Getting inside of someone else’s mind is a really difficult thing.  What makes people think and act the way they do isn’t easy.  As you listen to the news have you ever thought to yourself or even said out loud, “What on earth was that person thinking?  “What was going through his head to make him do this?”

We hear of a gunman entering a school and randomly shoot a teacher and students.
We hear of someone brutally harming a child.
Each time we shake our heads because we can’t fathom what has happened in that person’s life or what is going on in their minds to bring them to that point.

A pastor was called in to support a young mother and her two children who were shocked and traumatised by the unexpected death of their husband and father.  After what seemed like a normal lunch with the family, he went out to the shed and ended his life.

The police, family, friends and neighbours all asked the same question, “Why did he do it?  What was going on in his head?  He had a lovely wife and great kids – what led him to take such an extreme action?”  Everyone was trying to get inside his mind but in the end everyone had to admit that they would never know.  As much as we would have liked to get an insight into what this father was really thinking it was now impossible.

We might ask – how much does Jesus understand what is happening in our lives?  Our fast-paced world is so different from the dusty roads Jesus walked in first-century Palestine.
Does he understand our needs and sufferings?
Can he empathise with our worries, especially those worries that upset us and stress us?
Does he really know what is going on inside of our minds and what is really distressing us?
To be specific since Jesus experienced none of these while here on earth –
does he know what it’s like to lie in a hospital bed;
does he know what it’s like being 70 or 80 and all that goes with an aging body;
does he know about the stress that’s involved as we go through the various stages of life – getting married, raising children, dealing with teenagers, changing jobs, planning for retirement and then choosing the right moment to go into an aged care facility?

Does Jesus know and even care about these things which, in the big picture of the universe, are quite trivial but to us they are what make up our lives?

We acknowledge that Jesus is God;
that he was there at the creation of the world and
that he now rules with all power and authority.  As Paul wrote, “Christ rules above all heavenly rulers, authorities, powers, and lords; he has a title superior to all titles of authority in this world and in the next” (Eph 2:21-22).  Jesus is so totally different to us – his ways, his wisdom, his knowledge, his decision are way beyond our comprehension.  Theologians have called God The Totally Other.  If the glorified Jesus is The Totally Other how well can he appreciate the things that are happening in our lives right now?  Has he ever had a sick day?  Has he ever had to grapple with depression, terminal illness, or to live in a dysfunctional family?

We know that Jesus was the one perfect person to walk this earth but that leads us to ask, “Was his personality, his character, his ability to cope and endure, his patience, his understanding and compassion so perfect from the moment he was born that it made it impossible for him to understand what it’s like not to be perfect?”  Therein lies the question that is almost as old as Christianity itself – Was Jesus really human or was he God in human disguise – in other words, he didn’t really become one of us?

The answer we give is crucial.  Among the things Christians believe is that through the birth, life and death of Christ, God became a part of what it means to be human.  He didn’t stand aloof from our pain and trouble.  He came right into the middle of all that causes suffering, sadness, depression, sin, rebellion and death. That’s what Christmas is all about – God leaving heaven and enduring all that is involved in becoming a human on this planet including birth in a time when infants dying at birth or soon after was quite common.

Because of Jesus, God can identify with us. He actually cares for us as one who personally knows us from the inside out and the outside in.  He knows what is really happening inside of us and the causes of the trauma and drama in our lives better than we know ourselves.  He knows all this because he has lived here amongst it all and experienced it all himself.

We say that through Jesus God knows what it is like to be hungry or to have plenty, to toil and sweat.
God knows the frustration of learning discipline and skills which do not come naturally.
God comprehends what it is like to sleep peacefully or toss sleeplessly, to relax and enjoy a joke.
Jesus may not have been an old man and experienced the aches and pains that old age bring but he certainly knew pain when every muscle, sinew, tendon and gaping wound made him cry out in agony.

Through Jesus God personally knows the sneakiness of some temptations and the full-on audacity of others.  From Christ God appreciates what it’s like to be warmed by a smile or snubbed by indifference.

God understands what it’s like to enjoy a new friendship and treasure an old one, to feel affirmed and to feel betrayed, to suffer for the truth, to be misunderstood, to make enemies, to suffer emotional and physical agony, and to feel forsaken. Yes, forsaken; forsaken by everyone. At the cross Jesus knows what it’s like to feel forsaken, even by God.

Some people say that if Jesus is not divine, then Christianity is a hoax. That is a part of the truth.  I would say that if Jesus were not fully divine and fully human then Christianity is a hoax.

When the writer of Hebrews says, “In his life on earth Jesus made his prayers and requests with loud cries and tears to God” he is reflecting on Jesus agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where he felt fear, dread, terror, and anxiety just as any of us would in the same circumstances.  He prayed and begged God to save him but still he had to suffer.  The letter to the Hebrews presents Jesus as the truly obedient son.  Obedience led to suffering and even though he feared death as much as anyone else, he trusted God perfectly.  Through his obedience he gained forgiveness for all those who buckle under the weight of suffering and depression; for all those who doubt God’s love for them when life becomes more than can be endured.

It’s natural for us to shy away from suffering. Not surprisingly, we dislike hard discipline and pain. We would like a trouble free, painless existence. Yet we need to face the unpalatable truth that we often learn more through suffering than we often do through comfortable times.

The very successful movie and TV star Michael J Fox was interviewed on TV was time ago.  At the age of 29 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease and was on a quest to find a cure.
The interviewer asked Fox after a clip from his time travel movie, “If you could go back in time, really, you wouldn’t change the fact that you’ve got Parkinson’s, would you?”
Fox replied, “No, I wouldn’t.  I absolutely wouldn’t. This path that I’m on …. it’s like I gave up my job to do my life’s work”.

That’s an amazing statement when you think about it.  There is an element of sacrifice about it and there is also the idea that suffering, used creatively, can enhance the beauty of a human life.  You may know of times in your life when some kind of trial or suffering has led you to grow in your understanding of God or developed your own perseverance, or strengthened your faith and trust, or increased your awareness of the suffering of others.  The path that Jesus was on included obedience and suffering and his life’s work brought about a cure for another sickness – the sickness of sin.

Even though Jesus never sinned he knows the shame and guilt that sin brings into our lives.  He was nailed to a cross but it was more than nails that held him there.  If it was just the nails then he could have used his almighty power and come down and healed himself and cursed his enemies.  Nails went through his flesh but it was our sin and shame and guilt that pinned him to the cross.  As he hung there he felt our shame and died for our sin.  He must have been overwhelmed with sadness at how much evil humanity had done and it was all now bearing down on him.  As the Scripture says, “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities”.

When we look in the scriptures we see Jesus in two different ways.  In every way Jesus is one of us. He is as human as you and I.  He is born and dies.  He knows in a very real way what it means to suffer pain, and have needs, to feel vulnerable and helpless.  The man Jesus died the undignified death on a cross as a sinner giving his life to save all people.

The scriptures also show us that Jesus is God.  He created the world and us and as our Creator knows his creation.  He knows us more intimately than we can ever imagine.  He knew us before we were born – even before we were aware of ourselves.  He rose from dead and rules in heaven; he is our eternal high priest in heaven who presents our needs and prayers for us at the Father’s throne in a compassionate and understanding way (Hebrews 4:14-16).

At the beginning I talked about getting into the mind of someone else and understanding where that person is coming from and what makes him/her act in certain ways.  What makes us tick might be a bit of mystery to other people but it is no mystery to Jesus.  Approach God boldly and confidently, knowing with every human need that you suffer, Jesus is the High Priest who hears, knows and understands how you feel.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy

John 3:14-21

Psalm 121 begins, “I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”  How often in life do you find yourself in the depths of despair or frustration only to feel a call within yourself to lift up your eyes and search for help?  Our emphasis today is on lifting up and looking up, what does it mean for us, how does it take place and what are the benefits.

Moses and the Israelites were taking the long way round to get to the Promised Land, they were bickering and moaning to Moses and against God for taking them away from a life that even though it was unpleasant and hard work, provided them with food and water and a place to rest.  They felt that they would probably die in the wilderness and the food they were getting was as bland as I’ve been eating lately!  So they were grumbling big time.

So what did God do to fix it?  He didn’t remove them from the wilderness, he sent venomous snakes among them and many of the Israelites died!  Here is the wrath of God pure and simple, but when Moses prayed to God on behalf of the people God said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and lie.”  God provided the antidote and when the people were bitten they looked up and lived.

We could be a little perplexed by this scenario, we heard last week “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.” And here is God telling Moses to make a snake from bronze and place it on a pole and get the people to look at it!  The thing to realise in this case is that God commanded Moses to make it, and also in the original commandments they were told “You shall not bow down to them or worship them”, they weren’t bowing down and worshipping, they were looking up and being healed and in doing so they were reminded of how God provides for their healing and his power over all things.

Another important point is that God didn’t stop the snakes from biting after Moses prayed, he still allowed the snakes to bite the Israelites, but then provided them with the antidote in the snake lifted up for them to see.  God does provide the healing that is needed to bring them from death to life.

Our gospel reading makes the connection for us between the snake being lifted up in the wilderness for the Israelites and the son of man being lifted up.  We know in retrospect that Jesus was lifted up on the cross at Calvary, he was hung there for all to see, even if it was only for a short time, he was hung up there.  So what is the connection between a slithering and silent killer like a snake and the son of man who came to give his life for our sake?  You know the answer to that as well as I do…when the Israelites looked to the snake they were healed, saved from certain death.

Jesus was hung on the cross to save us from our certain death.  The healing that takes place through him on the cross takes us from death to new life in him.  Our second reading today describes this healing beautifully for us.  “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live…like the rest we were by nature deserving of wrath.  But because of his great love for us , God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.”

Just like the Israelites who were bitten by the snakes, we were bitten by sin, through the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve.  We are surrounded daily by the slithering silent evil that longs to tempt us away from our focus on Christ and the cross on which he died to bring us healing from that sin.

Each and every one of us struggles with sin on a daily basis, there are events and challenges in the lives of all of us that threaten to swamp us, they feel like quicksand dragging us down feet first, like weeds wrapping around us and trying to trip us, like nets binding us hand and foot.  But even someone who is desperately trying to cling onto life can look up and live.

The Israelites looked to the bronze snake on the pole and they lived.  We have Christ on the cross to look to and to remind us that in fact we are already healed, and even better than that, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

This takes us beyond the cross, we need not only look at the cross, but through the cross, as we see in the screen behind the altar at Croydon, to the wrappings of the empty tomb which represent the resurrection of Christ, in victory over death and then to his ascension into heaven where he does indeed sit at the right hand of the father.  From there he prays for us, just like Moses prayed to God the Father on behalf of the Israelites, Jesus is sitting in his place in heaven bringing our needs before God too.

None of this is our doing, as we heard in the opening, from Psalm 121, “our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.”  And then in our second reading another way of saying it, “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

God gave us his son, to be lifted up on the cross, just like Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so that when sin bites us and threatens to bring about our spiritual death, we too have somewhere to look for help, we lift our eyes to the cross, but then through the cross to the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, all the while knowing in our heart of hearts that it is by grace that we have been saved, this isn’t something for the future, we have been saved.   Look up and live, lift your eyes to the Son of Man who was lifted up for our sake, so that we might be saved.

Amen.

What is it that really burns you up?  What really stirs you up and gets you angry? Some people say that all anger is sinful.  It’s true a lot of anger may lead to saying and doing things that are harmful, there is also good anger.  Good anger comes as an expression of love and concern.

Today we hear of Jesus being angry.  The anger that Jesus felt that day grew out of his love for his Father and love for the people he saw in the temple and concern for what their worship had come to mean.  It is because of the intensity of his passion that we see Jesus so stirred up.

Jesus has just performed his first miracle at the wedding at Cana where he turned water into wine.  In fact John doesn’t call it a miracle; he calls Jesus’ miracles ‘signs’.
They are signs that God is doing something new; a new age is dawning on this world.
They are signs that the Messiah has come and that God is about to reveal his glory and do some powerful things as he demonstrates his love.
They are signs that a new order has come to replace the old.
They signs that things will never be the same again.

Jesus’ first interaction with the public in John’s Gospel takes place in the temple.  He causes a furore and people question his messianic authority and ask for a sign.  The sign Jesus gives is a prediction of his own suffering, death and resurrection.

Can you visualise the scene?  Jesus has entered the temple courtyard and it looks like a market place crowded with people selling and buying and money changing hands.  As Jesus watches all this he is outraged.  He makes a whip from some rope and drives out the animals from the courtyard, overturns the tables sending the coins of the money changers spilling on to the ground.  “Get these out of here,” he shouts. “This is place of prayer.  How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market! ” 

By the way, we aren’t talking about Jesus driving out a couple of animals from the courtyard.  During the Passover thousands of lambs as well as oxen and pigeons were slaughtered in the temple. So you see the temple courtyard would have resembled a huge animal market.   And as Jesus cleared all of these out, it was the maddest and angriest anyone had ever seen Jesus.

But you see, the problem is not only that Jesus is really mad, but he is in the temple when he gets so angry.  And it’s the time of the Passover – the great celebration of the liberation of Israel from Egyptian slavery.  This is the highest, happiest feast of Israel’s year.

The temple was the place where the nation gathered to be close to God. The temple is that place where they remembered God; they came there to be with God. Everyone is happy to be here at Passover in the temple for this festival occasion.  What a contrast this is to the anger of Jesus, whip in hand, overturning tables and shouting, “Get out of here!”

A while ago we heard the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament reading.  On this occasion Jesus doesn’t get red hot about adultery, he doesn’t get mad because the people in the temple were stealing, he doesn’t get furious because of covetousness or lack of respect for parents.

He attacked their worship. He assaulted their religion.  He isn’t attacking the Pharisees for their legalism, or the scribes for their snobbishness.  He isn’t assaulting unbelievers, he is attacking believers.  Here he barges in and attacks the religious for their religion, for the way they have perverted the worship of God.

John quite deliberately places this story in chapter 2 of his gospel because a new thing is breaking into this world.  The temple with its sacrifices and superficial worship has had its day.  Jesus explains it this way to the Samaritan woman,
“Believe me, the time is coming when you won’t worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. … The time is coming and is already here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. The Father is looking for anyone who will worship him that way.  For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23-26).

We are in the Lenten season and this is a time of self-examination.  Jesus cleansing of the temple leads us to ask ourselves,
“Does our worship need cleansing and renewing?”
“What does this ‘sign’ say to us about how we worship and our attitude toward worship”.  This is a text that leads the religious to examine their religion.

We are supposed to come here to meet God, to spend time with God and be touched by God and healed by God.
We are supposed to come here to recall the great things God has done in our lives this past week and celebrate with thanksgiving how God has rescued us from slavery to sin and given us a new land, a home in heaven with him forever.
We are supposed to be here to let the God who loves us touch our lives in his Word and the Sacrament, assure us of his love and send us out into the world to make a difference.
We are supposed to come here with our fellow Christians and be strengthened and reassured in their presence that we are loved and supported and comforted.

But what often happens.  We get out of bed, get dressed, sit in our seat, sing the hymns and songs, fight to keep focussed during the sermon, struggle to concentrate when our legs are aching during the prayers, stand for the benediction, have morning tea … and go home.

When Jesus saw what people had done with the worship life in the Temple he was horrified.  It made Jesus mad, just so mad when he saw what had happened to worship in the temple and what terrible attitudes those worshippers had.  When Jesus looks into the temple of our hearts when we worship, is he also horrified about the way we approach worship?

When he looks into our hearts does he see our reluctance to be here, driven here by our consciences, barely participating in the service and glad it is all over when that last “Amen” is said?
Are we so busy that out of the 168 hours in a week we can’t willingly spare just one hour to come into the presence of God with our fellow believers and celebrate God’s love.

When we come here to this church, do we really worship and celebrate God’s goodness in our lives, or do we just go through the motions sitting, standing, singing, saying the words, and perhaps sleeping, if not physically then spiritually?

When we come here to worship are we aware of what we are doing – that we have come here in the presence of the all-powerful and ever-loving God whose name we call on at the beginning of the service?
When we come here to worship do we have a sense of the absolutely amazing grace of God who has made it possible for us sinners to have the privilege to come before him?
At the temple the worshippers lost sight of just this fact and became more engrossed in other things. Recently I read this about worship:
Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?  Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it.  It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews for God will one day take offence…”

There is an element of humour in this, but it is also the truth.  Too often we consider worship as just a yawn.  Just as Jesus took great offence about the way the people were worshipping at the temple, likewise he is also offended by the attitude we have to worship.
The Bible says, “Since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be destroyed, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28).  We have to admit that “reverence and awe” have been replaced by a yawn.

Isn’t it true that sometimes we lose focus of why we come here?  We lose focus because we are distracted by our feelings about the music, the preacher, the people sitting around us, the person we don’t particularly like sitting a few rows in front of us, you know what I mean.  This is one of Satan’s oldest tricks to get our thoughts and focus away from God and on to things very mundane and extremely distracting.

It happens to me as much as to anyone else – there are times when I don’t like the music, or there’s a distraction, and I admit that sometimes I find certain things that people do in worship off putting but when I’m most annoyed I have to remind myself that we’re all different, we all have different tastes in music, we have different ways of worshipping e.g. some like drama while others like meditation,  but in spite of our differences, in love we join with our fellow brothers and sisters and worship and celebrate our God in the best way we know how.

Remember Paul’s picture of the church as a body.  Every part of the body works together, even in worship.  And besides, God comes to us in his word and Sacraments regardless of what kind of music we have, or what style of liturgy, or what level of understanding we have about what worship is all about.

Jesus cleaned out everything that didn’t belong in the temple.  He cleans out everything that doesn’t belong in our lives including our worship lives here in this church or wherever.

He gave his body and blood for all the insincerity in our worship,
the times we have been driven to worship by conscience but our hearts weren’t in it,
for all the times we have spoken the words and not meant them.
He has given us his body and blood for the times we have sat here and gone home untouched by the Spirit,
for all the times we have given something else a higher priority than coming into the presence of God.

We thank God that he is still cleansing his temple, the temple of our hearts today.  We are made clean by the blood of the Lamb and invited to come and stand in his presence with reverence and awe.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy

Mark 8:34,35

“He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

All of you are familiar with the concept of “wish list”s.  They pop up—sometimes at our specific request, and sometimes with no prompting at all!—they pop up around Christmas, or birthday, or in the more sophisticated form of the “bridal registry”.  It seems to be an innate capacity of ours to identify and list all the things we need, or want.
I see wish lists in people’s lives in other forms, too.  It may be talking about “what I am going to do when I grow up”, or “what degree I’m going to get when I finish VCE”, or “how many children I’m going to have at which years in my marriage”, or “what I’m going to do when I cash in my super”.
The positive thing about a wish list is that it gives us an insight into someone, an opportunity, a focus, an understanding, a goal.  The danger of a wish list is that if it doesn’t eventuate—none of it!—(Not even one thing on my list, but all this other junk instead!)—we may end up desperately disappointed, disillusioned, even hurt, and angry.
The school of experience has taught me to value instead what I call the “prerogative of the giver”.  Giving is the prerogative of the giver.  A gift is the prerogative of the giver.  It may well be that the gift is, in fact, exactly what I wanted, perfect, just right!  But it is, before that, what the giver has wanted to give, is able to give; it is, first of all, a gift that is generated by the excitement, the love, the desire of the giver.
Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  I think that probably 99% of the occasions on which I have heard those words, I have readied myself to do something, to take something up—“my cross”.  But go back a couple of verses in the Gospel today and you are reminded that when Jesus talks of the cross he is talking not of something that you carry, but something that carries you, that fixes you, that leaves you powerless, naked, stopped—
At that moment—taking the cross (or being taken up by it)—you lose life.  And from that moment life becomes, again, as it was in the beginning, a gift, and the prerogative of the Giver.
A little later, you’ll recall, Jesus—nailed to the cross—prays, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
And then it is up to the Father.  What will the Father give?  In his teaching Jesus once made a point of talking about the Father’s giving.  He pointed out that if we understand that even evil fathers know how to give good gifts to their children, “how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts”!
Easter is the prerogative of the Giver, the gift of the Father.  The life Jesus lives is the gift of the Father.  The life we live, in Christ, is the gift of the Father.  The life we have seen one person after another receive in recent weeks in baptism, is the gift of the Father.  The life given to you, body and blood, at the altar today, is the gift of the Father.
To put it quite bluntly, in denying yourself and taking the cross, you render yourself open to the gift.
This isn’t how we always think when we consider our “faith life”, or our “spirituality”, where we might prepare a list of what we think we should do…what we think we should pray for…how things must be.  Sometimes we think that “denying yourself” is giving up ‘chocolate’ or ‘wine’ or ‘take away’ or ‘TV’ and choosing to improve yourself by spending more time on much more pious but probably less exciting indulgences.
The example of Abraham is rather interesting.  Abraham is often touted by us as a man of great faith.  Indeed he was!  But the exercise of his faith is somewhat perverse.  God promises many descendants and a wonderful land.  And in order to actually receive these gifts Abraham has to—and this doesn’t happen easily:  he often resists, he second-guesses God, he lies, he manipulates—in order to actually receive the gift of the promise of family and land Abraham has to accept that he and his wife are barren, and then give their home away!  Abraham receives the promise by giving away.  It is completely counter-intuitive.
We have watched some close neighbours in the last few weeks lose everything.  Some of us have made little lists of what we would take if we were threatened by something that could very well take everything.  What would try to keep?  What would try to save?  We’ve seen people in tears celebrate the poverty of life, of family when everything else is gone.  We’ve been unsettled in ourselves.  What is important?  As the economy falls away, or as health deteriorates, or as age catches up, or as plans collapse, or as windows of opportunity slam shut, or as reference points shift, or as friends disappoint—
“My God, my God,” Jesus cries, “why have you abandoned me?”  And yet, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
That is the emptiness of taking the cross.  That is losing your life.  That is trust that the God into whose hands we give everything is “for us”; that he who gave everything up for us, will not give us up!; that, in fact, he will give us all good things—clothed better than the flowers, fed better than the birds, loved better than  the child loved by the best of earthly parents.
Taking up the cross is not about devising a spiritual discipline, praying a prayer list, giving something away (for Lent!).  Taking up the cross is about relationship.  It is about will.  It is about identity.  Ultimately it is about shifting our minds from “what could I do?” and “what could I want?” and “what could I be?” to “what has God done, for me?” and “what does God will for me?” and “what has God made me to be?”.
There is an old phrase that we use in the Church that talks about God’s “plan of salvation”.  When we “take up the cross” we are not taking that plan into our control, but are recognizing that God’s plan of salvation takes us up into it, into his will, into his love.  Abraham was taken up into that by giving up country, culture, home, status, security and receiving in return all the wealth of all the blessing of God—all of which had not been part of his plans, nowhere on his list.  But out of it he became a conduit of God’s blessings to all the nations of the world.  St Paul, who we heard today talking about and admiring the faith of Abraham, had had a similar challenging lesson about being taken up into God’s plan.  Paul had been turned around in his own life, giving up his ‘religiosity’, giving up his ‘expertise’, giving up his perfection and status and authority and power, giving up his sense of security and even giving up his concept of what constitutes real ‘health’ and ‘strength’ and, in return ended up knowing the liberation of grace—of receiving rather than earning or commanding.  He gave up what was his whole world and received an unexpected gift which, in turn, he would never give up even if the whole world were offered back to him.
Pastor David Stolz gave us, the pastors in his care, a little wooden cross he had made for each of us—just the right size to hold on to comfortably—big enough to fill your hand.  In prayer, in thinking, or in sharing with another who needs to be reminded of the grace of God…
In a way you might say that in order to take up the cross, we have to put the “wish list” down.  In holding the cross (and being held by it) our hands are actually freed, our eyes are freed, our minds are freed, our lives are freed to focus fully on the gracious will of God.  [In the garden Jesus prayed, as he was about to be taken up on the cross, “not my will, but your will….”]  The emptiness which comes from handing it over to God actually frees us to receive what does not necessarily appear on our self-made “wish lists”s, and opens us up to experiences of contentment, or healing, or recovery, or service, or generosity, or patience…or love…that we may not otherwise have planned.
In losing what we often think of as “life”, and in taking up the cross, we take up and are taken up by the fullness of God; we hold and are held by the eternal love of God.  The cross and the resurrection are the one place, the one event, the one gift.
James 1:17:  “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father….”  It is the prerogative of the Giver!
Amen.

In 1993 Bette Midler recorded and popularised a song called, ‘From a Distance’. When it first came out there was a buzz of excitement because there was a song about God on the radio. Each verse starts “From a distance’ and the words express the need for harmony and peace in the land and no guns, no hungry people and no disease. And then follows the chorus,
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

But is that really what God is like? God doesn’t watch. We watch. We watch TV. We watch children playing in a playground. We watch circus performers do all kinds of amazing things as they balance, tumble, juggle and perform high above our heads. Watching is a kind of aloof activity; in fact, it can hardly be called an activity. It is passive. When you watch a group of children playing cricket, you aren’t actively participating in the game. You are watching them from a distance.

God doesn’t just watch. He gets in there where the action is. He bats, he bowls, when a kid falls and grazes a knee, he picks them up and dusts them off, wipes a tear from their eye, and with a word of encouragement sends them back into the game. God doesn’t just watch what is happening here on earth from a distance. He comes right down into the thick of things; born in stable, living in a war torn country ruled by unjust and unkind rulers, experienced pain, hunger, thirst, even tempted just as we are, as we heard in the gospel reading today when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

As we begin this Lenten season again we become aware once again that God isn’t watching us from a distance, in his Son Jesus he gets down and gets dirty. The reading today from Peter’s First Letter highlights this when the apostle says,

“Christ died for sins once for all”, and then a few verses later says, “Christ suffered physically” (4:1) and a bit earlier we hear “Christ suffered for you” (2:21). Peter is saying what the New Testament states again and again, as in Romans 5:8, “While we were still sinners that Christ died for us!”

We have heard words like “Christ suffered” and “Jesus died” so many times that I wonder whether we have lost the true impact of what these simple, yet very complex words, are saying to us. It’s only when we look at other words connected with Jesus suffering that we start to get an idea of what is being talked about. Words like ‘abused’, ‘rejected’, ‘beaten’, ‘whipped’, ‘mocked’, ‘pain’, ‘agony’, ‘wounds’, ‘crown of thorns’, ‘nails’, ‘put to death’. When we hear these words we realise that the word ‘suffer’ is a very intense word. We talk about the pain that a paper cut sends through our finger to our brain or the suffering that a backache causes us or a twisted ankle. But this kind of suffering pales into insignificance when we talk about the extreme suffering that Jesus experienced. It’s true some people have suffered extreme pain to a similar degree as Christ suffered and maybe it’s these people who have a sense of something of the suffering that Jesus went through.

But here is the dilemma with which the New Testament confronts us. When we say that Jesus suffered, we are saying, God suffers, God feels pain. To our human mind this is not possible. When we think of God we think of him being so different to us. We are mortal, God is immortal. We are weak, God is strong. We have limited knowledge, God knows everything. We are sinners, God is holy and perfect. It would be natural to follow on and say, “We suffer, God doesn’t suffer”.

But that’s precisely the point that the New Testament is making. God does suffer. There are those who say that God is just a creation of over active imaginations. But if God is just made up by the human imagination, I’m certain that the God we would create would not be a suffering God. Paul backs this up by saying to the Corinthians that the whole idea of God suffering on a cross is utter foolishness to our human way of thinking – ‘a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles’ (1 Cor 1:18-31).

Some Christians don’t like to focus too much on the suffering and death of Jesus. Some prefer to talk of him being Lord and King and that’s okay but let’s not forget that he is also a suffering God, a servant God. Suffering God and Servant God might seem like a contradiction in terms but that’s they way God is.

The New Testament doesn’t avoid talk about God suffering because this is central to God’s plan to save all people. Already in the Old Testament there is a connection between the saviour, the Messiah and suffering. In Isaiah we read,
“He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering ….
He was despised, and we esteemed him not;….
he was pierced for our transgressions …
and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:3-6)

We have a God who suffered. When we see God in pain on the cross, we know that this God understands my pain. You see God knows and understands what it’s like to lose a child, to be abused, rejected, humiliated, a social outcast because he hasn’t just watched from a distance, he hasn’t even saved humanity from a distance.
He came to earth and was hated, tortured, made a laughing stock, abused, humiliated, and suffered to the point of death, even death on a cross. As we go through Lent which includes the events that happened between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, we need to remember, more than ever, that our God is a suffering God.

That’s the reason why a cross is so central to a Christian place of worship. We can sandpaper and smooth down the cross. We can make it into a nice piece of jewellery. Whether the cross is plain empty cross, or a crucifix with the image of Jesus on it, it doesn’t matter. No matter how much we pretty up the cross, it is always in instrument of suffering; a reminder of excruciating agony and death. In Jesus’ case, the cross is a symbol of an innocent man suffering because of the wickedness of others. The cross can never be anything else but a symbol of suffering and death.

When we see Jesus on the cross, blood dripping down his face, his naked body bleeding from the cruel whipping, hands and feet nailed to its beams, it’s hard to imagine that this is God. In faith we can see beyond all that and realise that this is God’s love at work on the cross bringing us salvation and eternal life. Through the vulnerability and weakness displayed on the cross, God brings his love, power and grace to us. We may think that this is a strange thing for God to do but it’s all about God’s love for us.

Peter goes on and reminds us of another strange way that God comes to us when he says, “baptism now saves you”. Again this is a very strange thing for God to do. Very unimpressive. Very boring. Very ordinary. But very God!

Water, very ordinary water renews, cleanses, brings us under God’s grace and claims us as his children. When we look at water it’s hard to see how God can do anything fantastic through something so plain, so uninteresting. But that’s the way God often chooses to work in our lives. He calls ordinary people like you and me. In baptism God calls people who have ordinary jobs, ordinary lives, and live amongst ordinary people and joins their name with his name. In this way we are joined with the powerful God who empowers and enables ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

There is a message here for our lives as Christians. The question that confronts us then is this: Are we Christians ‘from a distance’? Just as Jesus didn’t deal with humanity’s problems from a distance neither are we called to deal with the hurts, troubles and pains that afflict the people around us from a distance. Often it means getting down to be with them and understand them and getting dirty to help them. Is this what Jesus was getting at when he washed his disciples feet on the night before he suffered and died? He was a true servant, getting down on his knees, taking dirty feet into his hands and washing them. This was a foreshadowing of the kind of servant role that he will take up as he suffers on the cross. Doesn’t he also say, “I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you”?

This is what discipleship is all about.
It might be risky.
It might mean being a friend to someone whom everyone else ignores.
It might mean giving others time, money and help that you can’t really afford.
It might even mean putting your comfort and reputation on the line.
But in the end it’s the only way that we can be true disciples of Jesus. Up close and personal, understanding and full of compassion for where the person is at, ready to do whatever is necessary to provide relief and comfort. End goal of discipleship does not include ‘watching from a distance’.

As we move through this Lenten season we ask that the Holy Spirit would prepare us for the suffering God, the God who mixes it with the muck of our lives, who mixes with our pain, who suffers alongside us. Let’s thank God that he was prepared to do more than watch us from a distance but was prepared to get up close and personal for us. We pray that we might do the same for others.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy