Ever wondered what it would be like to fly? I don’t mean flying in a plane, or dangling beneath a kite or parachute.I mean sticking your arms out like a bird, or out front like superman if you like, and soaring above the earth; banking over the forests; skimming over the rivers; darting through mountain canyons; diving down and scaring the living daylights out of the members of your family; breathing deeply in the fresh air of free and effortless flight! And if you are someone who is scared of heights, imagine if you had no such fear. You could come and fly with the rest of us.

From the early pages of history people have looked at the birds and wanted to fly. You may have seen on TV people flying in a wind tunnel but that’s not soaring high above the clouds. You have seen people jump out of perfectly good planes and ‘fly’ at least for a while, but gravity does it job and the skydiver has no choice but to pull the ripcord on his parachute.

I’m sure every kid at some time has wanted to fly. Maybe it’s been a theme in your dreams but like all dreams there comes a rude awakening when you wake up and discover that you are still a prisoner of gravity. As much as we really wish we could fly, we have to walk to the bathroom, walk out to the kitchen for breakfast and walk to school or work. We aren’t built for flying.

As adults we don’t think about flying as we did when we were kids. Not only aren’t we built for flying but we also carry a lot of baggage – we carry too much weight. Not only the kind of weight that shows up on the bathroom scales but the weight of worry, anxiety, paying bills, keeping the boss happy, and how our health crisis will turn out. All this weighs us down.

If you own your own business and you wonder if you’ve thought about everything and planned for every contingency. You do care about those who work for you, and you realise that there may come a time when you will have to put off some of them. And this weighs you down.

Then there’s your family. The people you love. You see your parents getting older; perhaps becoming infirm. You see your children struggling in this or that. Perhaps you’ve hit a rough patch in your marriage. When you were a kid love wasn’t so difficult and so demanding. But that’s because you were mostly on the receiving end of it. And now you are called to be the one who gives it; called to be the one who loves. This too can weigh you down.

So what about those dreams of flying high above the world in complete freedom and in the open spaces where there is not a worry in the world? Nah! Not anymore! Life is way too heavy to entertain such thought. Flying – that’s okay for kids to dream about because they don’t have the worries we have but for us the world is too real. A bit like gravity – we can’t ever get away from it.

And yet, what does the text from Isaiah say? “Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary.” Hmmm. “They will rise on wings like eagles”. With renewed strength they will soar above the earth with the powerful wings of an eagle. I don’t know about you, but Isaiah’s got my attention! Suddenly my childhood interest in being able to fly is renewed. Floating, drifting, circling, free as a bird. Is there a way to overcome the gravity of our lives, a way to lighten our loads, a way rise above it all? Is this just a dream, wishful thinking, belonging to the world of fantasy along with fairies, flying dragons and magic carpets?

Just to put these words about flying like eagles into context. The prophet Isaiah was writing to the people of Israel during a time, when they felt like their strength was sapped and they had no hope. Like us, they were worried. The news wasn’t good. The dreadful Assyrians were breathing down their necks, and later it would be the Babylonians who would take them all away to live in exile. As they thought about all the stuff that was happening around them, they were weighed down and overwhelmed by the seriousness of their situation.

They started to say things like, “God doesn’t really care about me! How can he? Look at all this bad and difficult stuff that is happening all around us. He’s not really in charge of things!” (Isaiah 40:27).

You see what was happening here? They began to see their problems as being bigger than God himself. They forgot that the creator of everything, the everlasting Lord, whose love for his people means he will never grow tired of helping them, just might be able to help them with all their worries.

You see over the years a subtle exchange had taken place. They exchanged their faith in God for a kind of do-it-yourself kind of attitude. We do the exact same thing! This DIY kind of Christianity excludes God from certain areas of our lives. I know God is there but I can handle this myself.
“Let’s see, my work, hmm, no that’s not God’s problem.
Finances, no. I can fix that.
Relationship problems, no. That’s my responsibility.
My love life, no God doesn’t know anything about that, that’s my area.”

Without even giving it too much thought we exclude God from different aspects of our lives. We can fix it we say and maybe it works okay for a time. But then we begin to feel the weight. Our blood pressure rises. We toss and turn. We get sick. We become depressed. The joy goes out of our lives. We despair. We slowly realise that the DIY approach isn’t all that successful after all.

I’m sure that a lot us, including myself, have to admit to doing this at some time, if not more often than we care to admit. We sideline God and try to be our own god. We believe that we can do it alone, but that’s something God never intended us to be. God didn’t make us to stand alone against everything that threatens our safety and happiness. God made us to rely on him.

This is where Isaiah comes in and we have this wonderful passage that was read earlier. He asks, “How can you be so dumb. Don’t you know who stretched out the heavens, made the earth and filled it with people? Don’t you know that it is God who created the stars? There are millions of them, and yet he knows when one of them is missing and if God knows each individual star, it follows that he knows each one of us personally and calls us by name. He knows when we are in trouble. No one can ever accuse God of turning a deaf ear to our needs.

Then comes these wonderful words,
“Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God; he created all the world.
He never grows tired or weary.
No one understands his thoughts.
He strengthens those who are weak and tired. 
Even those who are young grow weak; young people can fall exhausted. 
But those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed.
They will rise on wings like eagles;
they will run and not get weary;
they will walk and not grow weak.” (40:28-31)

Jesus affirmed what Isaiah said when he said things like, “Come to me, all of your who are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” or “Your heavenly Father knows all about the sparrows even though there are so many of them and he knows when a hair falls from your head. In the same way, he knows each of us intimately and personally” or “I am the good shepherd and I know each of my sheep and if one should get lost, I will go so far as to sacrifice my life to rescue that lost one”.

Jesus assures us that there is not a moment when we are not under his love and care. Yes, there will be times when we will intentionally and unintentionally lock him out of our lives. There will be times when we could have saved ourselves a heap of stress and pressure if only we had trusted in the Lord for help and realised that he is ready, willing and able to give us renewed strength and a fresh outlook on life and its problems.

The apostle Paul realised that he knew what he ought to do and trust God more but found more often than not that he did what he knew he shouldn’t do. There were times when he was physically exhausted and drained, not knowing what will happen to him next. But in each case he came back to this one point, “God can raise me above all this. His love is so powerful that I can be confident, content, and certain no matter what the circumstances. The Lord will help me to face each thing that terrifies me and give me the strength to continue”. In the end Paul says, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

As Isaiah said, “Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles; they will run and not get weary; they will walk and not grow weak”.

In other words, trusting in God to give us the strength that is beyond our own strength to deal with any situation, we can rise on wings like eagles. We can fly. We can soar high above our problems; we can fly free with the sky as the limit. God wants us to fly like eagles.

When we trust in God and his love for us and entrust our lives to the one who gave his life for us on the cross, everything else is dwarfed in comparison to the largeness and authority of the Lord. He is bigger than any problem we might face. And as we learn to trust him, we begin to see things from his perspective. He draws us upward in faith, so that we begin to get a bird’s eye view of things, or more correctly, a God’s eye view of things.

Remember the dreams about flying, the fantasy stories like Peter Pan where children could fly; well they are not too far off the mark. We too can fly even though our feet never leave the ground. We can rise above everything threatens our security with a strength that comes from God. “Those who trust in the Lord for help will find their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles”.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy

A  young girl was reading her Bible on a bus.  A grumpy looking, overweight man sat down next to her and noticed what she was reading.  After some muttering and mumbling that she didn’t really understand he asked, “Do you believe everything in the Bible?”  And she said, “Yes, I do.”
He kept on, “You mean to tell me you believe that Jonah lived for three days in the belly of a whale?”
The girl answered, “Yes.”  The man persisted, “Well then how do you explain that?”
The girl answered, “I can’t, but I believe it.”
The man became more agitated and said.  “Young lady, you should be able to explain what you believe!”
The girl then said, “I don’t know exactly how Jonah survived but I’ll ask him when I get to heaven.”
Then sarcastically, the man asked, “And what if Jonah didn’t make it to heaven?”  And she replied, “Then you can ask him.”

The story about Jonah and the big fish has always been a favourite with children.  It has something of a fairy tale quality about it.  It’s a story that appeals to the imagination.  This is a story about one of God’s most reluctant prophets who is told to go to Nineveh – that hated, despised, despotic Near Eastern power that had caused so much suffering in Israel.  Jonah is to preach against their wicked ways but he doesn’t want to do it.

The Ninevites had caused so much grief and pain to the people in the surrounding countries so why should he go there as God’s messenger and call them to change their ways?  They won’t change and Jonah didn’t want them to change. They only deserved God’s condemnation and punishment.  Jonah knew that God was loving and merciful and that he was great on giving second chances (see 4:2) but as far as the Ninevites are concerned they don’t deserve a second chance?  Why should such a horrible, cruel and merciless people be given the opportunity to repent and change their ways?  Besides, people like that don’t change.

Even though Jonah tries to ignore God’s call and boards a ship for a place on the edge of the world, God persists and sends a storm and a big fish which swallows Jonah and rescues him from a briny death.  In the belly of this fish Jonah relents and after three days Jonah is coughed up on the beach.

Jonah walks through this enormous city calling out a simple message – not a call to repentance, not a message of God’s love, only a threat, “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!”  It seems as if Jonah is making his message as offensive and as blunt as he possibly can.  Was he trying to prove a point to God, “See, people like this don’t change”?

Jonah wasn’t rejected as a crackpot.  A miracle happens.  The entire city from the king down to the poorest peasant believed God’s message.  Even the sheep and cattle are involved.  Everyone wears sackcloth and ashes and prays that God will not destroy them.

This is a preacher’s dream. A whole city of people turning to God.
In spite of his reluctance,
regardless of his lousy attitude that the people of Nineveh weren’t worth it,
and apart from his very blunt message,
the whole city fell on its knees in repentance and prayer.  Jonah had only just begun walking through this huge city; with such little effort on his part the response was overwhelming.

Jonah’s half-hearted efforts resulted in Nineveh’s wholehearted response.  Jonah was wrong.  People like that do change.  The one person in the whole story who found it difficult to change was Jonah himself.  Reading on further in the book of Jonah we find that he becomes angry and disgusted with God’s whole attitude in this affair.  Jonah becomes angry because God is not.  Jonah wanted justice not grace, punishment not forgiveness.  In fact, by the end of the story we aren’t even too sure if Jonah himself changed.

What are we to make of this whole story about Jonah?  As I said at the beginning this Old Testament story makes a great story for children but what message does God want to convey to us today?

Well, most importantly this is a story of God’s love and mercy.  Look how often God was patient with the hard-headed and ignorant Jonah.  If it was up to us we would have given up on this idiot long ago.  We would have come to the conclusion that he will never change, he is too wrapped up in his own ideas and his own world that he will never change.  He is too set in his attitude about the Ninevites about the judgement he thinks they deserve, it might be better to choose someone else.

But notice how God comes back to Jonah again and again.  He doesn’t give up.  He rescues him from a watery grave and orders a big fish to swallow Jonah.  He is patient with Jonah’s half-hearted effort in delivering his message, and to top it all off he hangs in there when Jonah becomes angry with God saying, “I knew it!  I knew you would be loving and merciful.  I knew that you would go back on what you said and save the people of Nineveh!”  God was trying to convince Jonah that he loved the people of Nineveh as much as anyone else.

God hasn’t changed one bit from the days of Jonah.  We know how frustrated and impatient we can get with other people and so you can imagine how frustrated and impatient God must get with us. The way we hurt the people around us through our selfishness and lack of consideration and the way we hurt God with our sin must leave him upset and offended.  And yet he doesn’t let this get in the way of his love and mercy and, like he did for Jonah, he comes back to us again and again wanting us to love him, trust him and turn our lives around from self-centredness and sin to lives of love, and patience and understanding.

Just as God spoke his word through Jonah, as poor and inadequate as Jonah’s effort was, he speaks to us through the Bible, through other people, through parents, neighbours and friends, calling us to trust him and believe in him as the God who loved us so dearly that he sent his Son, Jesus into this world to be our Saviour.

The Son of God came to earth and from his earliest days on this earth, he was hated and hunted down by kings and rulers and religious leaders.  He did this because of his love for us.
He lived in this world and endured hunger, pain, thirst, sadness and death that he would not have endured had he stayed in heaven.  He did it for us.
He died, not a peaceful and quiet death, but with nails in his hands and feet, a crown of thorns pressing on his head, because of his love for you and me.
Jesus came to this earth to tell us that believing and trusting in him is the only way to eternal life.  He said it clearly and plainly, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no-one goes to the Father except by me.”

He loves us, loves us, and loves us more and will do anything to ensure that we will live forever in heaven.  Jesus has promised to walk with us all the days of our lives through the ups and downs.  He has assured us that he will always be there for us to call on in times of sickness, sadness, trouble, even death.  The love that God has for us is stated over and over again in the Bible.

That’s how God felt about the people of Nineveh and grumpy Jonah.  That’s the way God feels about you!  But I don’t want to give you the impression that God is an old softie and that he will never condemn anyone.  He does!  Those who insist that believing and trusting in God is nonsense will one day face God’s disappointment and anger.  And who can blame him.  He has given us every opportunity to trust in his love for us and still people turn their backs on him.

The other point that I wish to bring out is that people can change.  There are those who say, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  I’ve lived without God, Jesus and the church for all these years, I can’t change now”.
Others say, “I’ve lived with this hatred for so long I can’t stop,”
or “My sexual sins, my compulsive gambling, my alcoholism (or whatever) are so much a part of my life I can’t stop,”
or “I can’t help being rude and unkind to that person.”

A counsellor of many years once said that the one thing he had learned in counselling people with problems is that “people almost never change.  Change, real change, is rare.”  Perhaps that counsellor was having a bad day when he said that.  Perhaps he was like Jonah – not believing that God has the power to bring about change in the lives and hearts on the people of Nineveh.

This is where faith comes in.
Faith is the willingness to be amazed, shocked by the surprising changes that God can bring about in our lives.
Faith is the willingness to be surprised at the depth and power of God’s love for us and his constant willingness never to give up on us.
Faith is the willingness to believe the power that the Gospel can have in changing the direction of our lives.
Faith is the willingness to believe that with God’s power in our lives we can change.

The first words Jesus preached after his baptism were “turn away from your sin and believe.”  They are as relevant to us today as they were when they were first spoken.  When we take God seriously, don’t be surprised when he challenges us to make some radical and risky changes in our lives.  In fact, just when we have our world settled, fixed, finished, God comes along with his amazing grace and turns our whole life around.  That’s what happened at Nineveh when Jonah preached.  And that’s what happens when God and his never-ending love touches our lives.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy

Mark 1:21-28

There is little doubt after reading today’s gospel reading that evil exists.  But if you take notice of what happens when Jesus speaks with authority, it also exits.  When Jesus tells the evil spirit to be quiet and come out of the man in the synagogue, it obeys him, it comes out, although with a shriek and not quietly.  But does evil still exist?  If we look around us in the world we can say honestly, categorically and perhaps even with authority that yes evil does still exist.

Now we may not see people like the man in the synagogue that Jesus encountered, but I’m sure you’ve all heard stories about people who have been possessed by evil spirits or demons.  There are accounts of things going wrong when exorcisms have been performed without proper authority and there’s an article on the Lutheran Church of Australia website that gives an account of an ‘unlikely Lutheran’ who has in his past experienced the presence of evil spirits.  So that kind of evil is still around today.  But on the whole we avoid talking about such things, they are perhaps taboo.  Even to the point that I’ve avoided a children’s address today because the subject matter isn’t necessarily ‘G” rated.

But there are some important things to notice about this account that Mark recorded for us as Jesus first act in his ministry that we need to hear about and understand.  This man while being possessed by an evil spirit was in the synagogue, not waiting outside, but inside, a part of the group.  Then when Jesus walked up the man called out to Jesus and said, “What do you want with us Jesus of Nazareth, have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are – the Holy One of God.”  This evil spirit knew exactly who Jesus was, who he represented and what he was capable of, and it feared him and what he was about to do.

It’s important to note that Jesus had the power and authority over the evil spirit.  You may have also noticed that at the beginning of the reading the people of Capernaum were amazed at Jesus teaching in the synagogue because he spoke with such authority.  Jesus has authority over the word and over evil spirits and over us too.  He is after all the Holy One of God.

So what does this mean for us?  As I look around the congregation I see no-one who appears to be possessed by an evil spirit like the one in our gospel.  I can’t know for sure, but I’m fairly certain.  What if we think of the evil things in our lives that are more insidious and hidden, that we might not even see as evil?

What about things in our lives that become strongholds for us, things that demand our attention night and day, things that we hide from our friends, family, workmates etc.  Are there things in your life that have become stumbling blocks to you and maybe even those around you?

For the Corinthians it was an issue of eating food that had been offered to idols.  If it led to confusion and caused others to sin, then Paul said to do away with it, stop, cease!

You could say that any addiction is a stronghold or a stumbling block to you and potentially those around you.  Let’s think about a few of those things.  Mobile phones have become a bit of an addiction haven’t they?  I challenge you to walk into any restaurant, fast food or otherwise and not see people sitting across a table from one another staring at the screen of their mobile phone.  This damages natural relationships, rather than interacting with those who are sitting right there with us we are distracted by the people within the screen or the games that exist on them.  And I’m not saying I’m exempt from this either, I’m as guilty as the next person!

This helpful and seemingly harmless piece of technology now rules our lives.  We feel naked if we leave home without them, we grab for ours when someone else gets a call and even if we know it’s not our ringtone we still take the opportunity to check ours anyway.  (I even found myself stopping as I was writing this because I ‘needed’ to check my emails and others messaging systems).

Then of course there are the more obvious things like drugs, alcohol, gambling, smoking, or even pornography those things that are addictions in the traditional sense of the word.  These too have an impact on our own lives and our relationships with others.  Some of them bring about deceit and lying, covering up the habit or addiction if someone else has a low opinion of it or might find out.  Maybe it’s because if others find out it could be a stumbling block and cause them to do it as well, but more than likely it is through a sense of guilt or shame.  We generally have a bit of an idea that something we are doing is either wrong or not good for us.

There are a few way of going about dealing with this.  Jesus said to the evil spirit “Be quiet” and “Come out of him.”  With God’s help we can do that too.  Some things like alcohol and drugs require professional assistance and a time of detox and rehabilitation to be free from them, others require admitting that they are a problem and then making a decision to say enough is enough.  It may surprise you but confession and absolution can have an amazing effect on the person who feels guilty for the things they have been up to.  Speaking the truth to someone in confidence and knowing that it is never going to be spoken about outside of that discussion has an amazing sense of a weight being lifted.  A problem shared is a problem halved is quite true.  Then to add to that the hearing of God’s forgiveness for you through his Son Jesus has the most power and authority of all, the result is as if a demon has been cast out of us.

It’s funny how little coincidences occur, but as I was writing this on Wednesday out there in the kitchen I was on shuffle on iTunes and the Tim McGraw song Angel Boy came on.  It goes something like this:

My mother said there’s only one way
Sweet angel boy, narrow and straight
Time it has passed, teachings they fade
Now her angel boy has gone astray

I’ve held the hand of the devil, felt his breath on my skin
Dip me into the water, wash me again
Can I still be forgiven for all of these things?
Or have I gone too far now
Have I lost my wings?

I found me a priest, I spoke my mind
Asked if I’d sinned one too many times
He said, “My Son, you’re only a man”
Then I said, “Sir, you don’t understand”

I’ve held the hand of the devil, felt his breath on my skin
Dip me into the water, wash me again
Can I still be forgiven for all of these things?
Or have I gone too far now
Have I lost my wings?

Here’s the good news, no matter what we’ve done, we don’t need to be rebaptised, once is enough for all time.  Jesus has all authority and he has passed it on to us.  Whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  There is nothing we can do to cause God to love us any less.  He wants to save us and forgive us.  He went to extraordinary lengths to achieve it.

He is the only true stronghold in our lives, cling to him, live in his love and claim that love and forgiveness for yourself.

Amen.

There is a word picture that I want to focus on today. It appears in the account of Jesus’ baptism in Mark’s Gospel when we are told that heaven opened up. This picture is used on numerous occasions in the Old Testament. Ezekiel begins his book saying, “The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1). The prophet Malachi records God’s words, “I will open the windows of heaven and flood you with blessing after blessing” (3:10). Perhaps one of the most well known references to the ‘windows of heaven’ is in the early chapters of Genesis (7:11) at the time of the Flood when we are told that “the windows of heaven were thrown open” (though some translators prefer “floodgates” instead of windows).

It seems that every time ‘the windows of heaven’ are mentioned we get a glimpse of God and see something of who he is – one who blesses and gives generously or one who takes sin seriously. Even when people like Isaiah or Daniel or John in the Book of Revelation receive a vision of God and heaven, it is as if they are looking through a window into heaven and seeing what no one else has seen before.

When the windows of heaven open there are no barriers between earth and heaven. Human prayers freely ascend and divine blessings descend without hindrance. There is a connection between the divine and the human.

However, at the time of Jesus people believed the windows of heaven had been closed. Longingly they looked back to the stories of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, King David, Amos, Isaiah and Ezekiel when there was a good deal of communication between heaven and earth. God would come down and talk to people like Abraham and Moses, or he would rain down manna from the heavens, or open the windows of heaven during a time of drought, or give his messengers visions that would reveal to them the glory and majesty of their God. It seemed that the windows of heaven were always open in those blessed days.

But now it seemed that the heavens were closed. There were now no famous prophets, no new law givers, no singers of new psalms. No outpouring of the Spirit, no new word from God. There was nothing new coming from God and they deeply mourned the continued silence. This made the promise of the messiah even more important because surely then the windows of heaven would be open again and God would pour down new blessings on his people.

People gathered at the Jordan River wondering if John was the one who would once again open the windows of heaven for his people. Jesus was baptised by John. The gospel writer, Mark, states that immediately the heavens were opened and the Spirit came down like a dove on Jesus of Nazareth. Then a voice spoke from the heavens. It was the voice of God saying, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you” (Mark 1:11)

For the early Christians who read the accounts of Jesus baptism recorded by the gospel writers this opening of the window of heaven, the dove and the voice of God were so exciting. The waiting, the longing and the grieving were over. The gates of heaven were now wide open; the Word was speaking, the Holy Spirit was active. It was now a time for celebration.

John records the testimony of John the Baptist about what happened that day. We read, “I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and stay on him. … I tell you that he is the Son of God” (John 1:32-34).

Let’s step from that situation by the Jordan River to today.  Every so often in a casual conversation a comment like this is made when the topic of God comes up.
“Maybe there is some kind of a God. I believe there is some kind of a power that keeps the world going and maybe that’s God. But if that is the case, God must be so far away that the affairs of this world are of little importance to him. When I hear of children being blown to bits in a senseless bombing attack, or people dying of starvation or innocent people being murdered on the streets of our own cities, I see no sign of God’s presence; I hear no word from God. It is as if he doesn’t exist. If he does surely he would do something about the mess our world is in.”

I wonder if the people of Jesus’ time felt something similar. They had been subjected to Roman rule which at times was quite harsh. Babies were massacred in Bethlehem by their own king. The temple had been corrupted as a place of worship – a place where you could find God if he was to be found anywhere – and yet God did nothing about it. It was as if the windows of heaven were closed and God couldn’t even see what was going on.

I wonder if the disciples felt this when they saw Jesus nailed to a cross. They saw his agony, they heard his cries, they saw him give his last breath but the heavens were silent. Not a word from God. It was as if God had closed the window and let Jesus die at the hands of evil people.

Is it that many people don’t believe in God because they don’t see any evidence that God has anything to do with our world or is it because they don’t recognise God’s voice and what he does for them? Remember that John the Baptist saw the heavens open and believed but many to whom he told this didn’t believe and he lost his head over it.

According to history, James Whittaker saw the heavens open and believed. Who was James Whittaker? He was a member of the hand-picked crew that flew a Liberator bomber to where the war was being fought in the Pacific. On board was Eddie Rickenbacker who had been sent to meet with General MacArthur and see first hand what was happening. In October of 1942, Rickenbacker and the crew were reported lost at sea. Somewhere over the Pacific, the navigation equipment failed, the plane ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean dangerously close to the enemy. The nine men, some injured during the crash, floated in 3 rafts. They battled the heat, the storms, and the water. Sharks – some 10 feet long – would ram their 9 foot rafts. After only 3 days their rations ran out. It would take a miracle to survive.

On the morning of the 8^th day Rickenbacker leaned his head back against the raft and pulled his hat over his eyes. A seagull landed on his head. He peered out from under his hat. Every eye was on him. Rickenbacker caught it, and the crew ate it. The bird’s intestines were used for bait to catch fish . . . and the crew survived 24 days at sea to tell the story. What a miracle!!

In 1985 at a reunion of the crew and their families, Mrs Whittaker spoke about another miracle. “The real miracle”, she said, “was not a bird on the head of Eddie Rickenbacker – but a change in the heart of my husband. The greatest event of that day was not the rescue of a crew, but the rescue of a soul. You see, my husband was an unbeliever. The plane crash didn’t change his unbelief. The days facing death in the life raft didn’t cause him to reconsider his destiny. In fact, my husband grew irritated when one of the crew continually read his Bible privately and aloud. … It was right after one of those morning Bible readings that the seagull landed on Rickenbacker’s hat. And at that moment, my husband became a believer.” James Whittaker wrote a book about all this and concludes with these words, “During those blazing days out there I found my God”. (You can read this book online http://www.ccel.us/angelssing.toc.html).

Perhaps it might have been better to say that during those blazing days out there on the sea in a raft, the heavens opened, God came down in the form of a seagull, and Whittaker saw God’s hand in his rescue and believed. Some would say that the appearance of the seagull was fate or a coincidence.
Would God really go to so much effort to save 8 men while the rest of the world was locked in a deadly battle for freedom and thousands of people were dying in Europe and the Pacific?
Would the Maker of the universe really go to such lengths as to send a missionary seagull to give its life to save not only the lives of those men but also to reveal to them that God really does care? Would God really do this?

John the Baptist and James Whittaker would say, “Too right. Of course, he does!” The heavens opened and there was a connection between the divine and the human. They experienced God reaching down to them and showing them his love and grace as they realised that God had come down for them. Jesus is real. His love is real. He wants all people to know that their sins have been dealt with and that he has made it possible for God and humans to be connected. He came so that we can enjoy the presence of God in our lives as we battle the storms and dangers that come our way in the same way that Whittaker came to see that God had everything to do with the incredible rescue of those in the rafts.

Isn’t that how it still is for us? The windows of heaven are opened. Jesus’ life and death embody the opening of the heavens. Open! Absolutely open!  God with us! The heavens open and we get a glimpse of God through
Jesus’ love for people, his teaching through the parables;
his healing of the sick, his touching of lepers, his table fellowship with sinners;
his embrace of those who were socially unacceptable;
his last supper with his friends, his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane;
his betrayal, arrest, abuse, torture, and his staggering to Golgotha;
his crucifixion and concern for a thief at his side,
his death and burial, and then the wonder of Easter Day and his living presence among his disciples.
Jesus opened the heavens and showed us the heart of God the Father while he was here on earth.  He still does this for us today.

No matter what our feelings are telling us at any particular moment, the heavens are definitely open, declares the Gospel. No matter what our mood, the heavens are open.

There may be times when we feel that the windows of heaven are shut. We may have grey times, when the feeling of God’s absence blots out any warmth that we might get from sun (son). We may feel that way but in truth the heavens are never closed. Never! In Christ and through Christ they are open! The negative feelings and moods that we may sometimes have don’t determine the status of the windows of heaven or God’s relationship with us. That has been determined by Christ Jesus. God’s promises, the grace of Jesus Christ, the Spirit, our adoption by God as his children in baptism and every day, and the gift of Jesus’ body and blood in the sacrament assure us that heaven’s windows are never shut. God’s loving heart is always available.

When Jesus was baptised the heavens opened and a dove came down on Jesus. Ever since, the heavens have been open and God’s Spirit comes down on us to challenge us to deal with some aspect of our lives, to offer us support in our struggles, to give us comfort in our grief, to assure us of his grace and mercy, to challenge us to respond with faith and obedience.

In Jesus, the words of the prophet come true, “I will open the windows of heaven and flood you with blessing after blessing”.

© Pastor Vince Gerhardy