Saturday 3 December 2011

Sunday 4 December 2011, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12, Bruce

A man offers to paint the Vicarage at a very reasonable price. He can do this because he waters the paint down as much as possible and slaps it on quickly. As he finishes, it rains heavily and washes all the paint off. The vicar leans out of the window and shouts “Repaint! And thin no more!”

Both our readings are about how you think, and therefore how you act.

The biblical word for a change of thinking is Repentance. This is not to turn over a new leaf, orto try to give up things that we do that we know are bad. That would not be an unworthy objective, but the experience of ourselves and countless others is that we are unable, of ourselves, to suffiently reform our lives.

What we need is a completely different world-view, a fresh take on reality. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Ronald Weasley comes to believe that he has perfect luck and is bound to succeed. Consequently he loses all his nerves and finds himself unbeatable at quidditch. He was not suddenly more skilful. The only thing that had actually changed was his perception of himself.

In this season of Advent, we are invited to consider how we live, and to order our lives in the light of the coming of Christ. This radical thought gives us such a changed world view, that all else pails into insignificance.

Money is not the most important thing in the world. Neither is your career. Nor, dare I say it, is your happiness. The central fact is that God has made this world, and that he himself has entered it in the person of his son, Jesus. Jesus died and rose again, and he will come again to judge the heavens and the earth. He calls us to mingle our lives with his, and to recognise and give him glory for all that he has created and shares with us.

At the beginning of Romans we read that God’s wrath rests on those who look at the wonders of creation and fail to see God in it. From that act of wilful blindness starts a downward spiral into selfishness and isolation, that leads to all the evils of this world. Now in chapter 15 Paul is bringing together the threads of his arguments, especially that in Jesus we have become a new humanity people of radically different backgrounds and cultures are made one.

In particular the task of praising the one true God, which has been the special preserve of the Jews with their heritage of temple and scriptures, now is shared with the Gentiles, and Paul brings forward several scriptures to demonstrate this. The key task of confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and of believing in our heart that God raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9), is all that we need, but it is also the one thing that really do need. This is the change of viewpoint, the new way of thinking.

There are lots of factors that influence us. In the time of Paul and the early church it was about keeping the Sabbath, whether a man was circumcised, to what extent it was necessary to keep the Jewish law. Today the questions that occupy us have changed, but we are gripped by the exciting fact that Jesus is alive and he is central to us, to the church, to the whole universe.

How is this seen?

Paul says it is revealed in how we accept each other. We have the same mind as each other, because we all have had our thinking changed to be like Christ’s. What the NIV calls a ‘spirit of unity’ in verse 5 is actually ‘the same mind’ among ourselves, as we follow Christ Jesus.

I wonder if Paul is acknowledging that this is not always easy? It is, in fact, excruciatingly difficult. He says that we will need endurance and encouragement. Why? Because other humans can be so infuriating. The polite, well-bred thing to do is to gently withdraw from those who irritate us. But that is not an option if I am truly Christ-centred, and if you are truly Christ-centred. I cannot just take my ball away to find another game. In real life, this means that we have to be prepared to express our different viewpoints, but always with humility and with a willingness to listen as we would like to be listened to. In Rome the Christians of Jewish background and the Christians of Gentile background needed the scales to fall from their eyes so that they could realise their essential oneness in Jesus. The result, Paul says, is ‘that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.’

As we accept one another, just as Christ has accepted us, then we bring praise to God. The Choir pray regularly ‘that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may show forth in our lives’. This means that we are kind and loving and accepting to each other, just as Jesus is kind, loving and accepting of us. This lifts the words that we say and sing from being merely doggerel to being the motive power to praise God, live holy lives and become those of whom it is said: ‘Behold how these Christians love one another.’

But how?

First, we dwell on the scriptures. Second, we open ourselves to the power and work of the Holy Spirit – John said that we would be baptised in the Holy Spirit and in fire.

I think this means that as we spend time thinking about the encounters of God’s people with him, and allow ourselves in turn to encounter God through his Spirit, so we are changed. We find that the promises made to the patriarchs, made through the prophets, made through the apostles, are coming true in our lives today. First we are changed in our thinking, we are led to repentance. Then we find that we are being changed in our attitudes and our behaviours.

‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’

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