Category: Epiphany

Epiphany 5 Isaiah-40:21-31 and Mark 1:29-39   God4me

I have on me, a good pair of walking shoes, a hat, a walking stick, a back pack with food and water.  Also, if I am really going to get up close and personal with nature, I am going to need these; binoculars.   Most people love to go bushwalking and get close to nature; to get away from it all and find rest and even themselves, in the beauty and grandeur of creation.

When I picked up my Subaru in Wollongong, I got talking with the previous owner about my job and how my role is to bring God’s word and grace to people; I work to bring people closer to God.  The young man replied saying ‘When I surf, I am close to God; the beach is my church and while I am riding the waves, I am closest to God; in nature and in the waves is where I find peace for my soul.’

When we go sight seeing, it is so easy to lose ourselves to its beauty and wonder.  The next slides explain what I mean (slides of nature).  The beauty of creation relates to us in some spiritual way and makes us feel close to God, or for many, like the surfer, closer to some spiritual force.  This is not uncommon and even biblical.  St Paul says ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities– his eternal power and divine nature– have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.’

St Paul is right, for Christians, a walk through nature can make us feel closer to God and as we look through the binoculars at the view, or look through them into the heavens, and we try to grasp the awesomeness and glory of God, we might want to recite the words of Isaiah ‘God sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.’

Perhaps we may even begin to sing the words of popular Christian songs which focus on God’s power and glory ‘Our God is an awesome God, he reigns on heaven and earth, yes, God is an awesome God.’  Or ‘Proclaim your awesome power, declare your mighty deeds and my eyes always look to you and I am captured by your majesty’.

Yes, God is indeed awesome as he says ‘To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? Yet, is this how God wants us to know him, in his power and majesty, and is this the way God assures us that he loves us.  Perhaps the surfboarder is right?  Perhaps creation is the church of God; nature is where we are closest to God and in his glory and majesty is where can come to know him best?”  Perhaps our focus on sin and the cross, suffering and servant hood, word and sacrament is not authentic Christianity; its not how God would want to be known?

If the surfboarder is right, and God is to be known best by his power and glory in nature, what sort of God would we have when we see this (pictures of destruction).  When we try and come close to God only in his majesty and power, only in his creation, we are going to get burnt like a moth to a flame.  One moment the flame of creation and God’s majesty is beautiful, the next, it can destroy us and our faith that God is love.   One moment we can be praising God as awesome, the next moment, we can hate him because he destroyed all we have, like Job experienced.

God is indeed awesome and glorious, as shown by his creation, but to only know God in his glory is to have an uncertain God; a God of contradictions.  A God who is two faced; a God of beauty and destruction, of glory and anguish, of life and death, of love and hate.  We don’t know for sure if God loves us or hates us. To trust God because he is an awesome God, will only leave us uncertain and in doubt when suffering or when we fall into sin and constant temptation.  The unanswerable and age old question stunts our faith ‘how can a loving God allow suffering?’

Yes, we believe God is awesome, as we say in our, “I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth”.  But the true awesomeness and wonder of God is not that he is sovereign over us, not that he created heaven and earth, not that we cannot compare him? Or that no one is his equal?  For us, the real miracle of God is that he came to us in his Son Jesus.  He made his heart and love known to us in Jesus, ‘Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.’

The uncertainty and contradictions we have of God are totally dismissed when we place our trust in Jesus.  In him we truly know God and his will for us sinners.  In today’s gospel Jesus clearly demonstrates God’s love and his willingness to heal and restore human life, even in the midst of suffering.

Simon’s mother-in law was suffering a bad fever when Jesus healed her, clearly demonstration God’s love.  Yet he didn’t stop there, Jesus, as a way of showing the will of God towards us, heals many with sicknesses and demons, as Mark records ‘the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases.’

Jesus showed the love God has for us throughout his whole earthly ministry, not in glory and signs and wonders, but by healing, cleansing and restoring people caught in suffering; people like you and I.  (slide) Yet even more than this, we have a graphic and compelling demonstration of God’s love for us, when Jesus suffered and died for our sins on the cross.  At this point, with his hands and feet pierced, his blood that run down the cross, cleansed and healed us from all guilt and sin.  Hidden under suffering and death, Jesus brings healing and shows the Father’s love.

For St Paul, the cross was central to faith and the only way we have certainty of salvation, as he says in Romans 5:8 ‘But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’  Knowing God in suffering is to have certainty of faith that he loves us and forgives us, even in the midst of our sinfulness and messed up lives.  Luther called this sort of faith a ‘theology of the cross’.

A theology of the cross is for us, better understood as a ‘faith of the cross’.   A faith of the cross does not try and know God in his glory and majesty.  A faith of the cross does not look for signs and miracles in our life.  A faith of the cross looks for God hidden in suffering and ordinary things.

That same healing power of God and the same love for us that Jesus demonstrated is to be found for us in the sacrament of Holy Communion.  Jesus is hidden, present and available for us in the bread and wine to give us the forgiveness and healing he won for us on the cross.  A faith of the cross, your faith, believes this is true because it does not attempt to find God in his glory, but where he has promised to be found; in his word the bible and in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

We really are in the true church of God; this is authentic Christianity.  So instead of wearing all this sight seeing gear and walking around to find God in his glory and power, we who have a faith of the cross carry around with us the bible, and look, not into binoculars, but into the waters of our baptism to find God.  And we, who have a faith of the cross, don’t drink and eat plain food and water on our journey with God, we have stomachs filled with Jesus body and lips moistened by his blood.  These are the things of God we wear on our earthy journey and wear to give us certainty of salvation.  Amen

Authoritative word Mark 1:21 28

 

President Eisenhower once said ‘Farming looks mighty easy when your plough is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.’  And the famous Lutheran pastor, who was shot by the SS for attempting to assassinate Hitler said ‘It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.’  We love to hear quotes from important people.  This is because words have power when people in authority speak.  We listen to them and act on what they say because of the authority of the person saying them

When a doctor says ‘you are very sick, we instinctively respond and believe exactly what the doctor says; even when we don’t feel sick!  We don’t know why or how we got sick.  We just believe what the doctor says, because his words have authority.  Words of authority bring about change and they bring about action; we want to be healed.  Perhaps you know other examples, like the words of a parent or even a judge.  It is a fact that words and authority combine into action and are change agents.

Mark records an incident in Jesus ministry when his words and authority came together as a change agent to bring about action.  Listen again to what happened when Jesus spoke.  ‘When the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.  Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, “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!”

Jesus spoke and things happen.  Instantly, people recognise Jesus as someone who has authority; someone who knows what he is talking about and embodies his teaching.  His words spoke to their heart and conscience; they are amazed at how his words moved them and acted upon them.  Yet they, like us, should not have been surprised at this, after all, the prophet Isaiah says this about God’s word ‘As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, … so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.’

Yet, just as in Jesus day, so it is today, many people do not want to hear God’s word.  Even many Christians fail to understand the spiritual importance of hearing God’s word.  Perhaps you have been told the bible is just words on a page; a message and nothing more.  I once had a person tell me ‘why should I go to church, the message is all ways going to be the same.  Jesus is always going to rise from the grave; I’ve heard it, nothing’s going to change, I agree with it, so why go?’

Why go to church if the message never changes?  Perhaps we all think this at times, why go to church, nothing changes?  That would be true, if God’s word was only a message on a page, but its not.  God’s word has power and authority, as Jesus says ‘my words are Spirit and they are life.’  What if that man with the evil spirit chose not to come and hear Jesus, would he have known he had an evil spirit?  Would he have been healed? Do you think he knew?  Do you think the others sitting around him that day knew of the spirit with in him?  Of course not.  As he listened, Jesus’ words had an effect on him.  They revealed the sin, removed it and restored this man’s soul; Jesus words and authority are change agents.

As you and I sit hear, listening to God’s word, none of us can fully know and understand just what action and effect his word is having upon us, just like that man with the evil spirit.  God has not given us the privilege of having spiritual eyes to see into our heart, only he can do this, as the psalmist pleads ‘search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.’  His word will reveal the evil and sin hidden within us, or remind us of the sins we try and hide deep within us.

This action of God, where his word convicts us of sin and evil, Luther called the ‘foreign work of God, or his alien work’.  It is where, Luther said, he speaks a word of law and demands an account of what we have done.  It is where he says ‘have you served other God’s?’  Have you taken part in violence?  Do you hold bitterness and anger or partake in wrong sexual acts, all of which attract evil spirits?  It is where he makes us realise we are sick and in need of a physician, as he says in Matthew 9:12 ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.’  The words of Jesus combine with his authority, as change agents, to reveal and deal with the sin in our lives.

However, we dare not stop there!  A doctor doesn’t just diagnose and say ‘you are sick’, then send you on your way.  No, a doctor will immediately say what needs to happen in order for you to be cured; he begins to heal you.  In the same way, God’s word doesn’t stop at its alien work, its work of revealing sin, it also heals and restores.  Jesus said sternly to the man, well, actually to the evil spirit ‘”Be quiet!” “Come out of him!”  The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.’  Jesus’ words combined with his authority as change agents and effected change upon this man’s life; he was healed and restored as a child of God.

This action of the God’s word Luther called God’s ‘proper work’.  The proper work of God’s word is to save and restore; to sanctify and bless, just as a doctor’s proper work is not to diagnose but to heal.  And God does this through the gospel; the word of good news.  St Paul points this out saying ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.’  The gospel is the word of God which declares you right before him; that your sins are forgiven, you are healed and a child of God, because of the atoning death of Jesus on the cross for yours and my sin.

The proper work of God, his healing word, comes to you and me as a change agent through what the church calls sacraments.  It is where God has promised to heal you and give you grace, mercy and forgiveness.  The proper work of God, the pure gospel happens in and through baptism and Holy Communion.  In these, the word and authority of God are change agents, which declare you forgiven, because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.  Many call the sacrament of baptism and Holy Communion, the medicine of eternal life.  We are given them as a doctor gives his patients medicine.

Just as the simple words of Jesus ‘come out!’, sent the evil spirit from the man, Jesus word to you and me, ‘your sins are forgiven’, combined with the water’s of baptism or as we partake in his body and blood in the bread and wine in Holy Communion, send the devil flying.  He has no power over us.  This is the living and active word of God that is a change agent in our life and this is why we continue to come to church and this is why we hear and read God’s word in our homes.

To sum up, let me finish with a quote from John Kleinig, an OT lecturer at Australian Lutheran College, in a book by called ‘Grace upon grace’.  Dr John writes
‘The power of Jesus [word]does not just apply to what happened in Capernaum.  It applies equally, and perhaps even more fully now in the light of Easter, to us and our situation.  All people remain in the darkness until Christ comes and teaches them his Father’s word with authority…with that word he sends Satan and his spirits packing.  Everything, therefore, depends on Christ and his victory.  Through his self-sacrificial death for our sins and his resurrection for our justification he has won the victory for us.’

Amen

 

 

3^rd Sunday after epiphany Mark 1_14-20 good new/bad news

 

“I have some good news and some bad news’, the chair person of the ladies guild said to the pastor.  ‘The good news is that we voted to send you a get well card.  The bad news is the vote passed by 31-30”.

 

Good news/bad news.  “The good news, said the elder to his pastor, is that the congregation accepted your job description just the way you wrote it.  The bad news is that we were so imprest by it, we formed a call committee to find someone to fill the position”.

 

Good news bad news, they always seem to come as one.  When there is good news, there always seems to be bad news, or the other way around, there is always good news in bad news: as the saying goes, ‘there is a silver lining behind every dark cloud’.  Millions are celebrating the good news that the first black man Barak Obama has been installed as the new president of the United States, however, the bad news is, despite all the words of hope and determination, Obama is only one man and only human and we know the record of human attempts to ‘redeem the world’. 

 

We are currently in the church season of Epiphany.  A time set aside in the church to explore the revelation of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ.  It is a time for us to learn about how God reveals himself to us through his word.  The observable fact that good news and bad news come into our lives, gives us a simple but profound way of understanding how God deals with us.  The bad news/good news reality is a formula for understanding the bible or as Martin Luther explained it ‘God always speaks to us in two ways; in law and gospel’.  Understanding God’s word as being both law and gospel is unique to our faith tradition and the simple key that opens the scriptures to us.

 

The first words Jesus spoke in his earthly ministry were words of bad news and good news.  But unlike the good news bad news jokes I just told you, Jesus was not joking when he spoke these words, “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!“  He is not joking about the bad news ‘repent of your sins’, he means it, but just as important he is not joking when he says ‘believe the good news and be saved; believe in me…believe also in the one who sent me.’ 

 

Repent and believe, God’s word of bad news and good news is the simple message of Jesus, and it was the simple message of John the Baptist, of the Apostle Paul, of the bible and is the simple yet life changing word of God to you and me;

 

Law and gospel, the bad news/good news formula is the window which enlightens us to God’s word.  It gives us a paradigm or platform from which to understand our relationship with God and his word to us.  When we read the bible, when we hear God’s word spoken to us, the widow of both bad news/good news together enables us to understand what Jesus means when he says ‘repent and believe.  The bad news ‘repent’ convicts our conscience of sin. 

 

It tells us what God expects of us and reveals to us, that we can never achieve what it demands, as Jesus says “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery (you think you can keep this command, well).’ I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’  The bad news of Jesus’ ‘repent’, tells us that when we read the bible are hear Isaiah say ‘all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.’

 

We can know for certain that even the good we do for others, the good deeds in our service to the church are never good works to impress God enough to get us to heaven.  This is the law, the bad news.

 

The good news however, which must always accompany God’s word of bad news, comforts us and releases us from the terrors of sin and guilt.  It demands nothing of us yet gives everything.  It assures us and gives us certainty that despite our failure to keep what the law demands of us, we are forgiven because of Jesus death on the cross.  This is what Jesus meant when he said ‘believe the good news’.

 

 The goods news is that ‘whoever is baptised and believes will be saved’.  The good news is as  St Paul says ‘there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’.  The good news is as Luther discovered, that we are save by no merits of our own, but by faith alone in Christ alone.  This is the good news Jesus was speaking about and is now speaking to you.

 

The good news is spoken most clearly in Holy Communion.  It is here in this meal, where Jesus says ‘take and drink this IS my body and blood given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.’  We eat and drink pure good news, pure gospel.  The bad news is dealt with and destroyed as we partake of the supper.  Holy Communion is the observable and tangible forgiveness of God.

 

We must in no way confuse this pure good news with the bad news and doubt our forgiveness, doubt the grace of God.  When God forgives it is complete, or in Jesus words on the cross, ‘it is finished’.  When God says it is done, it is final!

 

And with these words of Christ ‘your sins are forgiven’, our Christian life begins.  It begins anew each time we leave the Lord’s Table.  We walk free from here to live our life travelling the road between God’s bad news and good news.  As an analogy similar to our Christian walk between law and gospel, when Julie and I lived in Alice Springs, we decided to travel to Adelaide via an outback road through William Creek.  Well, it rained all night which made the road very muddy and slippery.

 

 I used to wonder why outback roads were so wide when very few cars travelled them.  Now I knew.  When they are wet, the wide road lets you slide from one side of the road to the other around corners.  Bouncing off one embankment you are corrected back to the centre of the road, then as you slip off the other side around the next corner, the embankment corrects your direction and you are able to continue on the road. 

 

The embankments on the wide road keep you from falling off the road into a bog and also keep you going in the right direction; the wide road between the two embankments gives you freedom to negotiate the road.

 

In the same way God’s word of bad news and good news are like the embankments.  As we travel down the wide road of life, when things become slippery and we slid off our Christian walk, God’s word of bad news, calling us to repent, bounces us back onto the road again. It stops us from falling right off and loosing sight of Jesus.  God’s word of good news is the other embankment. 

 

After hitting the bad news we are speared off onto the other side of good news which comforts as and assures us that Jesus as forgiven us and that news sets us on the road of righteousness and the road that leads to eternal life.

 

This is what it means and this is what we do as you and I together live the life and walk the journey to the new Jerusalem between the two words of Jesus ‘repent and believe’.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, there is no sermon today!  Can I leave everything with you- I’m not doing this any more, I am off to follow this guy who came and asked me to join him on a journey.

You can probably now imagine how old man Zebedee felt when his own son’s just up fishing and left him.  Left him with the fish, the cleaning and even with an uncertain future.  Who was Jesus or what did he say to make these men leave everything and follow him?

Simon known as Peter and his brother Andrew where generational fishermen.  From all accounts, they were most likely well known and quite well off in the fishing industry; Peter had his own house and was married.  To suddenly do something as radical as leaving their job to follow Jesus, something special must take place when you follow Jesus.

Have you ever been called to follow?  Was it in a job, or a holiday or when you are learning some thing new- when someone said ‘follow me’.  So what does that entail?  Just mindless repetition, like a parrot that only dictates words and actions?  Or is to ‘follow’ something more?  It must be more than this or you wouldn’t follow; Simon and Andrew wouldn’t leave everything if all it meant was to be like a parrot.  No, to follow is far more.
Unfortunately, to follow is not very popular, who wants to be a learner under the control of someone else!  Yet Matthew makes it crystal clear what it means to be a “Christian.” A Christian is a “disciple” or “follower” of Jesus. Our fundamental identity, who we are as believers in Jesus, is not a “leader” but a “follower” or “companion” of Christ.  Jesus says ‘come, follow me’ not ‘come be a leader and fisher of men.’
Despite Jesus call to first follow, we still seem to chase after conferences on leadership and mission.  Yet has anyone here EVER seen a conference on “followership?” Or how about a conference simply on how to be a better disciple? Isn’t it very interesting how we are more interested in Jesus’ position of “Leader” than in our position of “follower?” Perhaps we are putting the cart by for the horse.  Perhaps we need to take a step back and refocus on what it means to follow and why we are followers of Jesus, before we tackle the mission field.

Let me show you a clip from Finding Nemo.

What happened?  Yes, confusion reigned!  Both were followers, one fish thought she knew how to follow and so called the other to follow, but because both of the fish didn’t know what they were following they both became confused and had to changed direction all the time and in the end never arrived no where.

Yes, to have a good leader is critical, but to know what it means to be good follower is just as important.  Only when we follow, can we truly begin to know the leader.  Only then, will we know where we are going, why we are following and where we will end up. After following, we will then be empowered to bring others with us; to follow along with us.

And the only way we can learn to follow is by following.   Jesus promises to make these fishermen into fishers of men, not by empowering them to do this, but by asking them to follow.  Empowerment to call others to follow only happens later in their discipleship, when Jesus ‘calls the disciples to him and gives them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.’  Before they are empowered to be missionary focused they are first missioned themselves by being a follower of Jesus.

Yes, Jesus makes fishers of men, not empowers them.  We are made or created or crafted by God himself to call others to be disciples, not suddenly by some sort of magical blessing, but through following him.  To be followers of Jesus means the same for us as it did to Simon and Andrew.  We are to study him, learn from him and watch the way he did things and have the same concerns and goals as him.  This can be hard work and takes a conscious effort.

In Jesus day, many others accepted his invitation, dozens, maybe even hundreds responded to Jesus’ call.  Crowds followed him around, but many only like a spectator might follow Tiger Woods around a golf course, only watching on, never being involved; never grasping and receiving the joy of salvation that only Jesus can give.

The joy they didn’t grasp, and many today don’t grasp, is the fact that Jesus makes us into followers; its not our doing.  This is why many give up, for them, being a Christian is about moulding and making themselves into followers; its about how hard they work and the goals they achieve in themselves.  But we don’t need to concern ourselves about that, or any other difficulties we will face.

To be a follower does not depend on how we are doing, or how our commitment compares to what others are doing.  Being a follower of Jesus means we follow, allowing him to work in us, even though there are times in our life when we think we have failed.  Yet St Paul reminds us as we follow ‘do not lose heart. Though outwardly we see nothing happening, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.’

And this renewal happens as we follow Jesus.  I opened a bob bon at Christmas, and you know the little sayings or jokes you get inside, well the one I got read ‘A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something’.  How true this is for us as followers of Christ.  As we listen to him, study is word and think about how it is relevant to us, after a while we will learn something.
This is what it means to be a follower; to learn about Jesus, why we follow and where we will end up.  It is through this that Jesus is renewing us and making us into fishers of men.  Once we have listened and learnt, then we are empowered to call others to come and follow.
So, as we as a parish look to embark on a mission program and become a parish of fishers of men, let us remember that first and foremost, our calling is to be followers.  So let us commit ourselves to the study of God’s word, make it a conscious goal of ours to provide times of study, and make ourselves available to attend studies or to devote ourselves to the word through home devotions.
Then we know that Jesus is making us ready to make other followers, and then we know, that it is not by our effort that we are followers, but that Jesus is renewing us day by day.  So come with me and follow Jesus.

John 1 29 to 42 20_1_08

Take away- what does this mean to you?  We live in a take away society. Everything revolves around ‘taking things away’.  I don’t mean just take away food; I mean ‘everything we do is based on ‘take away’.  And I really noticed this on our holiday over to the far West Coast of South Australia.  Out there, where there is nothing, no shops, no amenities and no facilities; just a beach surf and sand, I soon realized the importance of ‘take away’ and how we rely on it for our very being.

Living on a beach really puts life into perspective.  We can’t do anything without ‘take away’.  What was I do with all my rubbish, who was going to ‘take it away?’.  There is no bins, no dumps, no garbage collection to take it away.  I had to carry it around with me all for the whole week.  Then when we left, I couldn’t just leave the rubbish on the beach, I had to take it with me.  And I still have it with me.  There has been no one to take it away from me.

We love take away because it means we don’t need to deal with things.  Someone else deals with our needs, our food, our coffee, and most important for us – our waste.  We love it when someone else is responsible for the things we don’t know what to do with.

There is one take away that every one of us does not know how to deal with; sin.  It is always with us, our constant companion.  We are never rid of it because it is who we are, as St Paul reminds us ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, and St John ‘If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us’.  Its like we are all sitting on Yalata beach with no way of disposing of our rubbish, we just have a big black bag of garbage and call out– ‘will someone deal with this stuff.’

Ever since Adam and Eve fell into sin by wanting to be like God, we have had to carry around with us a big garbo bag of sin; full of guilt, shame and embarrassment over the wrong things we have done in our lives.  Or perhaps we are carrying around a garbo bag of addiction or anger which stops us from being a loving person and stops us from having close relationships with our husband or wife.  And we just can’t get someone to ‘take it away’.

More and more people today are finding the load just to hard to bare and are trying to deal with it themselves.  Suicide, especially among our young people, is becoming an accepted alternative to actually facing the problem.  Many are turning to therapists and self help gurus to alleviate their guilt, or just becoming isolated from society and live lonely lives.  One other way of trying to ‘take away’ sin, which is now very popular, is to play the blame game; its not my fault its my upbringing or alcohol or drugs or my bad schooling.  Yes, we have all done it, the blame game, yet somehow nothing seems to be taken away.

People in Jesus time had the same problem; sin, and were lining up to see John the Baptist.  He was known as the prophet could take away sins by baptising ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’.  Matthew reports ‘Confessing their sins, the people were baptised by John in the Jordan’.  People could unload their guilt, drop of their waste; their garbo bags of shame and sin’.  The water would take away sin.  This was a new thing, a great thing, a way of letting someone else deal with the things we couldn’t.

Yet what was wrong with this?  What are the short comings of John’s take away service?

Yes, it was only local; for those in Israel and it was only around while John was alive and it was only temporary, it could never totally and fully take sins away, because there is no payment for the sin; no atonement.  It was like dumping everyone’s garbo bags at the tip gate but not paying the fee to dump it in; the sins are taken away from the person, but still not dealt with, not buried, never to be seen again.  The price had yet to be paid.  John knew this and told of one to come that would pay the cost to rid us totally of our sins; who would bury them for good.

Then suddenly this person, the one spoken about, turned up.  But John doesn’t say ‘there he is, the one I was talking about’, no, he says something unheard of until that moment ‘Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’.  John instantly connects the person of Jesus with his mission ‘to take away the sins of the world’; a universal mission; a world wide mission’.  Jesus is the great ‘take away-er’ of sins.  He will be the one who deals with our waste.  No longer will we need to be on an empty beach with a garbo bag full of waste with no one to take it away.

And how will he do this?  By paying the price for sin, taking them and burying them –totally and forever.  Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  And this title ‘the lamb of God’ connects Jesus with the lambs used for the sacrifice for sin in the temple and so indicates how Jesus will take away sin; through his death. In giving Jesus this title, John may have even had in mind the time God called Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.  On building the altar Isaac asked ‘”The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.”

Jesus is the Lamb provide by God himself, as Abraham implied.  He is the perfect sacrificial lamb to take away sin.  Why? Because we are unable to take away our own sins, we will die for them, as Paul reminds us ‘the wages of sin is death’.  And God holds us responsible for each and every one of them, and for who we are.  However because he is compassionate and full of grace and love, he provides Jesus as the person to die in our place- to pay the admission price to enter the tip and dumb all our bags of rubbish, to be buried forever.  Once and for all.

If you want to know more about this, the paying for our sins by Jesus death, can I encourage you to read Hebrews.  It will help to explain this great and wondrous gift to us.

While Jesus is the once for all payment for our sins, his sacrifice is an ongoing action that is just as valid today as on the day he hung on the cross.  The baptism we have today,  the communion you receive today, the announcement of forgiveness you hear today, is as if Jesus is speaking to you directly from the cross saying ‘your sins are forgiven’.   The blood of the lamb which paid the price for the sin of the world, is the same blood we drink to pay for the sins of today.  This is why the sacraments of baptism and communion are so inseparable from the church and Christian faith, they are the means of grace; the means through which our sins are taken away.

To have a place where my sins are taken away is a big relief, its like taking this bag of rubbish, the same rubbish I could not get rid of on the beach, the rubbish I carried around the whole holiday and being able to dump it off in this garbage bin for someone else to deal with.  And sure enough, I know that in the coming week it will be taken out to be destroyed.  This is literally what happens with our sin when we come to church; we dump it and Jesus takes it away.

How much easier it is to walk with no garbage to carry.  We are not loaded down and no longer looking for someone to take it away.  This is the good news about Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  And this is what gives us the freedom we now have and what makes us rejoice and give thanks to God.  Let us now do this very thing as we sing the following song ‘Shine Jesus shine’.