that he can be trusted.

We can experience Jesus Christ, but we did not see him or hear him. That is why we are so dependent on the first followers of Jesus, on people like Peter, James and John. That is why they are apostles, in a unique sense. That is why we read the bible - to remind ourselves of what he said and did; to remind ourselves that even though we did not see him or hear him, there was a bunch of people who did. And they wrote it down.

So we have a great hope: a hope based on the prophets in the old testament, and on the words that are written for us in the new testament. It is a hope that is far greater than anything that could be given us in this world or by this world.

1. It means we can face death with a quiet confidence. Many Christians say that they don't like the idea of the process of dying, but they are at peace because they know that they will be with the Lord. Peter knew that he would die in a dreadful way (Jesus had told him that), but he is still able to write: "I know I will soon put aside this tent in which I live"

2. It also means that we can face life with a quiet confidence: that our faith is based on facts; that this world is not all that there is; that there is something much much more real and solid - and that the way to live now is about reminding ourselves that there is a judgement and an amazing future.