Psalm 23 (part two)

The LORD is my Shepherd – I will fear no evil

Psalm 23 part two

Let’s talk about phobias. The definition of a phobia is an irrational fear of something and there are all kinds of phobias out there. I had a look at some recognised by the Oxford English dictionary and there are some pretty obvious as well as some pretty obscure ones. 

For example did you know that if you have a fear of Americans you are suffering Americophobia? A fear of body odour is bromidrosiphobia and a fear of bullets is ballistophobia. Although I think a fear of bullets is generally healthy and to be encouraged!

I’m going to test you on some this morning. The first one is easy and is probably quite prevalent at this time of year. What is arachnophobia? (Fear of spiders)

What about ichthyophobia? (Fear of fish) Gamophobia? (Fear of marriage) Gephyrophobia? (Fear of bridges). Triskaidekaphobia? (Fear of the number 13). And finally, thanatophobia? (Fear of death). Ineterestingly most of these words come from Greek and I know a few people who studied NT Greek with me who definitely suffered from Hellenophobia – a fear of Greek or Latin terms!

Fear of death is, of course, very real for many people. Even if we don’t actually fear death itself, the process of dying can, we know, be unpleasant, painful and hard both to go through and to watch. So, perhaps, it is the fear of suffering more than the fear of dying, that we struggle with. 

So, how is it that David could get to a position in writing Psalm 23, where he could say ‘I will fear no evil’. I suppose the clues are there throughout his life. This is the young man who fought off wolves and bears as he looked after Jesse’s sheep in the Bethlehem hills. This is the man who faced down the Philistine champion with a sling and a stone. This is the man who, when on the run from Saul, twice crept close enough to him to kill him but was courageous enough to stand up to the temptations put forward by his men. This is the man who led a rescue party to bring back the kidnapped wives and children of his men. This is the man who ultimately defeated the Philistines, captured Jerusalem and built a kingdom. 

David knew about courage in the face of evil if anyone did, but the secret of his courage is revealed here in this psalm. It was not his own strength of character or will power that made David courageous and allowed him to say ‘I will fear no evil’. It was the knowledge that the LORD was his shepherd.

So, what is the evil David is referring to in this psalm? Some translations talk about the valley of the shadow of death. Others say simply the darkest valley or the deepest darkness. Clearly it is a path of suffering. It is a path down which nobody wants to travel.

It is probably that idea of the valley of the shadow of death which, more than any other, leads us to use this psalm at funeral service, but I think we can understand this valley to be any path of suffering we might go down including the path of death and bereavement.

All of us, to some extent, have walked these dark paths. We have endured the suffering of losing a family member. In some cases that loss has been sudden and shocking. In others it has been preceded by a period of watching and waiting as a loved one slowly slipped away from us. The language of a shadow is very powerful because we do feel enveloped by darkness at those times. 

But the times of deep darkness are not limited to death and bereavement. They include the times of ill health that begin with the unexpected diagnosis from the hospital and continue through the periods of treatment, exhaustion and isolation. We go through pain. We endure setbacks. Our physical strength is weakened and our emotional strength is wrung out.

There may be times of mental illness – anxiety or depression – that lead into that long, dark valley that so many people experience but so few people still talk about. The darkness of depression is a valley of deepest darkness. It is a struggle just to get out of bed in the morning. Simply meeting people and talking to people is physically draining. There is an unexplained feeling of shame or guilt attached to admitting that we are, in fact, not fine. If we say that we are just not coping at the moment, it feels like an admission of weakness.

Whether it is bereavement or physical or mental illness, we can feel hemmed in by the darkness. No matter where we turn or what we are doing or who we are with our minds are filled only by thoughts of the person who has gone or the situation we are in. 

Some people enter our valley with us for a while. They sit with us. They pray with us. Perhaps they give us a hug or bring food. But then they leave again because while they feel sad and sorry for us, they are not experiencing the grief we are experiencing. They have their own lives to live. They have their own issues to focus on. They have their own paths to walk down and, for now, their path does not take them through the darkness.

All these paths are hard paths to travel. They are painful paths but they are not wrong paths. When the shepherd guides the flock through the valley he does so in the knowledge that these are dangerous paths. He knows that there are lurking threats from wild animals or bandits hiding in the caves and rocky cliffs. We do not generally end up walking these paths because of some sin that we have committed. We are not being punished. Derek Kidner in commenting on this verse says this; ‘The dark valley, or ravine, is as truly one of his ‘right paths’ as are the green pastures – a fact that takes much of the sting out of any ordeal. And his presence overcomes the worst thing that remains: the fear.’

The danger of fear exists on these dark paths because it is here that we come face to face with evil. The anniversary of 9/11 earlier this week reminds us that sometimes it is acts of pure evil that plunge us into the deep darkness without warning.

In bereavement we come face to face with the evil of death, the curse that our sin has brought into the world that blights every human relationship. Each time we face bereavement something within us wants to cry out ‘This is wrong! This is not the way it is supposed to be! This is evil!’ And we are absolutely right to feel this way. 

In illness we come face to face with the evil of weakness and suffering that we were never supposed to endure. 

Mental illness brings into sharp focus like nothing else that we are creatures living in an identity crisis, made to live with God in a perfected eternity but dwelling in a time and space full of suffering and sickness and sorrow. We were made for a world without evil and we live in a world where evil exists all around us and even within our own hearts.

But the message of the 23^rd psalm is that, even when we come face to face with the lurking evil in the darkest of paths, we need not fear. We need not fear because our shepherd is with us.

Last week we thought about how Jesus deliberately identifies himself with the shepherd of psalm 23. He is the good shepherd. He is not like those hired hands who run off in the face of danger. He faces down the evil. 

The rod that the psalmist talks about was the shepherd’s weapon. It was a cudgel like implement with which he could fend off the attack of whichever wild animal was threatening the flock.

Our shepherd, Jesus, has faced down and defeated the devil himself. He does it in the wilderness when he refuses the devil’s temptation to do things the quick way rather than the right way. He does it in Caesarea Philippi when he rebukes the devil for using Peter to try and deflect him from the cross. He does it in Gethsemane when he overcomes the anguish of the cup that he must drink and sets his face towards the cross.

And on the cross itself he disarms and destroys the powers of evil once and for all. The one who led Adam and the entire human race into sin is bound and fettered at the cross of Jesus. As promised in Genesis 3, the seed of the woman has crushed his head and he is a defeated enemy.

The shepherd’s staff is his aid to walking through the rough paths and difficult to terrain. Just as hillwalkers today have their walking poles, he had his staff. His aim is to keep us walking until we get through the dark valley. He is with us to encourage us, comfort us and keep us going. He is not going to run away. He is alongside us no matter what happens. He lays down his life for us. He will not leave us.

 ‘In death’s dark vale I fear no ill, 

with You, dear Lord beside me; 

Your rod and staff my comfort still, 

Your cross before to guide me. 

We don’t need to fear any evil when this shepherd is beside us.

In the Narnia story the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Edmund, Lucy and their cousin Eustace find themselves on a Narnian ship set out to explore the furthest reaches of the seas. On one of their adventures the ship sails into a mysterious and magical darkness that surrounds an island. In this darkness all those on board the ship start to imagine their worst nightmares coming true. 

The entire crew are in abject terror until they spot a beam of light in the sky with something flying towards them. ‘Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched or an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her “Courage, dear heart,” and the voice, she felt sure was Aslan’s and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.’

Here are the words Jesus whispers to us in the midst of the darkest valley. ‘Courage, dear heart.’ He loves you. He is with you. He has been this way before you and he can guide you through. Stuart Townend has taken that image and put it this way in his song There is a hope.

There is a hope that lifts my weary head,
A consolation strong against despair,
That when the world has plunged me in its deepest pit,
I find the Saviour there!
Through present sufferings, future’s fear,
He whispers ‘courage’ in my ear.
For I am safe in everlasting arms,
And they will lead me home.

Even when the path leads eventually through my own suffering leading to death, he is with me. As Derek Kidner says, ‘only the Lord can lead a man through death; all other guides turn back, and the traveller must go on alone’.  I face the darkest valley of all on our own unless the LORD is my shepherd. 

But when he is with me, even death itself is robbed of its fear and its power to hurt. This is the good shepherd who lays down his life. He suffers and dies, faces down everything the evil one can throw at him and then he is buried.

His body bound and drenched in tears
They laid Him down in Joseph's tomb.
The entrance sealed by heavy stone
Messiah still and all alone

But this is the good shepherd who lays down his life only to take it up again. 

Then on the third at break of dawn,
The Son of heaven rose again.
O trampled death where is your sting?
The angels roar for Christ the King

Death has no hold over him and has no hold over us as we trust in him. In the midst of the darkest valley we can imagine, we discover that our shepherd is also the king who conquers death. Who else would you have walking with you through that valley?

In The Lord of the Rings (I know a Narnia illustration and a Lord of the Rings one in the same sermon is a bit much but stick with me). In the Lord of the Rings the ranger, Aragorn, leads a group of people into a dark and dangerous mountain pass known as the paths of the dead. In that pass, it is said, dwell the undead spirits of soldiers who betrayed their king at a crucial moment and have been cursed ever since. No-one has ever gone down those paths and returned. But Aragorn goes nonetheless. 

Sure enough, he and his men encounter the ghostly soldiers and, just at the moment when it seems all is lost, Aragorn reveals his true identity. He is the one true king to whom they owe allegiance. They are unable to harm him or any of those with him. Anyone else wandering those dark paths would not survive but this group does because the King is with them.

The one true King walks with us through every path in life. He is there among the green pastures. He is there by the still waters. And he is there in the deepest, darkest valley we can imagine. And because the king is our shepherd, we have nothing to fear.

The Anglican vicar David Watson, died of cancer in 1984. After his diagnosis he began writing a book called ‘Fear No Evil. This is what he writes towards the end of that book. 

‘God offers no promise to shield us from the evil of this world. There is no immunity guaranteed from sickness, pain, sorrow or death. What he does pledge is his never-failing presence for those who have found him in Christ. Nothing can destroy that. Always he is with us. And, in the long run, that is all we need to know.’

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.

The Lord is my shepherd (part one)

The LORD is my Shepherd – I shall lack nothing

Psalm 23 part one

(I said I would blog my 3 sermons on 23rd Psalm after my initial thoughts a couple of weeks ago, so here is the first.)

They say that familiarity breeds contempt. I am not sure if that is always the case but I do think familiarity can lead us to take familiar things for granted. How many times have I walked past the Bank Buildings in the centre of Belfast without paying it a second glance and noticing the architecture and the clock and just the beauty of that grand old building which is now a burnt out shell.

How often do we take for granted the beautiful part of the world in which we live? We take once in a lifetime trips to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or the Australian outback and then we come home and suddenly have a deeper appreciation for the simple beauty of the North Down coastal path. 

I was speaking to someone recently who was telling about a friend who had visited Sydney’s Bondi Beach. To say that they came away less than impressed would be an understatement. ‘It’s not even as good as the West Strand in Portrush and even the East Strand is better than the West!’

But we become familiar with all these things and we take them for granted.

And that, I think, is what happens with the 23^rd Psalm. We take it for granted. It is so familiar to us. These are perhaps the six most well known verses in the entire Bible. They are read or sung at many funerals, so that even people who only attend church to go to a funeral know these words well. A version of them even became the title music to a much loved sitcom a few years back – The Vicar of Dibley.

Well, over the next three weeks, I want us to pause and reflect afresh on these familiar words. What are they really saying to us? What have we missed in our over-familiarity with them? Do these words still have the power to challenge, comfort and inspire us? I believe that they do, because they are God’s words written nearly 3000 years ago, but written for you and for me today.

And the thing is that you don’t get very far into the 23^rd psalm before you come up against a shocking statement. ‘The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.’ Other English versions put it in different ways. The ESV says ‘I shall not want’. The newer version of the NIV says simply ‘I lack nothing’. The New Living Translation says ‘I have all that I need’ and Eugene Peterson’s Message version says ‘I don’t need a thing.’ 

Really?

Don’t we live in a world full of want? Don’t we see on the news every night people living with the lack of good health, clean water and basic human rights? Don’t we see people in conflict zones all over the world who just want peace? We see refugees who want a new life or the ability to return home in safety. Campbell Brown reminded us last week from his trip to South Africa that there are people in our world still living in corrugated iron shacks that they call houses.

In such a world, how can we encourage people to say, ‘The LORD is my Shepherd, I lack nothing’?

Even those of us who live in the well off, stable and peaceful countries of the West find difficulty with this phrase. We all have wants, don’t we? We have the normal desires for food, clothing, good health and shelter that everyone else shares. But having largely secured those things, we want more.

As I said in the newsletter, ‘We want the summer holidays to start all over again. We want this, that or the other thing for Christmas. We want a good harvest. We want a new car, a new house, a new TV, a new games console. We want five minutes of peace. We want our family life to be happy and our family members to be healthy.’

None of us are ever really that far away from the toddler throwing a tantrum in the middle of the shop and screaming ‘I want it!!’ It’s just that most of us have learned to control the tantrum.

Think about your life at the moment. Think about the way things are right now for you in your family, your work, your church, your community. Think about your health and your happiness. Can you really say, ‘I lack nothing’? Can you honestly say ‘I don’t need a thing’?

Yes, you can. It is possible to live what Dallas Willard calls ‘a life without lack’ when the LORD, Yahweh, the covenant God is your shepherd. How?

Well, the first thing we need to do is to approach these words afresh and see them in context. We need to peel away the layers of familiarity that surround the 23^rd psalm and see again its power to shock and challenge us as well as comfort us.

Some of the most well known words in history suffer from this familiarity problem. Think of some world famous speeches from the past. We look at Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech as an inspiration. But he wasn’t seeking to inspire a generation as much as he was seeking to challenge the status quo. We look at Churchill’s ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ as a rallying cry to the people of the UK, but, at the time, with Britain on the brink of collapse, he was speaking as much out of a sense of sheer desperation  as of grim determination. When Jesus told us to love our enemies was that a realism that we need to live out or a romantic ideal that we can never achieve?

When David says, ‘The LORD is my Shepherd, I have all that I need’ he is not just exaggerating for poetic effect. He is declaring a reality? He is not simply offering these words as comfort for the dying or bereaved. He is sharing them as a foundation for every day of life – the good and the bad, the sad and the happy, the empty and the full.

And when we read these words today we need to read them through the lens of the gospel. We need to see how these words, like every other part of the OT are fulfilled in Christ. We need to picture ourselves sitting on a Galilean hillside listening to Jesus as he takes for himself the covenant name ‘I AM’ and then declares himself to be the Good Shepherd. We need to grasp the promise of abundant life that he offers to all who come through him to find what they really need. And we need to imagine ourselves walking along the road to Emmaus with those two disciples and listening to the risen Christ explaining how if they have HIM as their shepherd, they will lack nothing.

And let’s be clear it is nothing less than TOTAL satisfaction that Christ, our Good Shepherd offers us. Look at verse 2 of the psalm. ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters.’ Do you notice anything strange about this verse? No? Neither did I until my attention was drawn to what these sheep are doing by Dallas Willard’s book ‘Life without Lack’.

These sheep are lying down in green pastures. They are not feeding in green pastures. They are not filling their stomachs with the nutrition that the pasture provides. They are lying down because they are satisfied. They don’t need anything because of who their shepherd is. They are satisfied in him and by him.

These sheep are being led beside quiet waters. They are not being led to them. They are not drinking their fill from the cool, clear stream because their thirst is satisfied in their shepherd.

Fast forward again to Jesus who declares ‘I AM the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’ Complete satisfaction. A life without lack. A life of abundance is what Jesus offers to those who come to him – to those who trust him with their lives. 

Jesus is deliberately, consciously and clearly inserting his name in the place of the LORD at the beginning of Psalm 23. Jesus is saying that the one to whom David looked to provide complete satisfaction in life is him. Every time he uses that phrase I AM, he is claiming to be the covenant keeping God and the one true shepherd of Israel. He is saying that he and he alone is the all-sufficient one who meets all our deepest needs

So what is it about faith in Jesus Christ that allows us to live a life without lack? David tells us. He restores my soul and he leads me in right paths. He saves us. Our lives are restored and redirected through faith in him and in that restoration and redirection there is true satisfaction.

He restores my soul. Let me take you back again to that awful destructive fir in the middle of Belfast last week. That once beautiful building now destroyed and distorted by fire. You remember that initially it was thought that the building was in danger of imminent collapse. The hope, of course, is that it can somehow be restored to something close to its former glory.

This is a picture of our lives. Something that, in the beginning, was so beautiful that God declared it to be VERY good, has now been eaten away and distorted by sin. We are a shell of what God intended us to be, still reflecting something of what it means to be made in God’s image but everywhere showing signs of the devastating impact of putting ourselves on the throne of our lives instead of him. 

Our hearts, the seat of who we are, are corrupted by sin and there is nothing we can do to make them whole and healthy again. We have a longing to be truly ourselves. Our hearts are restless, searching for the one thing that will bring us satisfaction, fulfilment and purpose in life.

That search for fulfilment and purpose leads us in all kinds of different directions. We throw ourselves into a career. We devote ourselves to family. We get involved in a local church. We give ourselves over to sport and competition. Some of us turn to the cheap thrills of alcohol or drugs or casual relationships.

But after the thrill has gone or the success has been achieved or the family has been raised and left home where do we go next to seek fulfilment and purpose?

The only way to truly still that restlessness is to recover and restore the purpose for which we were made. We were made for God, said Augustine long ago, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him.

It is only in him that we find true purpose and fulfilment. It is only in him that we find true rest and satisfaction. Only he can restore us from our fallen, sinful state. It is only through faith in Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, that we can be ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.

And as we place our trust in him, he leads us in right paths. He doesn’t just restore us and then leave us to it. If the Bank Buildings are restored to their former state and then left without anyone using them, the restoration would have been pointless. The building needs to be used. It needs to be given a new task in the city centre. 

When you enter into a saving and restorative relationship with Jesus Christ, you also begin a journey with him. He restores you to a position of righteousness so that you will walk in paths of righteousness.

Jesus calls you to follow him as he leads you in right paths. You are not just saved to sit here and wait for heaven. You are saved for a purpose here on earth. You have a task to complete. He calls you to give yourself to him so that he can make you a fisher of men. He calls you to be a disciple who will go about the task of making more disciples. He calls you to spread the good news of his kingdom around the world, in your communities and among your friends and families. He calls you to be salt and light, making a difference for him in the corruption and darkness of this world. 

These are the right paths he will lead us on when we trust him to do it. But we will only find satisfaction in walking these paths when we walk them in the right way.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. I don’t share the good news of Jesus so that everyone can comment on what a great evangelist I am. I don’t spend time in the study preparing a sermon so everyone can comment on what a great preacher I am. I don’t teach my children the gospel and set them an example of Christian living so that everyone can say what a great parent I am. I am not diligent at my work, be that farming or teaching or nursing or business, so that everyone can say what a great farmer or teacher or nurse or businessperson I am.

I walk in right paths for his name’s sake. I, if I want true satisfaction will not want people to know or even care how great I am. I will want them to know how great, how wonderful, how gracious, how majestic Jesus is. I am not concerned about my honour but his. I am not concerned about my reputation but his. I am not concerned about my glory but his. I am not concerned about my fame but I want to spread abroad the fame of Jesus Christ the all-sufficient restorer of my soul. 

In Philippians 4, the apostle Paul thanks the Philippian Christians for a support package they have sent him. This is what he says; I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. ¹¹ I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation…. I can do all this through him who strengthens me. What is Paul saying here? He is saying what David said 1000 years before him. The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need.

I am satisfied in him - I can lie down in lush green pastures and not feel hungry or walk by still waters without feeling thirsty. I am saved in him – my soul is restored from the corruption and tyranny of sin by his saving death on the cross for me. I have abundant life in him, whatever my physical circumstances might be. This a life without lack and it is ours in Christ.

The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

Seven things ministers need to know at the start of September

For many pastors in this part of the world this time of year is that start of a new term or session of work. Organisations in churches which had lain dormant over the summer months roar back into life. Volunteer leaders return with (hopefully) fresh enthusiasm and (invariably) a new roster of events they would like you to be at. Summer is already becoming a memory and winter is looming somewhere on the horizon with its threat of increasing health and loneliness problems for some of your older members. Along with this is the knowledge that the out of the blue pastoral crisis will hit you in the middle of a week when spare capacity in your schedule was already minimal. So, by way of help to my fellow pastors (and non-pastors) here are seven things to remember in September.

1. Christmas will seem an age away. At the beginning of September there is still some length to the evenings. There is the possibility or even likelihood of a late summer heatwave to kid you into thinking that autumn is not really here yet. There are multiple events, business meetings and special services standing between you and the possibility of grabbing a few days off in the post Christmas slowdown. And there is certainly plenty of time to plan for that carol service. Do not be fooled because....

2. Christmas will be on you before you know it. The autumn will disappear in the blink of an eye. No sooner will you have posted the obligatory back to school photos of your children on Facebook than they will be off for half term and you will be putting the clocks back. You will go to bed on Remembrance Sunday and wake up to realise that the Carol Service is this evening and you still have to find a new and imaginative way to get across the message of the incarnation that you have attempted to preach for the last fifteen Christmases or more.

3. This year’s summer holiday will soon feel like it never happened. That few weeks when you allowed yourself to forget about committee meetings and pastoral problems is, believe it or not a relatively recent event. You really did get time off. Your batteries were, to some extent, recharged even if you did spend the entire summer trying to entertain that most demanding audience of all, your own children. But the first pastoral crisis or difficult visit will all but wipe those sunny days by the pool from your memory. It happens to everyone. Live with it.

4. You don’t need to be at everything.  Yes, there are a tsunami of meetings arranged for the first few weeks of a new term. One event comes after another like tube trains on the District line. But here’s the thing. Your presence is not required at them all. Many of your volunteer leaders know exactly what they’re doing without your help. A lot of them have been doing it longer than you have been in ministry and are more gifted for their area of service than you will ever be. If you turn up to their meetings you may well just get in the way. Most of the time they don’t expect you to be there. If you have a good relationship with them then when they need you they’ll call. It’s ok to have a night at home while meetings go on at church without you. No, really, it is.

5. You do need to take time off BEFORE Christmas. You may think that you can power your way through to 25th December without a day off. You may think that you can preach twice on Sundays, lead a midweek Bible study, do hospital visits, attend Youth Fellowship, chair business meetings and take school assemblies every week from now until Boxing Day all on the strength of 8 coffees a day and a quick five minute quiet time at 12.30 am every third night but you can’t. You need time to read something that’s not sermon preparation. You need to walk in the fresh air without it being a journey to another appointment. You need to pray. You need to sleep. You may need to lie in. You need to exercise. You need whole days (actual periods of 24 hours) away from anything to do with church. Stop kidding yourself that you don’t. In fact, just stop.

6. The congregation will (almost certainly) still be there next September. As pastors we have a totally irrational fear that this will be the year when the congregation splits irrevocably because of something we have done or failed to do. That is highly unlikely to be the case. The weird thing is that the longer you are in ministry the more this fear grows. Remember, they have put up with your sermon illustration from Lord of the Rings for this long, so deep down they must quite like you. Don’t panic!

7. The future of the kingdom does not depend on how your ministry goes this year.  Even if there are fallouts or fights over the colour of the new carpet God’s kingdom goes on. Even if the giving goes down, God’s resources remain infinite. Even if your church closes its doors THE church will be built and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Do your bit. Trust your Saviour. After all he’s taken the rebellious, sinful mess that was your life and turned it around, so he can certainly turn around whatever crisis blindsides you after the service this Sunday. Trust him. He is on the throne and he loves you.

There will be plenty of other things to remember this year, I’m sure. Tell me some of the ones I’ve not included here and let’s help each other to love and serve our God and his church with increasing joy and decreasing stress this winter.

The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want?

‘The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.’ Psalm 23:1

As the summer began I reflected on the pages of this newsletter on the need for rest. I quoted from a book called ‘The Art of Rest, where the author Adam Mabry said this; ‘Can you imagine a church which said no to the stressed out stereotype of Western cultural life? With deep peace and triumphant tranquillity, what a blessing we could be.’

I wonder how many of you tried to imagine that church. I wonder how many of you have given some thought to what the ‘unforced rhythms of grace' might look like as we begin another busy church year. What will it look like to rest in God with deep peace and triumphant tranquility as organisations get up and running, school terms start again and life speeds up all the way to Christmas Day when we fall asleep on the settee in front of the Queen’s Speech?

As I have been thinking about this, I have been led to the most famous psalm in the Bible. The words quoted at the top of this article are perhaps the nine most well known words in Scripture. We sing or read them at funeral services. We have all kinds of versions and paraphrases that we know how to sing depending on our age bracket. There is the metrical psalm version that we often sing at a funeral service. There is the ‘The King of love my shepherd is’. And there is the newer version that declares in its chorus ‘I will trust in You alone’.

But it seems to me that there is a reason why this psalm is so well known and so well loved and it goes way beyond the fact that we sing it when a loved one has died. In fact, to restrict this psalm to funeral services seems to me to do it a serious disservice. David’s shepherd psalm is not primarily about death, it is about life. It is about every season of life and how, if the LORD is our shepherd, we are fully equipped to face every season of life. We have everything we need or want if we have him.

Really?

The idea of saying ‘I shall not want’ or ‘I lack nothing’ in our world seems ridiculous doesn’t it? Because we all want something. We want the summer holidays to start all over again. We want this, that or the other thing for Christmas. We want a good harvest. We want a new car, a new house, a new TV, a new games console. We want five minutes of peace. We want our family life to be happy and our family members to be healthy.

But David says ‘I shall not want’. There is nothing that he wants outside of the knowledge that the LORD is his shepherd. He has found the life of contentment that we all seek and he has found it in God. Like Paul the apostle 1000 years later David has learned the secret of being content in every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

And the secret is this. ‘The LORD is my shepherd’. If I have him, I have everything I want. I am fully satisfied and fully saved. I have no fear of anything, even death, and I have hope in every situation, even when surrounded by enemies.

Over the Sunday mornings in September in Ballygrainey we are going to examine this Shepherd psalm in some more detail, teasing out what it means to be fully satisfied in God, to experience his presence in the darkness and to know the overabundant, overflowing grace of our Shepherd King in our lives. I may even post some of those reflections here. My hope is that we are equipped to rest in Him in the midst of the busyness, to live our lives without fear or anxiety but to know that we are protected, loved, led and satisfied in Him and in Him alone.

Yours in Christ the Good Shepherd,

Graeme

I need a rest...

This is my contribution to Ballygrainey's newsletter for July/August 2018 and marks my (tentative) return to blogging. We'll see how it goes.

‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Matthew 11:28-30

Last month in this newsletter I reflected on how, over the summer, I want to learn from the models of prayer we find in the Bible. I said this; ‘It is my prayer that over the summer months, I might learn from these people how to pray more effectively, with deeper faith, greater regularity and more expectation of what God will do. This is what I want for myself because I know that my discipleship, my family life and my ministry depend on being able to spend time with God in prayer.’ But in order to do this, I need to learn something else first. I (and we) need to learn how to rest.

I wonder if, like me, when you look at Jesus’ familiar words from Matthew’s gospel above, you sometimes find yourself wondering what has gone wrong. Where is this rest that he promised? My life seems pressurised, rushed, busy, stressed. Even when it comes close to holiday time, I find myself rushing to make sure all the tasks that I think need to get done have been completed before I take time off.

Recently I read a book called The Art of Rest by Adam Mabry. (I picked it up on our church bookstall.) I was struck by this paragraph; ‘Can you imagine a church which said no to the stressed out stereotype of Western cultural life? With deep peace and triumphant tranquillity, what a blessing we could be. If we begin to embrace a renewed Sabbath – a time of rest, holy to the Lord – we might achieve both a level of personal holiness and missionary effectiveness not seen for ages past. If we repent of our human-centric, self-reliant belief that more programs, more volunteering and more activity is always the answer to the problems of ministry and the challenge of evangelism…if we change our view on the necessity of doing every conceivable activity for our children…if we resist the siren call of a better lifestyle at the cost of more of our actual lives…what good could we actually be.’

Jesus’ promise of rest is not about overworking yourself for most of the year in family life, the workplace and church activities, so that you can take time off in the summer. The promise is not ‘Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will make sure you get two weeks in the sun before you return to the pressure cooker of life.’

No, his promise is for rest as we take on his yoke and assume his burden. His promise is rest in the midst of labour. He promises, as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message, to teach us ‘the unforced rhythms of grace’. If ‘more programs, more volunteering and more activity’ in church life means less prayer, less peace and less time for God and others, then we have to ask whether we are getting it right. We have to ask whether our lifestyles both as individuals and as a church are truly reflective of the unforced rhythms of grace.

When others look at us, do they see people who are at peace or do they see people just as stressed out as them? Do they see people who are unhurried or do they see people who are rushing home from work to catch a few moments with family before heading out to something else in the evening? Do they see people who prioritise time with God so that they can function for the rest of the day or do they see people who spend every last waking minute in activity of some kind or other?

We desperately need to relearn the gift and principle of Sabbath. We need to weave regular patterns of rest, refreshment and restoration into our lives if we are going to function. We need this physically, mentally, emotionally and, above all, spiritually. And we don’t just need it as individuals. We need it as church. We need it as a community of people who are learning to live as Jesus wants us to live. We need it as a family who need to learn how to relate to one another in love. We need it if we are going to truly hear the voice of God and learn his will for his church

So, will you help me to learn these principles in my life, as I help you to learn them in yours? Will you ask me how much time I’ve spent with God this week? (And will you promise not to be too disappointed to discover that your pastor is often as much a failure as anyone else in this area?) Will you commit to helping us to create the kind of community that is a genuine oasis of God’s peace and tranquillity in the midst of a stressed out, over worked, pressurised culture? I hope and pray that together we can learn the unforced rhythms of grace and be a truly different people in this stressed out world.

Yours in Christ,

Graeme

(P.S. I hope you get some time to rest over the summer!)

The Church's responsibility (Or 'What's next?)

The Church’s responsibility (Or ‘What’s Next?’)
Matthew 5:13-16

(This is the text of yesterday's sermon in Ballygrainey. It also forms my response not just to the events of last week, but to  whole trend that I and others see in western culture at the moment.)

One hundred years ago, in November 1916, the world was in turmoil. WWI had entered its third bloody year. The carnage of the Battle of the Somme ahd just come to its end. Ireland was still recovering from the impact of the Easter Rising. By November 1917, the Russian monarchy would be overthrown and peace would look further away than ever.

By those standards you might think 2016 has been pretty mild really. But this year will go down in history as a year of significant political, economic and social upheaval. The times they are definitely a changin’. Things have happened this year that would have been considered unthinkable just a short time ago. Whether it is Brexit or the US election or the refugee crisis or the terrorist attacks in places like Brussels, Nice and Miami or the disintegration of Syria or the continuing violence in Iraq or even the Ashers court case, this year has been one of enormous, unprecedented change.

In my favourite TV show which, appropriately enough for this week, is The West Wing, the president signals his desire to move on to the next item of business by simply asking ‘What’s next?’ And so I want to ask today, in light of all of the events that have happened and are happening in this tumultuous year around the world, what’s next for the church? What’s next for the people of God? What’s next for you and me?

I have felt a deep need in my own mind and heart to try and make some sense of what is going on in our world and to work out my role as a Christian and our role as a church in it all. I hope in the process to help you to do that as well, if I can. As a result I have changed this morning’s sermon from the Church’s gifts (which we actually touched on a couple of weeks ago) to the Church’s responsibility.

I don’t preach political sermons. You all know that. I don’t let events in the news dictate what I say on a Sunday morning. But the events of this week have finally brought to head a growing sense in me that this is a crucial time for the western world unlike any other we have faced in the last 70 years. That makes it a crucial time for the church of Jesus Christ in the western world and that includes you and me.

And I need to make a confession. This sermon would have been necessary no matter who won the presidential election on Tuesday. But I confess that I would have been much less likely to preach it if Hillary Clinton had won. The reason? Hillary’s election would have felt like less of an upheaval, less of a shock more like what we have come to expect over the years. But the same issues would have needed to be addressed no matter what.

You may feel that you are a world away from events in Washington DC or London or Aleppo or Mosul. You may feel unqualified to take part in complex legal disputes or unable to comment on complex political issues. You may feel that you don’t have much, if anything to contribute to those situations. You may feel like the world is passing you by and you just have to shrug your shoulders accept events as they are and move on. And to some extent that is true. But it is not the whole picture.

From beginning to end the Bible is clear that God’s people have a crucial role to play in the world. Abraham’s family were going to be a blessing to many nations. The children of Israel were going to be a kingdom of priests bringing God to the world and the world to God. The kingdom of David was going to result in one of his descendants bringing in an everlasting kingdom. The OT prophets kept calling Israel back to its role to be a light to the nations.

This is no less true for the people of God today and Jesus gives us our responsibility here at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are a city on a hill.

But what does that mean? What does it mean for the church to be the salt of the earth in a time of unforeseen moral upheaval? What does it mean for the church to be the light of the world in a time of uncontained social upheaval? What does it mean for us to be that city on a hill in a time of unprecedented political upheaval throughout the world?

Jesus said ‘You are the salt of the earth.’ Salt was an essential commodity in NT times if you were going to preserve food and prevent it from going rotten. Jesus says that his church, which is made up of the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted is the essential commodity that will prevent the entire world from utter decay.

But the salt can only act as this preservative if it retains its saltiness. It can only perform its essential task if it retains its essential character. Salt is different from the meat and other foodstuffs it preserves. The church is different from the world. That essential difference must be maintained or the church loses its effectiveness.

The church’s values are not the values of the world. The church’s behaviour is not the behaviour of the world. The church’s message is not the world’s message and the church’s lord is not the one that the world recognizes as lord. We are different. We provide an alternative.

The church offers truth in what many people today are calling a post-truth world. From the beginning the church of Jesus Christ has been about truth. The central teaching on which the entire Christian faith stands or falls is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If that event did not happen, if it has all been made up, if it is not true, says Paul, your faith is futile, you are still in your sins. Our faith stands or falls on the historic truth of the resurrection. It happened. And if it didn’t happen, what are we doing here? We might as well pack up and go home.

The US election has demonstrated that the church’s view of truth and the world’s view of truth are starkly different from, even opposed to one another. Truth no longer matters. You can stand on an election stage and make statements that are either unproven or simply untrue and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if it’s true as long as enough people believe it (and vote for you because of it).

In a world which no longer values truth, we will hold out the truth of the gospel which alone can set men and women free. IN doing this we wil be acting as the salt of the earth.

The church offers mercy in a harsh world. We do that because we have experienced mercy. We were dead in transgression and sin, says Paul, until God, who is in rich in mercy reached down and lifted us up. Listen to the way Bonhoeffer describes the merciful people described in the Beatitudes; ‘They have an irresistible love for the lowly, the sick, for those who are in misery, for those who are demeaned and abused, for those who suffer injustice and are rejected, for everyone in pain and anxiety. They seek out those who have fallen into sin and guilt. No need is too great, no sin is too dreadful for mercy to reach.’

Think about our world for a moment. Think about the refugee who has left their home in Aleppo and spent everything to get passage to Europe. Think about the white blue-collar worker in the middle of America who has lost everything and who struggles to feed his family on food stamps. Think about the people who are sleeping on our streets as the winter comes in. Think about the soldiers coming home from theatres of war in recent years with terrible physical or psychological injuries. Think about the mother in Malawi who is sick not because she doesn’t have medicine but because she doesn’t have the food that will help the medicine to work.

This is a world in need of mercy. Throughout the history of the world Christians have been at the forefront of showing mercy. Building hospitals for the sick and schools for the uneducated. Campaigning against slavery and child labour and third world debt.

Our world of social media and power politics has little or no time for mercy. It is the church’s responsibility to show mercy because we, above all people, know what it means to receive mercy. If we do this, we will be acting as the salt of the earth.

Jesus said ‘You are the light of the world.’ Not you can be. Not you should be. You are. Being the light of the world is not easy. It will require us to be as different from the world around us as light is from darkness. It will require us to expose and confront the deeds of darkness in our own lives, our own communities, our own nations.

It will require us to hold out the light of the gospel of grace. By doing this we remind ourselves that no darkness in our own lives is so dark as to remain unforgiven by God in Christ. By doing this we point our communities and nations to the only one who offers an unfailing light for our feet and a lamp for our path.

It will require us to put on display a life of faith in the One whose light we reflect to the world. His kingdom and his righteousness will become our first priority. The desire for earthly power, prestige, fame or wealth will all be laid to one side in the overwhelming desire to know Christ and make him known.

The life of faith in Christ is one which listens to the words of the psalmist;
‘Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that day his plans perish. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the name of the LORD his God.’

Those who celebrate the election of a leader as one who will make their country great, right all their wrongs (perceived and otherwise) and bring peace and prosperity for all are making a huge mistake. No Prime Minister, Prince or President will ever meet those expectations. Those who see the election of a man they did not support as an unrecoverable disaster and who mourn and weep and will not be consoled are also making a huge mistake. All Prime Ministers, Princes and Presidents are mortal human beings whose influence is limited.

There really is only one name given under heaven by which men and women can be saved – the name of Jesus Christ. There really is only one kingdom that will last forever – the kingdom of God. There is only one act that has ever really met the deepest need of every human being on the face of the earth – the self-giving, sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sin.

It is only those who trust in Christ and live the life of discipleship who will never be failed by the one in whom they put their trust. They will know the reality that whoever is in the White House or Downing Street or the Kremlin, God is on the throne and the Lamb who was slain is the ultimate conqueror in history. They will be the ones who live as light to the world – giving hope to those whose trust has been betrayed and pointing out the idolatries of those who put all their faith in human princes.

Jesus said ‘You are a city on a hill.’ Over the years various American leaders have used this phrase to describe the shining light of American democracy as the example for the world to follow. It was never intended to be used that way and to do so is a complete misuse of Scripture.

No, the city on a hill that Jesus describes are his followers. They are to be a new community breaking down barriers of race, social class and gender through the power of the gospel. They are to be a community that stands out from the world as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.

They are to be a hope-filled community pointing to Jesus as the one whose cross and resurrection brings true and eternal hope to a world broken and distorted by sin and death. They are to be a prophetic community, unafraid to speak truth to power as the OT prophets and NT apostles were.

What they are not to do is to hide themselves or accommodate themselves to the values and standards of the world in which they live. They are to be visible, obvious, different. They are to live for the approval of one person. They are to care only about the opinion of the audience of One – their heavenly Father.

At 7.30 on Tuesday morning I got a message from Steve Burton in Alabama (It was 1.30 there and the result was clear.) This is what he said; ‘We faced a no win situation. Either way we were faced with a decision about ultimate allegiance. I'm worried that the church will settle for this political "victory" and assume a posture of accommodation that wants a place at that political table at the expense of Gospel purity and Kingdom intentionality. Time for some serious discipleship.’

This is always the temptation for the church of Jesus Christ, to gain short term earthly power at the expense of gospel and kingdom integrity. In these days of upheaval in the western world, if you’re wondering what possible difference you can make it is simply this. Be the people God called you to be where he has called you to be. Be the salt of the earth. Be the light of the world. Be the city on a hill.

That is the church’s responsibility. Nobody else can do it. That is our responsibility, so, if you’re wondering what’s next….then it’s this; ‘let your light shine before others so that they see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven’. That’s the difference you can make today.