Abram – Just because

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot and all the possessions that they had gathered and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran, and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.
Genesis 12: 1-9

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax-collection station, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she was saying to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And the woman was made well from that moment. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread through all of that district.
Gospel of Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Have you noticed how it is always busy people that Jesus calls?

When He calls us to do something, He calls us away from something else. He calls ordinary people out of the ordinariness of their lives. They are not being called because they have nothing to do and are just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. Jesus doesn’t call people who do nothing.

Every one of the disciples Jesus called were busy people and were in the middle of their normal work at the time they were called. Peter and Andrew were fishing. James and John were mending their nets. Levi (who becomes Matthew), as we read in the first part of the Gospel passage, was in the middle of his work collecting taxes.

It is not that they don’t have anything else to do. It is that the most important thing to do is to hear and obey the Saviour’s call. Jesus, our Saviour, says “Drop what you are doing and follow me”. And the correct and best response is, of course, to get up and follow Him.

Matthew did not choose Jesus. Matthew was rather busy collecting taxes and was not contemplating following anyone.

Jesus chose Matthew. Not only did He choose Matthew but He did not grant the option of thinking it over. Jesus chose Matthew and told him to follow then and there. And Matthew got up and followed Him. Jesus calls us to do the same. No thinking time. No preparation time. No advance training – the only available training is on the job as we go! Just drop everything and follow Him.

When Jesus called Matthew, Matthew got up and left his desk. He left behind the symbol of his profession and the root of his sinfulness. We are never called to something without being called away from something else. We cannot come into full discipleship if we are unable to let go of what Jesus is calling us to leave behind.

In the passage from Genesis 12 Abram is called by God to leave his country, his kin, his father’s house and travel to an unknown land that God would show him. He was called to leave his past behind and to put his trust fully in God for the future. You cannot get to what God has for you without letting go of where you are and what is holding you back and following Him. It is not what Jesus sees in us that makes us worthy of following Him, but what He puts in us when we obey His command.

Jesus also said “I desire mercy not sacrifice. Go and find out what this means”.

Hosea 6:6 says “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice.”

The Hebrew word used is “hesed”. I desire hesed not sacrifice. Hesed is translated as steadfast love, mercy, goodness, kindness, compassion and loyalty. Jesus, God, desires all these things from us; not just sacrifice. And here, the meaning of sacrifice is tithing. Gifts given to God and used to support the priests leading worship. Tithing is important to God. I remember reading about a church in Africa where, as the choir sang, the people brought their offerings to God; mostly grain and produce. The people did this with great joy and enthusiasm, giving to God a portion of whatever they had. Tithes and offerings are important to our worship and important to God. But, they are not more important than our steadfast love and mercy.

What do we tithe? What do we give to God? Is it our time? Our talents? A portion of our income or possessions? Volunteering to help our community? All of these are a form of tithe and sacrifice, but, whilst they are important to God, they are not as important as our steadfast love and mercy.

Let us imagine that you help out at the food bank on a Monday morning, preparing and handing out food parcels to the hungry. This is a tithe and a sacrifice. But, whilst you are doing this work, are you gossiping with the other volunteers? Are you speculating about our new Priest in Charge to be? Making assumptions about what he is like without having met him and without waiting to find out? Are you googling him, claiming to know all about him, his experience and his qualifications, even though you haven’t actually read his C.V? Are you judging and claiming you know precisely what he will do before he has even got here? Are you gossiping about other people you know? About those you are serving?

If so, where is the love, the mercy and the kindness? It is noticeably absent from this scenario and, sadly, it is exactly what occurred on Monday and so we pray for them.

God wants us to sacrifice our time, our talents, a portion of our treasures or income, but not at the sacrifice of our steadfast love and mercy.

Our time, talents and money are no substitute for our steadfast love towards God and our neighbours or for our kindness and mercy.

God shows us, and it is detailed over and over again in scripture, the kind of steadfast love and mercy that is important to Him. He is not asking anything of us that He has not already given us.

There is a story about Gandhi. A mother asked him to talk to her son about giving up sweets. He agreed but weeks went by. The mother asked him why he had not yet spoken to her son. Gandhi replied that he still intended to speak with her son but that he was finding it harder to give up sweets than he had expected. The mother realised that Gandhi could not and would not ask someone else to do something he was not already doing and so the conversation with her son could not take place until Gandhi himself had managed to give up sweets.

Like this story about Gandhi, God only asks of us what He has already given us. God gives us and shows us that His steadfast love and mercy for us endures forever and will be with us all the days of our lives.

God demonstrated this by giving us His Son. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believeth in Him shall not perish but will have everlasting life.

And Jesus demonstrated God’s steadfast love and mercy over and over again.

We not only have the example of the calling of Matthew in our readings but also the healing of the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and the resurrection of the synagogue leader’s daughter.

Jesus showed the same mercy to everyone whether they believed in Him or not. His love and mercy really are unconditional and for everybody.

He called sinners, He healed the sick, He raised the dead, He spoke against injustice, He showed us how to love with a steadfast, merciful, kind, pure, good, everlasting love that knows no bounds. God loves us completely, unconditionally with an endless love that is for everyone.

Drop everything!

Let it go!

Follow Him!

Pentecost – the day the Holy Spirit was sent to be with us forever – is about much more than we realise. It is about the reversal of division, about overcoming human limitations, about the power to forgive and about continuous ministry.

It is the culmination of a series of events that began a long long time before. Let’s start with the reversal of division.

The Tower of Babel

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.’ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, ‘Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. [Genesis 11:1-8]

Instead of obeying the Lord God and allowing Him to be their God, the people gathered to build the tower. This was much more than our concept of a tower and was to be a man-made sacred mountain on which humanity intended to live and be gods themselves.

Humanity shunned the Lord God and His plan to restore Eden through them, and so God scattered humankind, dividing them with different languages, wanting to start again.

Israel did not actually exist at this point. God then selected Abram; a man from the very heart of the rebellion. It is through God’s covenant with Abram that Israel was created from Abram’s descendants.

In this covenant, God said that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abram and his descendants. This shows the intention of God; that despite His decision to punish the nations of the earth, the Israelites would serve as a mediator for the return of the True God with a trail leading the nations back to God through Israel and The Messiah.

When the Holy Spirit came, as described in Acts, as wind and fire, this links back to the images used for God’s presence in the Old Testament.

But more than that are the signs that the reunification, the reversal of division, is in progress whilst pointing to the division point. The flaming tongues were divided, and the crowd formed from all the nations, were confused. The tongues are distributed amongst the disciples as they are commissioned to preach the good news.

As the people heard about Jesus and His resurrection and became His followers, they carried the news back to their nations. The people are being reunited and reconciled with God through the Holy Spirit.

This is part of the continuous mission. To witness and call the people back to God.

The Holy Spirit unites people across boundaries. It replaces judgement and division with understanding, unity and peace.

So, what about the overcoming of human limitations?

The Holy Spirit provides the inner strength needed to work through hurts, resentment and shame. This allows forgiveness as an act enabled by the Holy Spirit instead of human effort on its own.

Forgiveness is also part of the continuous mission as we are called to continually release grievances, heal relationships and extend the same forgiveness to others as that we receive from God.

Which brings us to the power to forgive.

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you”. And with that He breathed on them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” [John 20: 19-23]

As Christians we are obliged to forgive. It can be difficult to forgive. It can be difficult to forgive others. It can be difficult to forgive ourselves.

Forgiveness – forgiving does not mean forgetting. It does not mean making excuses or trying to justify what occurred. It does not mean that there won’t be consequences. It is about whether those involved can move forward in life or whether they are imprisoned by being unforgiven.

If we choose for sins to be retained we choose a state of unforgiveness and living in darkness. To live in such darkness is our choosing not God’s choosing.

The Holy Spirit gives us power to forgive. It opens doors and allows us to live in the light.

The Lord breathes the Holy Spirit on us and gives us a new life, a new heart and a new mission:

Go and forgive!

Peace is not possible without forgiveness. Love is not possible without forgiveness.

At Easter we celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord. Just like Jesus did not stay in the tomb His instructions didn’t either. He instructed us to love, to forgive, to reconcile, to love God, to love our neighbours and to love our enemies.

The highest form of love is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is unconditional love. It is not only loving those who are easy to love but also those who are difficult to love.

Jesus arrived in that locked room and said to His disciples “Peace be with you” He was telling them that they did not need to be afraid of Him, that He loved them and that He forgave them.

Go in peace! Go and forgive!

Tag: Abram

Calling and Love

Pentecost

The Tower of Babel