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.

Walking straight paths... (Ballygrainey Newsletter article - November 2016)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
 in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Not for the first time these verses have been brought to my attention recently. They are going to be used at a wedding in Ballygrainey in November. As I have been reflecting on what to say at this wedding I have been struck by the fact that all too often in life our paths don’t seem very straight at all. In fact for most of us the experience of life is full of unexpected twists and turns. Instead of smooth straight journeys in life we experience far too many rough paths, steep climbs, sharp turns and potholes.

People of faith are no different to anyone else in this respect. We trust God. We believe that he is on the throne and in ultimate control of the universe. And yet we still experience far rougher, more difficult roads than the writer of Proverbs suggests. We can be going along the road quite happily when an unexpected diagnosis of cancer forces a sharp and unexpected left turn. We can be steadily making progress in our faith and suddenly fall victim to temptation that causes us to fall. We can make plans for the future that include another person and suddenly that other person lets us down and we feel like we are walking alone. We can be finding fulfilment in a job that is suddenly taken away from us.

Very few characters in the Bible had lives that we might call straight paths. Abraham who left his home and family aged 75 with no idea where he was going. Jacob who deceived and twisted his way through life. Joseph who was sold into slavery and left in a prison to rot. Moses the murderer of an Egyptian and reluctant leader of Israel. And then there is Ruth, Samuel, David, Esther and many more. All of them trusted God. None of them had a plan that worked out smoothly without a few unexpected twists and turns along the way. So how can the writer of Proverbs say that when we trust in God and submit to him, he will make our paths straight?

Perhaps the best way to understand this is to look at the life of Jesus. From an earthly perspective, you would never describe his 33 years on this earth as a straight path. Born in a Bethlehem manger, spending the first years of his life as a refugee in Egypt, taking on the family business only to up and leave aged 30 to go on a preaching and healing tour of Galilee. Quickly growing in popularity, only to see the crowds fade away when things got difficult. Training 12 men only to see them run for their lives when he needed them most. Being falsely arrested, convicted and crucified within a few short hours one Friday morning. That doesn’t sound like a straight path.

But from the perspective of eternity all those twists and turns were leading inevitably, unstoppably to that cross and empty tomb. In fact from the perspective of eternity all those twisty, turny, up and down Old Testament lives were leading that way too.

The history of the church since Jesus' ascension is hard to see as a straight path either. All those persecutions and flirtations with heresy. All those crusades and witch trials and acts of sectarian violence. All those encounters with totalitarian regimes that sought to stamp out any kind of faith that took first place away from the state or its glorious leaders. All those compromises with the culture of the day which have left the church apparently weak and ineffective.

And yet from the perspective of eternity there is a wedding feast being prepared at which the Church of Jesus Christ will be honoured as his beautiful, perfect bride. and every road and path in history is making its way inexorably towards that day.

God takes every rough and twisted path and makes it into a smooth straight road for his purpose to be fulfilled. He doesn't just do it with the grand sweep of history. He does it with your life and mine as well.

So the next time the road seems bumpy or an unexpectedly sharp change in direction comes your way, remember that the One who is making all things new is also making all your paths straight. Trust Him and lean not on your own understanding.

Letter from Canada

I am now over halfway into my (almost) three weeks in Vancouver, and the overwhelming feeling I have to convey is one of gratitude. Gratitude to my congregation at Ballygrainey for allowing me this time to be refreshed and renewed in ministry. Grateful to my hosts in Vancouver, the McConaghy family and Melanie Ross for allowing this strange, wandering Irishman into their homes. Grateful for a place like Regent College where faith is explored intellectually, spiritually and missionally with an overwhelming desire to make Christ known in our culture and in our day. Grateful to Paula, Ewan and Andrew for allowing me this time away and recognising how important it is for me, for them and for our church.

I am grateful to have been able to sit under teaching and receive for a while. It has reoriented me in my understanding of what it will mean to be a disciple of Jesus Christ in the age and culture in which we find ourselves and what it means to hear and understand what Jesus is saying to us today, particularly through his parables. It will take me some time to fully process all that I have been learning but I can already identify a few new perspectives that this time away has given me.

I have been given a new perspective on the work God has given me. If the church's task in the world is about making disciples that means that I have to be a disciple-maker. I have to invest intentionally in people the way Jesus did. The focus of my work has to be how I can partner with Jesus to make mature, equipped followers of his in every area of life. My longing for the people in my church family for a long time has been that they be known to be followers of Jesus in every place where they find themselves. If you're reading this and you're a member of that church family and deep down you want this for yourself as well, you need to let me know and together we can work out how best to do this.

I myself need to be a more mature, equipped follower of Jesus if I am ever going to lead others on that path. That means I need to spend more time in God's word and not just for preparing sermons. It means I need to spend more time in prayer and not just when I perceive some pressing personal need. I can only be any good as a pastor if I deliberately and intentionally spend time developing my relationship with God. Come to think of it, I can only be any good as a husband, a father, a friend and a Christian man if I intentionally spend time on that too. That means I need to look at my schedule and revise it in the light of God's calling on my life. It means I need to learn the difference between the urgent and the important and learn to focus on the latter. Just this morning in worship I have been reminded that it will mean that I need to realise that I am not in control of how things ultimately turn out. God is in control and he can be trusted.

I have a new perspective on global Christianity. Here at Regent I have had the enormous privilege of worshipping and working alongside people from at least five continents and that has added a richness and diversity to both worship and study that I have not experienced before. Having said that it has been very gratifying in worship to hear people from all these parts of the world sing songs by Keith Getty, Robin Mark and Rend Collective - all from our wee country of Norn Iron!!

Once I read over my class notes and am able to further reflect, I will hopefully have a clearer idea of where all this is leading. But for now let it suffice to record my thanks to all the people mentioned above and above all to God who has refreshed me in this time and has helped me to grow deeper in my understanding of his word and his will for my life and for our life as a church family in Ballygrainey. I have learned once again, as I have to keep on learning, that he is always more ready to give than I am to receive.