We are many we are one

 The rank individualism in our contemporary culture has infected all of us to some degree. It has sorely impaired the quality of our Christian fellowship and diminished our experience as human beings...

Starlings in flight - millions of birds in formation making spectacular patterns as they fly in unison over the English countryside. 

·       How do they do it?

·       How do they know which way to turn?

·       How do they not crash into each other?

·       Is there a leader that they are following or

·       Is there some form of elementary “group consciousness” which they share?

Though they are millions for this brief time they truly act as one. 
How does it work?

Under the sea in a most extraordinary gathering of fish.  Millions of jack fish school together forming submarine tornadoes.  More than 70% of the entire population of this species gather in one spot for this mass mating ritual which greatly increases their re-productivity.

Though they are millions for this brief time they truly act as one.  How does it work?

I watch ants and bees with the same sense of wonder.  We’re so tuned to think of the individual that it’s hard to comprehend how the colony or the hive works.  Which is first the drone or the collective?
  The community of ants or bees act as one it is as if they were just one being although physical separated somehow connected at a much more primal and significant level.

Anthropologists argue that we are social animals – that community is essential to being human, to human being. I’m in absolute agreement and I think we can all recognise the illness that arise from the opposite of community, - isolation,  we end up with self-centredness, narcism, depression, loneliness. Although there are billions of humans on the planet we are not as neo-liberalism would tell us individuals, we cannot be individualised we are beings-in-relationships, we are social beings, yet we rarely realise our potential in community, we seldom experience anything like the one-mindedness of lesser beings such as the birds and the bees the fish in the seas.

Occasionally we might experience what I want to call the spiritual experience of connection with a group of people at an almost ecstatic level.  We need to take notice of those experiences and reflect on them for they tells us something about who we are and as  we consider scripture today we ponder the essential nature of God as Tri-unity and of all of existences as essentially relational.

Ponder the unifying and sometimes ecstatic experience of being part of a choir, an orchestras or even pop group.

When such groups get it all together, there is a moment when the boundaries of the individual dissolve and the group becomes one.   There is a delight that exceeds an individual performance and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  Jazz bands are known for their improvisation and at times during a jam or a performance the musical score is abandoned and the group just seem to be carried away to another place, as they play in harmony each contributing to the magic of the moment with little conscious thought and what seems to be an intuitive collective consciousness.

If you are not a muso you may recognise another phenomenon that happens to a sports crowd or even an audience at the theatre or the ballet.  At the sports field it is that way the crowd rises to its feet as one, or when a spontaneous cheers erupts as your team scores a goal.  At the theatre it may be the hushed silence everyone holding their breath.  All of these experiences I want to call spiritual because even if they are a mere shadow of the what God has in store for us, they are moments when people feel most truly alive and they are moments when we feel most truly connected to those around us.  It is no accident that feeling that sense of connection makes us feel alive.  We are spiritual people made in the image of God, made for koinonia, fellowship, relationship and when we experience that by any means we senses what it is like to have the spirit flow through us.

CAN SUCH EXPERIENCES HELP US COMPREHEND THE HOLY TRINITY?

Some may say that I am on dangerous ground allowing experience to form my theology.  Surely theology must be based on something more substantial something more concrete and absolute like the bible.

Yet I contend experience is all that I have, I have my experience of life, my experience of living with others my relationships with people and things and of course my experience of the church, the bible and the teachings of many theologians over the centuries. 

The bible itself is an attempt to record in words the indescribable experience of encountering the divine.

And when the early church tried to describe the collective experience of the revelation in Jesus Christ, the experience of the Holy Spirit - The holy obsession of those early theologians was to affirm and safeguard the revelation that had been granted to those who had been with Jesus. They believed there was only one God; one ruling and integrating power in heaven and on earth. Yet that one God had revealed itself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There was no way they were prepared to shift from that treasured revelation. They celebrated both the unity of God and the revealed three Persona of the Godhead, because that is what they had experienced.

 It is likely the people who framed the doctrine of tri-unity were living in a world where this sense of communal identity, or “group mind,” was still present. A world where a man or woman defined and experienced themselves as a certain family, tribe, or village, before thinking of their individuality. Therefore they may not have had our intellectual difficulties with the concept of three in one. We have become fiercely and destructively individualistic.

Maybe what seems to the self-sufficient men and women of today to be illogical theological nonsense was eminently sensible to those early Christians whose sense of community identity was stronger than their individual identity. They knew that belonging to a comm-unity did not lessen personality but enhanced it.

The word fellowship, koinonia in Greek, carries the meaning of sharing. Sharing in a marriage, sharing in a meal, sharing in an adventure even sharing in a business being a stakeholder or a shareholder in a  common enterprise.

So we can think of koinonia a bit like a shareholding in a business.

Among the eighteen times the word koinonia is used in the New Testament, we have texts where it is a shareholding (koinonia) in Christ, a shareholding in the Spirit, and shareholding in God

Koinonia is part of the essential nature of God. As Christian people, members of the body of Christ we are sharing something of the true nature of God, We are no longer individual we have been delivered from the stark solitary ways of individualism. Through God, we are linked to each other, the members of the one body.  Paul encourages the church on many occasions to be of one mind he may have meant it more literally than we have previously thought.

We are members of that one body, the church, which from the beginning “held all things in common.”

FLASHES OF TRUE COMMUNITY

 The rank individualism in our contemporary culture has infected all of us to some degree. It has sorely impaired the quality of our Christian fellowship and diminished our experience as human beings made in the image of the tri-une God

 We do experience flashes of the true koinonia.

This can happen as we sing praise together. Sometimes we experience it in prayer. Sometimes when we are working together on a charitable or outreach project.

Yet for much of the time we live like self-contained individuals who intellectually hold a belief in common, and politely greet each other once a week in a church building, before returning to our isolated lives.

The fellowship we have with God affects the fellowship we have with each other and vice versa.

Through prayer and praise we let go of our egocentricity and we begin to share in the fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this opens us up to deeper fellowship with our sisters and brothers.  And whenever we truly meet each other as brothers and sisters in an open caring way, it enhances our fellowship with God.

The reverse also applies, whenever we become preoccupied with ourselves and neglect our relationship with God, we are liable to become indifferent or critical of others around us and human fellowship withers and dies. Or whenever we withdraw our real caring from those around us, we find we have also lost a sense of communion with God; divine fellowship withers and dies.

And because we are built for relationships, if our relationships with others withers and dies – guess what - so do we?  And if our relationship with God withers and dies – something in us withers and dies too.

John’s first letter starkly expresses this truth in another way. “We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love each other. The one who does not love, remains in death.”

God in  three persons, blessed Trinity

Community is the best possible form of living.

Individualism is a kind of death.

So on this Trinity Sunday recall that you are made for koinonia, fellowship, relationship, You are at heart a relational being even as God is in god-self a relational being.  And remember this. true life is to be found in loving one another in connecting with your God and with your fellow human beings.

In Community is life the life for which you have been made!

We are many we are one

1 Corinthians 13:12-14

Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the saints greet you.

The love of our Lord Jesus Christ,

the love of God,

and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,

be with you all :

Starlings in flight - millions of birds in formation making spectacular patterns as they fly in unison over the English countryside. 

·       How do they do it?

·       How do they know which way to turn?

·       How do they not crash into each other?

·       Is there a leader that they are following or

·       Is there some form of elementary “group consciousness” which they share?

Though they are millions for this brief time they truly act as one. 
How does it work?

Under the sea in a most extraordinary gathering of fish.  Millions of jack fish school together forming submarine tornadoes.  More than 70% of the entire population of this species gather in one spot for this mass mating ritual which greatly increases their re-productivity.

Though they are millions for this brief time they truly act as one.  How does it work?

I watch ants and bees with the same sense of wonder.  We’re so tuned to think of the individual that it’s hard to comprehend how the colony or the hive works.  Which is first the drone or the collective?
  The community of ants or bees act as one it is as if they were just one being although physical separated somehow connected at a much more primal and significant level.

Anthropologists argue that we are social animals – that community is essential to being human, to human being. I’m in absolute agreement and I think we can all recognise the illness that arise from the opposite of community, - isolation,  we end up with self-centredness, narcism, depression, loneliness. Although there are billions of humans on the planet we are not as neo-liberalism would tell us individuals, we cannot be individualised we are beings-in-relationships, we are social beings, yet we rarely realise our potential in community, we seldom experience anything like the one-mindedness of lesser beings such as the birds and the bees the fish in the seas.

Occasionally we might experience what I want to call the spiritual experience of connection with a group of people at an almost ecstatic level.  We need to take notice of those experiences and reflect on them for they tells us something about who we are and as  we consider scripture today we ponder the essential nature of God as Tri-unity and of all of existences as essentially relational.

Ponder the unifying and sometimes ecstatic experience of being part of a choir, an orchestras or even pop group.

When such groups get it all together, there is a moment when the boundaries of the individual dissolve and the group becomes one.   There is a delight that exceeds an individual performance and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  Jazz bands are known for their improvisation and at times during a jam or a performance the musical score is abandoned and the group just seem to be carried away to another place, as they play in harmony each contributing to the magic of the moment with little conscious thought and what seems to be an intuitive collective consciousness.

If you are not a muso you may recognise another phenomenon that happens to a sports crowd or even an audience at the theatre or the ballet.  At the sports field it is that way the crowd rises to its feet as one, or when a spontaneous cheers erupts as your team scores a goal.  At the theatre it may be the hushed silence everyone holding their breath.  All of these experiences I want to call spiritual because even if they are a mere shadow of the what God has in store for us, they are moments when people feel most truly alive and they are moments when we feel most truly connected to those around us.  It is no accident that feeling that sense of connection makes us feel alive.  We are spiritual people made in the image of God, made for koinonia, fellowship, relationship and when we experience that by any means we senses what it is like to have the spirit flow through us.

CAN SUCH EXPERIENCES HELP US COMPREHEND THE HOLY TRINITY?

Some may say that I am on dangerous ground allowing experience to form my theology.  Surely theology must be based on something more substantial something more concrete and absolute like the bible.
Yet I contend experience is all that I have, I have my experience of life, my experience of living with others my relationships with people and things and of course my experience of the church, the bible and the teachings of many theologians over the centuries. 

The bible itself is an attempt to record in words the indescribable experience of encountering the divine.

And when the early church tried to describe the collective experience of the revelation in Jesus Christ, the experience of the Holy Spirit - The holy obsession of those early theologians was to affirm and safeguard the revelation that had been granted to those who had been with Jesus. They believed there was only one God; one ruling and integrating power in heaven and on earth. Yet that one God had revealed itself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There was no way they were prepared to shift from that treasured revelation. They celebrated both the unity of God and the revealed three Persona of the Godhead, because that is what they had experienced.

 It is likely the people who framed the doctrine of tri-unity were living in a world where this sense of communal identity, or “group mind,” was still present. A world where a man or woman defined and experienced themselves as a certain family, tribe, or village, before thinking of their individuality. Therefore they may not have had our intellectual difficulties with the concept of three in one. We have become fiercely and destructively individualistic.

Maybe what seems to the self-sufficient men and women of today to be illogical theological nonsense was eminently sensible to those early Christians whose sense of community identity was stronger than their individual identity. They knew that belonging to a comm-unity did not lessen personality but enhanced it.

The word fellowship, koinonia in Greek, carries the meaning of sharing. Sharing in a marriage, sharing in a meal, sharing in an adventure even sharing in a business being a stakeholder or a shareholder in a  common enterprise.

So we can think of koinonia a bit like a shareholding in a business.

Among the eighteen times the word koinonia is used in the New Testament, we have texts where it is a shareholding (koinonia) in Christ, a shareholding in the Spirit, and shareholding in God

Koinonia is part of the essential nature of God. As Christian people, members of the body of Christ we are sharing something of the true nature of God, We are no longer individual we have been delivered from the stark solitary ways of individualism. Through God, we are linked to each other, the members of the one body.  Paul encourages the church on many occasions to be of one mind he may have meant it more literally than we have previously thought.

We are members of that one body, the church, which from the beginning “held all things in common.”

FLASHES OF TRUE COMMUNITY

 The rank individualism in our contemporary culture has infected all of us to some degree. It has sorely impaired the quality of our Christian fellowship and diminished our experience as human beings made in the image of the tri-une God

 We do experience flashes of the true koinonia.

This can happen as we singing praise together. Sometimes we experience it in prayer. Sometimes when we are working together on a charitable or outreach project.

Yet for much of the time we live like self-contained individuals who intellectually hold a belief in common, and politely greet each other once a week in a church building, before returning to our isolated lives.

The fellowship we have with God affects the fellowship we have with each other and vice versa.

Through prayer and praise we let go of our egocentricity and we begin to share in the fellowship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this opens us up to deeper fellowship with our sisters and brothers.  And whenever we truly meet each other as brothers and sisters in an open caring way, it enhances our fellowship with God.

The reverse also applies, whenever we become preoccupied with ourselves and neglect our relationship with God, we are liable to become indifferent or critical of others around us and human fellowship withers and dies. Or whenever we withdraw our real caring from those around us, we find we have also lost a sense of communion with God; divine fellowship withers and dies.

And because we are built for relationships, if our relationships with others withers and dies – guess what - so do we?  And if our relationship with God withers and dies – something in us withers and dies too.

John’s first letter starkly expresses this truth in another way. “We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love each other. The one who does not love, remains in death.”

God in  three persons, blessed Trinity

Community is the best possible form of living.

Individualism is a kind of death.

So on this Trinity Sunday recall that you are made for koinonia, fellowship, relationship, You are at heart a relational being even as God is in godself a relational being.  And remember this. true life is to be found in loving one another in connecting with your God and with your fellow human beings.

In Community is life the life for which you have been made,

Advent 2 Shalom/Peace

I’ve been contemplating the Advent candles and the themes of Advent that they each represent.
We have the hope candle which we lit last week. And at the beginning of the Christian year as we remember Christ’s first advent and anticipate his second, we affirm the hope that we have in Christ, hope that is like a light and a beacon in the darkness. We are a people of hope and while there is much to despair in our world presently we cling to that hope more determinedly.
Today we lit the candle of peace. And we recall that Jesus is the prince of peace. That he said “blessed are the peacemakers”. We remember that the angels announced his birth with the words “peace on earth and goodwill to all”. We remember Jesus own words to his disciples, my peace I give you my peace I leave you. We are a people of peace and we try to live peacefully for our world.
The pink candle is the candle of joy. Jesus birth is a joyous occasion. Mary proclaimed “my spirit rejoices in God my saviour for he has looked with favour on hid lowly servant”. The Angels announced to the shepherds “I bring you news of great joy to all people” and the same shepherds after seeing the Christ child returned with joy “glorifying and praising God.” We are a people who know a joy deep within a joy that issue forth in praise to God and a desire to live for Christ in the world.
The fourth candle is the candle of love. “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely love divine”. The best is kept to last, the tallest candle is the love candle for we know that “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son” And we know that “greater love has none that this that a man lay down his life for his friends” Christmas is about love the love of God for us expressed, fleshed out, made known. And in the centre is the Christ candle lit on Christmas day Christ the source and fulfilment of our hope, peace, joy and love.
But in contemplating these candles I thought of the text that Neil read last week from 1 Cor 13. These three remain faith hope and love and the greatest of these love. I wondered why it wasn’t these three virtues that were used as the advent themes. Why do we not have a faith candle and why instead do we have a peace candle and a joy candle?
And I wonder why Paul did not say “these things remain faith, hope, peace, joy and love – perhaps it was just too wordy for him!
Peace is a challenging concept to bring into our celebrations of Advent and Christmas. For at best the notion of peace in the gospel story is at ambiguous. The gospel account of Jesus birth are mixed with violence. King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents and the forced exile of Joseph and Mary into Egypt hardly paint a picture of peace. Today we read the beginning of the gospel of Mark, in which John the Baptist is introduced. This one who prepare the way for the Lord goes ahead of the Lord in facing a violent death at the hands of a brutal and unjust state. Like Jesus he escaped Herod the Greats plot to kill all boys under two in the region of Bethlehem, and like Jesus he meet his fate courtesy of that potentate’s evil son Herod Antipas.
The ambiguity surrounding ‘peace’ in the gospels is Jesus own proclamation “I came not to bring peace but a sword”.
Maybe this evokes some sense of relief. With the mad rush that is Christmas, the many demands of family and of work does and tightening budgets, peace is a luxury that barely get’s a look in. And when peace can’t be found we look for substitutes, some chemical to help you cope, some activity to express the pent up frustration or a self induced denial a sort of automatic pilot response to stress of the loopy season that shuts out the panic and pain but also shuts out the joy and celebration
How do we hold these notions of violence and injustice together with the peace that is also a key ingredient in the Christmas Story?
Today’s psalm speak of righteousness and peace kissing this is a very poetic and romantic notion but that one earth does it really mean?
It’s helpful if you have clear idea of what peace and righteousness are.
The Hebrew word for peace as you probably know is shalom; it involves far more than just the absence of conflict it is a positive concept that embraces all that is to do with total well-being. Physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and economic well-being are all aspects of the biblical concept of shalom/peace. Shalom symbolises the ideal life where we are at peace with ourselves our neighbour, our circumstances, our community and our God. It is akin to what Jesus called the abundant life and what we sometimes call the good-life.
Righteousness as I hope you also know is about right living. It is about living justly. Justice and righteousness come from the same root word in Greek and you cannot separate the two if you want to understand what either of them means.
Here then is the poets meaning when he writes that righteousness and peace kiss. He means that in the ideal world that he anticipates right living will result in the good life.
Evidently that is not true at the moment! It wasn’t true when the poet wrote it. It wasn’t true when Jesus was born. More often than not the righteous that is to use Micah definition those who act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God, pay a price for their right living, the price can vary from financial hardship, to mocking to persecution and martyrdom.
The poet writes with what Walter Bruegermann called prophetic imagination. He imagines a world where the righteous are reward for their good living, a world where

The LORD will indeed give what is good, and our land will
yield its harvest.

The poet finishes his psalm with a phrase that resonates with our gospel and Old Testament reading

Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps

He puts the two ideas in the right order good living must come first, the good life will follow. Until the end of all things when there is made a new heaven and a new earth, the good life cannot be guaranteed, but in the mean time we can be sure that the good life is not possible without good living.
The poet/prophet Isaiah was moved by the same spirit and his imagination was stirred in a similar way. He spoke comfort to the people of Jerusalem and Judah who had suffered long in captivity, he spoke of shalom of the good life being realise in their time. But for this to happen justice would have to lead the way. The valley shall be exalted, the hills shall be brought down, a highway through the wilderness would be built. The highway called the road of the righteous
An earlier poet writing before the exile also recorded in the book of Isaiah wrote of the holiness highway

And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean
will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools
will not go about on it.
9 No lion will be there, nor will any ferocious beast get up on it; they will
not be found there. But only the redeemed will walk there,
10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will
enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and
joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away

Here we have another image of good living resulting in the good life.
The latter prophet sometimes called Second Isaiah is convinced that only God can bring about the shalom/peace that people long for but that God will only come when the way is prepared, the ay of righteousness, the way of justice the way of good living.
Move forward a few hundred years to the time of John the Baptist. A prophet a preachers a voice calling in the wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord. And how is one to prepare the way for the Lord, how is one to prepare a way for God to act in one’s life or one’s community. The message is the same as that of the earlier poet/prophets. Live good so that the good life may come.
This means repenting, changing the way ones live in Luke’s gospel John spells out what repentances involves in very practical terms, he gives examples of the kind of right living that prepares the way for the Lord.
Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. ... The person with two tunics should share with the one who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.
This is the beginning of true shalom/peace. Where righteousness and peace kiss where right living meets the good life.
It’s simple stuff really. But it challenges us deeply cuts across our cultural norms and call for us to act in a way that custom and long ingrained practice work against. How do we find peace this Christmas amidst the mad rush around us, amidst the pain and panic, amidst the gross injustice and extreme deprivation that confronts us?
Peace comes as a gift, a gift from the Christ child and peace comes from within as we do what our conscience tells us is right as we find ways to share our tunic and our food with others. We can but do all we can to live rightly thus finding peace with ourselves and peace with God. This does not guarantee that w shall live long and prosper or that all shall be well around and about. But the inner peace that comes from doing our best and trusting God for the rest, is a great strength and can get us through the worst storms of life.
We are people of hope our hope is that the peace we experience now in part will one day be fully realised and we keep our prophetic imagination alive as we anticipate that day.
We are people with an inner joy a life giving effervescence that is the partner of the peace that passes all understanding
And we are people who are deeply loved and its our experience of that love in its many forms that settles our heart and the casts out all fear and lets us live and rest in peace.

Jesus is ‘Christ’.

Mark 8:27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the
villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "Who do people say
I am?"
28They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah;
and still others, one of the prophets."
29"But what about you?" he
asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter
answered, "You are the Christ"
30Jesus warned them not to tell anyone
about him.

One of the most familiar yet least understood titles given to Jesus is that of ‘Christ’. In practice for many people the term Christ functions more like Jesus surname than as his title.
Other Tiles such as Lord, King, or Saviour are more obviously titles of position and function we have some understanding of what a Lord or a King or a Saviour does – but what is a Christ? What does this title mean?
“Christos” is a Greek word used to translate the Hebrew Term Messiah. It literally means, ‘anointed one’.
In the Hebrew bible the prophets are called the anointed ones of God.The King of Israel and Judah were anointed to serve God and God’s people.Interestingly Cyrus Emperor of Persia and conqueror of Israel was called God’s anointed one; perhaps because he pursued a policy of generosity instead of repression, and allowed Israel to follow its own religious practices and to rebuild Jerusalem. The term ‘anointed one’ applied to priests and especially the High Priests who were anointed with Holy oil to serve the people of God.
So already in the term Messiah or Christ we see some things that apply to Jesus
· he is the anointed prophet who annunciates the word of God
· he is the anointed high priest who offers an atoning sacrifice
· he is the anointed King who rules with justice and generosity
When Jesus preached his first recorded sermon in his home town of Nazareth he reads from the Prophet Isaiah a text which he claims as his manifesto.
The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
This is one of the most important texts in the New Testament for it concisely and clearly lays out Jesus own view of himself and his ministry. It provides a central interpretative motif. In art and music a motif is a theme or a pattern that is repeated, it becomes a reference point by which the rest of the work is viewed or heard and interpreted. In the writings of the New Testament there are a few motifs that help us interpret the rest of the work. The Kingdom of God is major motif, the love of God is a central motif, the cross, the resurrection of Jesus these are all motifs or ideas that are important to our understanding of the scriptures and we can test our interpretations of the bible by seeing how they line up with these core motifs.
The title “Christos” or Messiah is itself a motif a very strong theme through which we understand who Jesus is and through which we interpret the writings about Jesus.
In the text from Isaiah 61 quoted in Luke 4 we have Jesus supply his own definition of what the Messiah or the Christ is. This was import to do because in Jesus own time there was a lot of expectation around the idea of a coming messiah.
Messianic expectation.
Several Old Testament themes merged together to create this messianic expectation, Biblical notions such as the Holy One of God, The Son of Man, The Son of David, and from non-biblical literature The Righteous One formed the literary background. Mixed into this was the contemporary political situation and the rise of Israeli nationalism in the face of Roman occupation. People believed and hoped and prayed that the coming messiah would liberate Israel from her oppressors and that he would establish a monarchy that would rule forever.
The depictions of this new messiah varied in different quarters but many saw him as a warrior king who would lead a revolutionary army to overthrow the occupying forces. Some of Jesus’ own disciples were awaiting this style of messiah.
Against this background of expectation comes Jesus who defines what the messiah is like. He defines the term in his conversation, in his preaching and teaching, in his life of service and in his surrender to death. The messiah is not what people had expected. It took people a long time to be convinced that Jesus fitted the bill, that he was the messiah the Christ.
Jesus showed that the Messiah is more like the suffering servant of Isaiah; peace loving, compassionate, gentle, humble, generous, gracious, looking to the needs of others above his own.
So “Christ” as a title for Jesus at its root in Hebrew thinking and in Jesus own teaching is a humble figure who preaches good news to the poor, proclaims freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, who releases the oppressed, and proclaims the year of the Lord's favour.
We could say that “Christ’ signifies the action of God in Jesus. The title “Christ” remind us how God acts toward us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We are reminded that Jesus is more than a teacher of great repute, a healer, a wise man a prophet, he is anointed by God, to fulfil God’s purposes for humanity. We see more in the writing of Paul.
Paul uses the word Christ 275 times the title is clearly important to Paul. Yet Paul; is not so much concerned with who Christ is as to what Christ does. For Paul it’s all about justification, we have been justified by faith through grace - this is what Christ does for us.
With his focus on the work of Christ, Paul is interested in Christ’s role in creation and Christ’s role in the life of the believer.
Paul sees Christ as intimately involved at the beginning of creation.
“by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth”
And more than that Christ is active in sustaining the creation
“in him all things hold together”
Here we have described for us the Cosmic Christ; Christ Jesus creator and sustainer of all things and Christ as the goal of all creation.
“all things were created by him and for him”
Putting together the Gospels depiction of the humble messiah and the Pauline depiction of the cosmic Christ an image emerges of one who though Lord and creator of all things humbles himself to become a human being, to seek and save the lost, and one who sets the pattern and goal for all of existence.
The cosmos was made in him though him and for him
We are made in him through him and for him and it is with this in mind that Paul uses the term Christ, he is concerned to show how our connection with Christ affects how we live here and now.
“there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live”
Paul uses the phrase ‘in Christ’ numerous times to describe the Christian life.
Christ is our life and our salvation
For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Gal 2:20
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Phi 1:21
Christ is the source of our unity and equality
in Christ we who are many form one body Ro 12:6
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Gal 3:28
Our life in Christ is marked by freedom, a freedom that allows us to do God’s good and perfect will.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Gal 5:1
he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, Eph 1:9
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Eph 2:10
We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. Col 1:28
Christ as the goal of creation is also our goal our end our purpose our model, we are being changed to become more like him
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus Phi 2:5
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. Eph 4:15
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Eph 4:32
Christ through whom the world was created and for who the world was created is also the sustainer of the world and he sustains us with his constant presence hence we are admonished by Paul to allow Christ to have his way with us.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts Col 3:15
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly Col 3:16
And Paul prays that we grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ Eph 3
Jesus asked his disciples Who do people say I am? and they gave their answers. “Some say you are Elijah, some say you are John, some say you are the prophet”
It’s relatively safe to answer the questions what do other people think of Jesus, we can answer that objectively and have an interesting discussion.
This morning and indeed over the last few weeks I’ve talked about some of the titles given to Jesus and reflected on what the New Testament authors thought of Jesus. All of that is safe stuff to talk about it’s out there it’s an academic question.
However the much harder question to answer and the one that must impinge on every aspect of our lives is the question that Jesus asks next.
Who do you say I am?
And whether you’ve been a Christian for 80 year or 2 years or still undecided this is a perennial question one that must be answered again and again in each life situation we find our self in.
Who do you say I am?
Prophet, teacher, King, Lord, Saviour Christ?

Jesus is Saviour

One of the classic titles given to Jesus is that of Saviour.
For many years a sign was inscribed on a large rock face on SH1 somewhere between Wellington and Hamilton it said JESUS SAVES underneath someone else had written “with the BNZ” or was it Westpac I don’t recall.
The humorous repartee points to a problem with the English language, what do we mean by saves and with the theological notion of Saviour and Salvation.
The exuberant evangelist on the street asks a passerby “Are you Saved” to which he gets the quite legitimate reply “saved from what?”
I think the phrase “Jesus is my Saviour” is repeated in some circles without a lot of thought to what that really means and without a lot of connection with the biblical idea behind that designation.
Like many terms in the bible saviour has a multiplicity of meanings and to grasp the concept you need to take all of them into account. Bad theology and bad Christian practice occurs when one meaning is given overdue emphasis.
A colleague of mine who spent some years ministering in the US recalled a number of experiences where he encountered people with a strange and unhelpful overemphasis on one aspect of saviour. On one occasion he picked up a hitch-hiker who was in quite a state, drunkard, gambler loose with his tongue as well as his money, had abandoned his family, but in conversation declared himself to be a Christian because he had got saved at some crusade or another. There was no expectation that Christianity had anything to do with being part of a church community living a life of love and service, of worshipping God. No being a Christian was a matter of uttering a prayer inviting Jesus into your heart and thereby being saved from hell destined for glory.
This is an extreme case but one that points to the pitfalls of having a narrow understanding of what saviour means, of what salvation is, of what being saved is all about. It is rather clear that this is not what Jesus envisaged for his followers. But how do we know that our view of salvation and our practice of calling Jesus saviour is any closer to the truth and any more helpful in living as Jesus intends us?
Salvation is a multifaceted jewel. It has a past, present and future dimension. We have been saved we are being saved we shall be saved. We are saved from certain things, sin, death, the devil, destruction. We are saved for certain things, a life of good works, to give glory to God, to be witnesses, to share eternity with God. There is a temporal dimension wherein salvation applies to the things of this world and there is an eternal dimension wherein salvation is a guarantee of a new world and life in all its fullness for all of eternity.
My colleagues hitchhiking companion had a limited view of salvation, for him to say Jesus was his saviour was a consequence of some past action that in turned guaranteed a future in heaven but had no implication for his life in the here and now.
His saviour was concerned only with saving his soul from hell. There was no sense that he was being saved to do anything – life could proceed in any way he chose without anything affecting his eternal destiny.
Contrast our sweat hitchhiker with Zacchaeus the tax collector. What do we notice about Zac’s encounter with Jesus.
1. To begin with there is an attraction and a curiosity about Jesus. Zac wanted to know who this Jesus was. Many conversions begin this way, with a person being curious and starting a search.
2. Jesus takes the initiative to engage with Zac. He calls to him in the fig tree. He calls to him by name. He invites Zac to respond. This detail reminds us of an important theological point about salvation and about Jesus the Saviour. Jesus is the initiator of salvation. Salvation comes from Jesus it is offered as a free gift. Some people strive to find salvation. They strive to earn their way into God’s good books; they want to prove that they are good enough to go to heaven. But salvation is actually the other way around; it’s about God coming to us with a free gift. The movement in the first place is always from God to human, from heaven to earth. We call this ‘grace’, unmerited kindness and favour. But note that Zac is not being invited to a free party. This is not cheap grace. Zac is being invited to a new way of life – it is to begin immediately with him showing hospitality to Jesus and his friends.
3. Zac immediately responds. He starts by offering Jesus a welcome. When I first became a Christian this was an incredibly important step. I acknowledged Jesus; I welcomed Jesus into my life. I asked him to save me. I knew already that that would involve change and it would involve commitments and it would involve cost, but I also knew instinctively that the new life I was beginning was going to have more pluses than minuses, that I would be rewarded for welcoming Jesus.
4. There is then a bit of grumbling. “All who saw it began to grumble saying he has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner”. The beginning of salvation can be quite unnerving because from that point on the world of the ‘saved’ is turned upside down. The sinner dines with the Lord of all, the wicked tax collector repents and begins to do good. The last becomes the first, the outcast is welcomed to the centre, the despised becomes a leader and shows the way. The religious become unnerved because their settled position is challenged, the complacent become unnerved because they see that grace is real and change is possible. The inactive become irritated by the energy of new convert who highlights their apathy. I’m sure you’ve experienced this phenomenon we often put it down to the zeal and inexperience and lack of mature wisdom of the new convert, but it is more than that, it is the unfettered activity of grace, turning the world of the convert upside own and with any shakeup like that there is bound to be a bit of a mess.
5. Zac’s response to the grumbling is to state his intention, to confess his faith, to outline for witnesses to hear his plan for following Jesus and working out his salvation. He makes his confession to Jesus the Lord "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." Zac is aware that for him to know Jesus as saviour he must know and serve him as Lord. Living honestly, compassionately, caring for the poor, working for justice. Zac is not earning his salvation, he is responding to the grace of God. The love of God compels him to do these things
6. Finally we hear Jesus affirmation of Zacchaeus: Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." Jesus came to seek and save the lost. There is no mention of heaven or the afterlife here; this story is not about that; it is about someone finding salvation. That is it is about someone finding Jesus, finding a reason to change and being given the power to change. Salvation according to this story is about life here and now, about the way we live about how we use our money, about how we follow Jesus as Lord.
This is not the only way the bible talks about salvation, but it is a good counter to the tradition that only emphasises the eternal and spiritual aspect of salvation.
Paul who is probably most often quoted to emphasise the eternal dimension of salvation is quite clear that salvation is also, if not primarily, about this life and how we live as saved people here and now,
8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
We are saved writes Paul so that we might do good works prepared for us. Salvation then is about being set free from all that prevents us finding our vocation, finding out what it is we are called to do, finding out just what those good works are that God has prepared for us to do and that God is waiting for us to do.
In this to we recognise an ongoing process, I am saved, I am being saved I will be saved. My past and present life decisions and career choices are based on my faith on the experience and understanding of God that has come to me through my relationship with Jesus. I have followed the call of Jesus to the best of my ability, according to my experience according to the degree to which I have been saved, set free, sanctified, made to be like Christ. As the process of my salvation continues I see my calling in a new light. I will see new works that God has prepared for me to do.
Thus our relationship with Jesus is dynamic and always changing. We can’t live in the past. We can’t base tomorrow’s decisions on yesterdays experience, we need an ongoing relationship with Jesus wherein we continue to be saved, to be refined, purified, challenged and changed. Paul once again Put’s this succinctly. This time Phil 2.
Therefore, my dear friends ...—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.
In working out our salvation we are working out our ongoing relationship with Jesus; determining how he wants us to live in the current circumstance. It’s about saying yes to Jesus.
Yes I will try that new thing
Yes I will allow you to challenge and change me
Yes I will look for fresh ways to live out my faith
Yes I will serve you wherever you place me
Yes I will pay the price
Yes I will get off my backside
Yes I will love the least
Yes I will speak out for injustice
Yes Jesus Yes You are my saviour, you have saved me for a life of good works and I am being saved as I follow you and I will be fully saved when we meet face to face.
Yes Jesus my saviour.

Would Jesus be A Christian?

Jesus is Lord: Matthew 7:21-28, Psalm 72, Ephesians 4:1-5
Intro
Christianity throughout the world is expressed in an enormous variety of ways. So much so that if you put two divergent groups together you might wonder if they bore any relationship to one another.
One might even wonder that if Jesus showed up at the gathering of certain Christian groups whether he would identify himself as a Christian.
Can Jesus be a Southern Baptist, a Korean Pentecostal, a Russian Orthdox, a South American Catholic and a Quaker?
There are many factors that go into explaining the vast difference in Christian expression. One is that at the heart of the gospel is an enormous amount of freedom. The bible does not in fact prescribe, how we should worship, what we should eat or wear. It does not lay out black and white answers to life’s complex problems as much as we wish it might. Secondly each Christina community is unique in its history and experience, factors which enormously influence our understanding of life and faith. Thirdly each Christian community is embedded in layers of culture. Culture not only affects the way we do things it affects the way we see things and understand things.
Our Christian experience and expression and witness are influenced by a multiplicity of factors so much so that it can be difficult to see the common core. It can also be difficult to gain a healthy perspective about your own faith and commitments because of the many layers that make up what we believe and what we think we know.
So I think it is a legitimate question to ask. Would Jesus be a Christian? I don’t want to ask it about Southern Baptists or Greek Orthodox. But I want to ask it about the style and type of Christianity that I am a part of here in New Zealand. And so how do we do that?
We have to try and get to the core of the matter the foundation of our faith and ask some key questions about Jesus and then reflect on what that means for us who claim to be Christian people. Are we being Christian in a way that Jesus would if he were alive as a human being among us now?
Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at some of the key Christological Claims that the bible makes and the church affirms. Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Saviour, Jesus is Christ, and bring it to some form of conclusion on the last Sunday of the month which is Christ the King Sunday.
What do we mean when we say Jesus is Lord? More importantly what did the early church and the writers of the New Testament mean when they called Jesus Lord? The Greek Word Kurios has three basic meanings and one further important connotation that we will explore.
Just and Noble King and Sovereign
One of the meanings of “Lord” is simply the king or sovereign ruler of a group of people. Now we don’t have much appreciation of this idea in our modern culture or even as we look back over history. The idea of a king being just and noble is more of a myth, as in King Arthur, than it is in any actual historical situation.
We’re used to the idea the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, history is on the side of this well worn cliché. We have two models of monarchy the one being a despotic and brutal dictator with absolute power of his people or that of a toothless figurehead who is good at pomp and ceremony but with no real power.
How then do we apply the term Lord to Jesus? Hopefully in neither of these ways.
In spite of a succession of bad kings throughout Israel’s history the people retained the hope of a good king. From time to time they saw the fruit of Godly leadership, some of their kings acted justly and nobly some of the time. Psalm 72 expresses that hope in the form of a prayer which begins

Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
2 He will judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.
3 The mountains will bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness.
4 He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.
Imagine being subject to any number of brutal kings that ruled throughout history. No hope, no justice, no safety, no prosperity. The thought of a Good king was a wonderful dream.
The good king would bring hope, and prosperity, he would protect his people, ensure that the service and infrastructure for a good society were in place and so on. The good king would bring life and liberty.
Here then is the hope we live by when we proclaim Jesus is Lord. We believe that Jesus sets us free from all other tyranny so that we may live in freedom and enjoy the life we have been given.
We reject on the one hand the idea that Jesus is a dictator who rules over us with an iron fist, and we reject the idea that he is a toothless lion who is nothing more than a figure head representing a set of good ideas and worthy aspirations. Jesus is the rightful Lord of All, his kingdom will endure forever, it is a kingdom of justice that we may enter into by swearing our allegiance to Jesus as Lord forsaking all other Lords and kings.
Master of Servants
The second meaning of Lord is related, it’s a little more domestic than political. In Jesus time a Lord would be one who had servants under him. Servants obey their master; they are enslaved to him or her at his or her beck and call. Often the servant or slave was treated as little more than a chattel whose sole reason for being was the advancement of the Lord’s needs and wants.
The Master had total control over the slave dictating what and when the slave ate, when and where they slept and arose, who they associated with, what they said, what they wore. The slave did not have a life of his or her own but was an appendage of the master’s life, all meaning and purpose were derivative from the master.
Of critical importance here is the character of the master. Once a slave is owned by one person the slave could be sold like any other chattel or beast of burden. A good and caring master could make the slave’s life bearable; a cruel master could make the slave’s life intolerably miserable.
As Bob Dylan famously wrote and sung, “You’ve gotta serve somebody”
You may be an ambassador to England or FranceYou may like to gamble, you might like to danceYou may be the heavyweight champion of the worldYou may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,It may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.Might be a rock'n' roll adict prancing on the stageMight have money and drugs at your commands, women in a cageYou may be a business man or some high degree thiefThey may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief.
That which we serve that which we submit to and give our life to that is the thing or person that gives our life meaning and gives us our sense of who we are. A slave in the first century Palestine might have had a miserable lot at the hands of his earthly Lord, but if he knew Jesus as Master and Lord, he had a higher sense of purpose a greater sense of self-worth, he could rise above his oppression and realise his human potential.
We are in a different situation our slavery is seldom to earthly an lord but many people are enslaved to chemical addiction, bad habits, unhealthy ways of relating to others, addicted to materialism, individualism, success, social advancement, power, adrenalin and so on and so forth. That which we are enslaved to dictates our lives makes us who we are and we have a choice we can choose to give up other masters and serve Jesus as Lord.
Master/Teacher of apprentice/learners
The Other common use of the word Kurios or Lord in Jesus time was that used for a master/teacher/Rabbi by his students or disciples. We use the word master in a similar way today. We talk about master builders, or master violinists, or a master craftsman and so on. A master is a person who has mastered a set of skills so perfectly that they are embodied within them. The master sculpture doesn’t need to consult a book when she is creating a masterpiece, the creativity flows. A surgeon operates with such skill and knowledge and instinct that it is almost second nature for her to operate.
But how do people arrive at being masters in their field, they submit to a process of learning through disciplined practice. The young violinists observes the masters, copies the master and practices what she has copied over and over again until the new skill becomes ingrained, it just flows naturally without conscious thought
When we say Jesus is Lord this is in part what we mean. Jesus is the master of life and living. We submit to his tutelage, we become his apprentices, his students, his disciples learning the discipline of love and faith and life and hope and grace and so on. We try to copy Jesus actions, to imitate his attitudes, to follow his lead, until we find that living the Jesus way comes naturally.
This analogy is limited in one respect. For in most other master student relationships, having reached a degree of near perfection the student themselves eventually become masters. When it comes to living the Jesus way we never quite master it. Perfection is always just beyond our reach; well actually it’s a long way beyond our reach. And the reason for this I will explain in the fourth meaning or connotation of the word Lord in the New Testament.
When the Greek Translators got a hold of the Hebrew Bible that is our Old Testament they decided that instead of Translating or transliterating the Hebrew word Yahweh the personal name of God if you like, the decided that they word just insert the words “The LORD” In most English translation where this tradition is followed “The Lord” is typed with small caps, the Hebrew behind this Phrase is Yahweh the name of God.
In a few cases in the New Testament the Hebrew Bible quotes an Old Testament passage that use “THE LORD” in small caps and it is clearly meant to refer to Jesus, here is an example. From Romans 10.
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." 12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”
The last section is a quote from Joel 2:32. A direct Hebrew translation would be "Everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved”. However Paul clearly identifies this with Jesus. So in saying that Jesus is Lord we are also saying that Jesus and YHWH are one in being, they are one and the same, Jesus is God.
So going back through our three meanings of Lord; when we say Jesus is Lord we declare that
He is sovereign King creator of all things perfectly good and reliable, rescuing us from all bad kings, rulers and despots
Jesus is our Master, the one who we submit to in preference to all else that would seek to have control over us for good or bad, we submit not to Jesus a 1st Century Jew but to Jesus one in being with God.
And Jesus is our teacher/master/Rabbi, Jesus models for us how to live, love and be, he does this not merely as a really good philosopher and healer, but as one in being with God and one who subjected himself to the tutelage of God the Father only doing what God the Father did, so that we in turn might become his disciples following in his footsteps.
Would Jesus be a Christian?
If Jesus arrived among us in the flesh would he recognise our worship and our lifestyle as a faithful expression of loving and serving God the Lord of all?
It’s not up to us to answer that question for other people, but from time to time it is good to look at our own lifestyle and see if we really mean it when we declare Jesus is Lord.
Are we serving as faithful subjects in his kingdom?Are we progressively dismissing all other lords giving up all those things which control our lives to serve Jesus alone?Are we learning from the master, living as he would live?
These are our questions.
You and Jesus know the answers!

What Happens to Bad People?

I’ve chosen to preach a series around 3 questions that I find I cannot answer with any degree of certainty.
What happens when I Die?
When will the world end?
And what happens to bad people?
These are what we call eschatological questions - questions about the end of all things.
In one respect the end of all things is a bit airy fairy and far removed from the hustle and bustle of daily life, yet ‘end’ also means purpose and as we ask questions about the end of all things in terms of the end of history we are also asking basic questions about the end or purpose of human life. It may be a luxury to contemplate such things but you have the opportunity to do so and therefore direct your own affairs with a sense of purpose and hope.
Today’s question is one that has bothered me for as long as I’ve been a Christian. What happens to bad people? It bothers me because none of the answers that are said to be orthodox satisfy me.
The typical answers relating to the doctrine of hell seem to me to be out of kilter with everything else I’ve come to learn and love about God. Yet on the other hand any answer that suggest that bad people will ultimately get away with their gross and evil deeds is manifestly unjust and immoral.
So what does happen to bad people?
This morning I’m going to provoke your thinking I’m going to introduce a range of answers that have been offered and I’m going to throw some things into the mix that you might not have considered before.
Firstly, the answer to our question What happens to bad people? Has been variously answered and we might put up a continuum of answers with a scale of how tough the punishment gets for bad people beyond the grave.
1. Eternal Torment
2. Eternal Separation
3. Punishment followed by Annihilation
4. Purgatory/Punishment followed by heaven
5. Heaven (universalism)
Before we decide whether any of these is more right than any of the others we need to explore the question a bit more. If we assume that bad people get punished or face some consequence for their sins beyond the grave we need to define what we mean by bad people and here things begin to get a bit complicated. Who deserve to go to hell?
1. Extreme Evil doers; Hitler, Pol Pott, George W Bush?
2. Sinners
3. ‘Unsaved’ sinners
4. Ignorant sinners
5. Faithful Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Humanists
6. People who have failed to do enough good
Which is the correct bible answer?
Some research out of the US is interesting on this.
· When polled about belief in hell of those who believed about 5% of them thought that that was their destiny.
· Some conservative groups believed that between 95-99% of the world’s population were destined to go there.
· A vast majority of people thought that only real bad people went there.
But what did Jesus teach about bad people? Are some people so bad that they are beyond redemption, beyond mercy, beyond hope?
Jesus certainly does warn some people about Hell mostly the religious leaders and I want to come back to that but I want to look at the parables because I think they are most instructive on this issue.
Take the parable of the sheep and he goat.
Jesus brings the nations before him at the end of time to be judge and just as a shepherd divides the sheep and the goats so he divided the nations according to what they have and have not done.
Three point to consider.
1. Sheep and goats were almost indistinguishable and only the trained eye of the shepherd was capable of judging between the two
2. This judgement is about what people have done in terms of looking after the most vulnerable people in society; that is the sole criteria of this judgement.
3. The judgement is practically impossible - Here’s what I mean!
Read through the criteria to be welcomed into your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world
Have you done any or all of these?
· Fed the hungry,
· Given water to the thirsty
· Given Hospitality to a stranger
· Provided clothes for the needy
· Cared for the sick,
· Have you visited anyone in prison?
If you answered yes to all of these you are probably a sheep and if you answered yes to one or more you may be a sheep.
But ask yourself this also have there been times when you have had the opportunity to do any of these things and failed to do so.
Have you ever missed the opportunity to do any of the above?
Maybe Mother Theresa comes close but even she I suspect was not perfect in this regard there would have been times that she failed to do some of these things.
According to the parable that makes Mother Theresa bad, that makes her a goat.
But she is not all bad, she is not all goat and neither are you or I we are part sheep and part goat.
The division of good and bad doesn’t run between one group of good people over here and another group of bad people over there, the division is though the middle of each of us.
The separation which begins at the judgement is one which removes all vestiges of evil and selfishness, of ill motive, of twisted thinking, of unforgiveness, bitterness and deep hurt. I’m of the opinion that this may take some time. I think we may continue to grow and develop as a result of the final judgement. I have a feeling that the ‘punishment’ that we face beyond judgement is the coming terms with ourselves and the working through of issues that are raised – it will be to some extent self-inflicted punishment a little like an athlete punishes their body to bring out the best.
In a moment I will comment on the passages that seem to most directly refer to Hell as a place of eternal punishment and damnation, but first I want to touch on what I think is our psychological need for hell.
When I look at the angry reactions of families who are victims of violent crime or sexual crime or other gross injustice as they confront the perpetrators outside the courthouse or as I see the way activists and legislators agree to get tough on crime building more prisons removing bail and parole calling for the death penalty and so forth I see a society that ‘needs’ to punish bad people. Unfortunately the punishment is all about revenge and vindication it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It’s about making people pay for their crimes. This idea that crime must be matched by punishment is deeply entrenched in our collective psyche even though in most case it does nothing to prevent reoffending. Punishing criminal makes them tougher, they grow to hate the system with intensity and lose all respect for authority, for property and for life.
Underlying our penal system is a deeply held belief that most if not all bad people are beyond redemption and are deserving of hell. Punishment is seldom viewed as corrective, merely punitive in a way to make the victim feel vindicated, to make society think that some equilibrium has been reached and justice served.
We live in a blame society where if we have someone besides ourselves to blame for our problems then we can feel better about ourselves. We seem to need to have others who are bad people others who are at least worse than ourselves and onto whom we can deflect our own faults. It makes life simpler to divide the world into us and them, the good and the bad, the saved and the damned. I think it is this underlying psychology that influences our interpretation of scripture.
There are a number of scripture passages that are universalist, we have one read to us this morning yet the dominant theme over centuries of Christianity has been to give precedence to those passages which are exclusive and portray bad people or unsaved people as eternally damned. Leading figures in the church including Mega church evangelicals and Pope Benedict still hold to a view of a literal hell. I don’t and I think the church needs to think long and hard about this doctrine.
The doctrine of Hell has served the church well, for fund raising purposes, evangelistic drives, crusades, for enforcing good behaviour and discipline.
It leads to a distorted image of God-portraying God as vengeful, unforgiving, merciless vindictive.
It leads to a distorted view of justice- We’ve inherited this economic view of justice, that is to do with balance sheets and repaying debt an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth model.

Justice is about putting things right, it’s about seeing what is wrong and making it right it’s about correction not punishment. When you make a mistake God is not out to punish you for it, but God does want to correct you, correct your thinking, your attitudes and your behaviour.
The doctrine of hell, leads to a distorted view of people who are different and we want to apply our own categories of good and bad.If they are not like us they are bad
If they do bad things they need to be punished and so countries are invaded, bombs are dropped and hell comes to earth.
Let’s now then look at some of the passage that speak explicitly of “Hell”

Matthew 5:22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca, ' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
Matthew 5:29If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Matthew 5:30And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
Matthew 10:28Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
Matthew 18:9And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.
Following last week’s sermon where I began to explore literary device used by Jesus you should be able to recognise these sentences as hyperbole. They are expression used to strengthen or amplify a point. The point of each verse is not hell per se but some behaviour that should be avoided. Now we can’t dismiss the possibility of a literal hell just by noting that these phrases have a literary meaning rather than a literal one; however we need to recognise that Jesus is not teaching anything about hell here he is using the idea of hell regardless of its actual existence to make a point.
Matthew 23:15"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
Matthew 23:33"You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?
These last two instances from Matthew’s gospels are interesting. Jesus is addressing the teachers of the law and Pharisees. It is only the religious leaders that get such harsh treatment from Jesus. Why does Jesus threaten these religious leaders with hell – most likely it is because they were threatening others with the same and using the threat of hell as a way to manipulate their followers – that sounds rather familiar. John doesn’t use the word Gehhena/Hell in his gospels and all of the other passage in Mark and Luke that use the word are parallels of the Matthean texts
Mark 9:43If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out.
Mark 9:45And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell.
Mark 9:47And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell,
Luke 12:5But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
...the one exception being the story of Lazarus and the beggar at the gate.

Luke 16:23In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side.
Again we have to ask of this story, what is the main point. Jesus is not teaching about hell, he is teaching about our responsibilities in the here and now. We have only one chance to get it right after your gone it’s too late to do that good that you had always thought about doing.
There are just 2 other uses of the word hell in the NT
James 3:6The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.2 Peter 2:4For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
The expression in James set on fire by hell is a metaphor that speaks of the evil potential of the human tongue. It’s not teaching about hell but a warning about controlling our speech.
2 Peter seems to have access to some extra-biblical sources that teach about angels, but note that his use of ‘hell’ here is more akin to the Old Testament notion of Hades a holding place until the judgement.
I have now shown you all the NT uses of the word “hell” now that by no means is meant to end the discussion, there are numerous other texts that talk about eternal punishment, eternal darkness, gnashing of teeth a great lake of fire and so on. I’m happy myself to believe that in spite of all these references that Hell exists only as an impossible possibility.
I believe that if a human being freely chose to be eternally cut off from God that God would not stop that and that such separation whether it meant annihilation or eternal isolated conscious being would in fact be hell.
But because I believe that God is love and God is fair, I believe that God would give every human being a reasonable and fair choice.
For such a choice to be reasonable and fair, the person making the choice must be of sound mind, and fully aware of all the facts and consequences of their decision.
In those circumstances I think it is impossible that anyone would choose separation from God.
Of course I am basing my argument on the eternal goodness of God and nothing yet has persuaded me that God is less than perfectly good or that Hell is compatible with such goodness.
So finally what do I believe happens to bad people?
The same as happens to me for I too am bad. I might be saved but I’m a saved sinner and there’s work to be done on me yet.
Death
Paradise
Resurrection
Judgement
Correction restoration rehabilitation Glory.
I’m more than comfortable if any of you take issue with what I have said this morning. For me this is the good news – but I appreciate other see things differently let us be adult about it and discuss it as friends on a journey together.

A footnote:

Is there then any point in being saved?

Yes
1. You have a relationship with God in Christ now
2. You have a certain hope
3. You know the eternal forgiveness of God
4. You can start work on your faults here and now knowing that will make an eternal difference
5. You have the spirit to help you
6. The truth shall set you free to live and love as an authentic God-loved human being
7. You can be sure that all the good work you do now is for a good end.