Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Romans 12.9-21 All Age Talk
Romans 12.9-21 (All Age)
Introduction
• Just a list of right and wrong ways to behave?
• A powerful and vital lesson in how to live in relationship to other people – especially those we may regard as enemies. The key word is love and it all flows from God’s abundant and merciful love for all people (11.36-12.1).
• In this short talk I want to concentrate on the first and last verses of the passage;
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. (12.9)
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12.21)
Sincere Love
Who can explain what “sincere” means? (Hint: use your spanish to work it out. Sin cera = without wax.) What’s that got to do with love? Here’s a vase of ours which has been accidentally knocked over and broken a few times. It looks pretty good and it is fine to use because Billie has repaired it with superglue. But dishonest Roman merchants used to repair their cracked vases with coloured wax and then sell them as new. Why was that wrong? (…) How could it be detected? (Hint: what happens to wax when it gets hot?)
So when our Bible tells us that love should be sincere, it means it should be without wax, without pretence, without a mask. Let me give a few examples and I want you to use your “wax detectors” (kids have rattles and bells) to spot whether the love is sincere or not …
• We tell someone we will pray for them but we don’t actually do it.
• We smile when someone is speaking to us, but without really listening.
• We visit a sick friend in hospital instead of going to watch our favourite football team.
• We give some food and clothing to a needy family without saying who they are from.
• We say nice things about someone when we are with them, but when they have gone we say bad things about them.
• We tell someone to call us any time, but when their number comes up on our phone, we don’t answer.
All these examples, and the others we heard in our Bible reading show that love is not just about what we say, but what we do.
Who is Lovable?
There are lots of reasons why we don’t always find it easy to love sincerely. We are so busy, self-centred and insecure for example. We also come across the problem that people are not always lovable. In fact people can be nasty and act so badly towards us that they deserve to be hated instead of loved. But notice what the Bible says: Hate what is evil (not WHO is evil); cling to what is good (12.9).
So we are to hate the evil and bad things people do but we are not to reject or hate people, who are all made by God in God’s image. In fact we are to cling to people, as God does. Because God’s mission is to rid the world of evil, not of “evil people”. The way God destroys his enemies is by turning them into friends, as we will see.
Vengeance and burning coals
This leads us into the most difficult and misunderstood part of the reading. We are challenged to bless the people who persecute us, to hold back from taking revenge on bad people but to leave them for God to sort out in his wrath. God is (ominously) quoted as saying: It is mine to avenge; I will repay (Deut. 32.35). Some people think this is like when someone trips you up and steals your bag, and you don’t chase after them because you know your big brother or your Dad is going to find them and beat them up later.
The problem with this is that it makes God somebody who is inconsistent; who does not treat people the way he tells us to treat people. It is very hard to respect and obey a parent who is like this (examples … "don’t laze around in front of TV eating chocolate" … "don’t push in front of people in queues"). God’s love for “bad” people would be fake rather than sincere.
Our love for certain people would also be fake, just giving them a false sense of security. We would be meeting our enemy’s hunger and thirst temporarily, knowing that they were going to have burning coals poured onto their heads later.
But God in fact loves all his creatures with a genuine, sincere love. The burning coals of kindness are to shame our enemy into changing. They are like a furnace which burns away the impurities from metal – hating what is bad and clinging to what is good (b.t.w. John Wesley interpreted this verse like this).
Perhaps you can remember a time when you said something hurtful to someone and they responded with kind words which made you blush, your face burning with shame! Maybe that experience changed you, “burning away” something bad from your character.
When the Heat is on
For a perfect example of God’s love in action we can look at Jesus, who put it into action sincerely, consistently and without any pretence or hidden agenda. It is not easy to love people as they express their hatred of you, spit at you, nail you to a cross. But Jesus kept loving them to the end, hating the evil but loving the people, all of them.
And what kept him going was not the thought of the revenge he would take on them later, it was the knowledge that they would all be transformed in the end by God’s perfect love.
There is a Greek myth in which Icarus flies too near the sun and the wax holding his wings together melts. In a similar way, the nearer we get to Jesus, the more the wax in our lives – all the pretence and fear and selfishness – will be melted away, leaving only a pure love for God and for all people.
What can you do this week to show sincere love to others?
Introduction
• Just a list of right and wrong ways to behave?
• A powerful and vital lesson in how to live in relationship to other people – especially those we may regard as enemies. The key word is love and it all flows from God’s abundant and merciful love for all people (11.36-12.1).
• In this short talk I want to concentrate on the first and last verses of the passage;
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. (12.9)
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (12.21)
Sincere Love
Who can explain what “sincere” means? (Hint: use your spanish to work it out. Sin cera = without wax.) What’s that got to do with love? Here’s a vase of ours which has been accidentally knocked over and broken a few times. It looks pretty good and it is fine to use because Billie has repaired it with superglue. But dishonest Roman merchants used to repair their cracked vases with coloured wax and then sell them as new. Why was that wrong? (…) How could it be detected? (Hint: what happens to wax when it gets hot?)
So when our Bible tells us that love should be sincere, it means it should be without wax, without pretence, without a mask. Let me give a few examples and I want you to use your “wax detectors” (kids have rattles and bells) to spot whether the love is sincere or not …
• We tell someone we will pray for them but we don’t actually do it.
• We smile when someone is speaking to us, but without really listening.
• We visit a sick friend in hospital instead of going to watch our favourite football team.
• We give some food and clothing to a needy family without saying who they are from.
• We say nice things about someone when we are with them, but when they have gone we say bad things about them.
• We tell someone to call us any time, but when their number comes up on our phone, we don’t answer.
All these examples, and the others we heard in our Bible reading show that love is not just about what we say, but what we do.
Who is Lovable?
There are lots of reasons why we don’t always find it easy to love sincerely. We are so busy, self-centred and insecure for example. We also come across the problem that people are not always lovable. In fact people can be nasty and act so badly towards us that they deserve to be hated instead of loved. But notice what the Bible says: Hate what is evil (not WHO is evil); cling to what is good (12.9).
So we are to hate the evil and bad things people do but we are not to reject or hate people, who are all made by God in God’s image. In fact we are to cling to people, as God does. Because God’s mission is to rid the world of evil, not of “evil people”. The way God destroys his enemies is by turning them into friends, as we will see.
Vengeance and burning coals
This leads us into the most difficult and misunderstood part of the reading. We are challenged to bless the people who persecute us, to hold back from taking revenge on bad people but to leave them for God to sort out in his wrath. God is (ominously) quoted as saying: It is mine to avenge; I will repay (Deut. 32.35). Some people think this is like when someone trips you up and steals your bag, and you don’t chase after them because you know your big brother or your Dad is going to find them and beat them up later.
The problem with this is that it makes God somebody who is inconsistent; who does not treat people the way he tells us to treat people. It is very hard to respect and obey a parent who is like this (examples … "don’t laze around in front of TV eating chocolate" … "don’t push in front of people in queues"). God’s love for “bad” people would be fake rather than sincere.
Our love for certain people would also be fake, just giving them a false sense of security. We would be meeting our enemy’s hunger and thirst temporarily, knowing that they were going to have burning coals poured onto their heads later.
But God in fact loves all his creatures with a genuine, sincere love. The burning coals of kindness are to shame our enemy into changing. They are like a furnace which burns away the impurities from metal – hating what is bad and clinging to what is good (b.t.w. John Wesley interpreted this verse like this).
Perhaps you can remember a time when you said something hurtful to someone and they responded with kind words which made you blush, your face burning with shame! Maybe that experience changed you, “burning away” something bad from your character.
When the Heat is on
For a perfect example of God’s love in action we can look at Jesus, who put it into action sincerely, consistently and without any pretence or hidden agenda. It is not easy to love people as they express their hatred of you, spit at you, nail you to a cross. But Jesus kept loving them to the end, hating the evil but loving the people, all of them.
And what kept him going was not the thought of the revenge he would take on them later, it was the knowledge that they would all be transformed in the end by God’s perfect love.
There is a Greek myth in which Icarus flies too near the sun and the wax holding his wings together melts. In a similar way, the nearer we get to Jesus, the more the wax in our lives – all the pretence and fear and selfishness – will be melted away, leaving only a pure love for God and for all people.
What can you do this week to show sincere love to others?
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Sentenced to Dance - Romans 10.5-15
“Sentenced to Dance!”
Romans 10.5-15
Introduction
A couple of years ago a 15 year-old criminal named Danny found himself in court yet again and waited, in shame and resignation, for the usual sentence of imprisonment in a Young Offenders’ Institution. To his amazement, Danny was sentenced to dance instead, and so began an incredible transformation of his life. His story caught my attention because it matches the gospel story in many ways. We’ll come back to Danny later.
The main bible passage we are looking at today is Romans 10.5-15, a key gospel text which has inspired many great missionaries down the ages to take the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. Paul himself was of course the church’s first and greatest missionary (having been its most vicious enemy) and it is likely that his purpose in writing his letter to the Roman church was to gain essential support for the mission he planned to take the gospel to Spain (see Romans 15.23-29 – Robert Jewett’s commentary argues this case very clearly).
Back to Romans 10. ‘ “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” ’ (quoting Joel 2.32, also quoted by Peter at Pentecost, Acts 2.21) writes Paul. And he famously goes on: ‘How, then, can they call on the one whom they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”’ (quoting Isaiah 52.7). Romans 10.13-15
Context
• Romans 10 builds on Paul’s explanation of salvation in chapters 1-8, by considering how people actually come to be saved.
• Chapter 10 also needs to be seen in the context of chapters 9-11, in which Paul addresses the puzzling and for him distressing question of the rejection of Jesus by most of Israel and he wonders whether this means God has in turn rejected Israel from participating in his salvation plan.
• Paul’s argument in 9-11 moves from despair and anguish to the glorious expression of hope in 11.32 and the joyful praise song of 11.33-36.
Three clear messages about salvation stand out in Romans 10.5-15.
1. That salvation is not something which can be or even needs to be earned. Jesus has done all that is required. Paul has already said as much in 9. 16 ‘It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy’, and he now takes a familiar passage of the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 30.12ff, and shows that Jesus has fulfilled it by his faithfulness in descending from heaven and by being raised from the dead, so that the very word of God is now present in the mouths and hearts of believers, resulting in their salvation.
2. That salvation is a universal gift and not confined to one favoured group of people (verses 11-13). ‘…the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (Romans 10.12-13, quoting Joel 2.32 – also quoted by Peter in his Pentecost sermon)
3. That God wants those who have received salvation to spread the good news, that is, to work with God in his stated mission to save and heal and restore all people and all things (verses 14-15).
What about Belief?
We now need to consider the important matter of belief, which Paul tells us is the way that people get to receive their salvation. Now the usual way of reading Romans 10.8-10 makes it very simple and it goes something like this:
The essential facts about Jesus, that he rose from the dead and that he is now Lord, are presented to all people by preachers and missionaries. Individuals then have a choice to either believe this information to be true or to reject it as false. Those who believe it to be true should confess their belief and when they do so they are officially saved, sola fides, by faith alone. This guarantees that, when they die, they will go to a place of everlasting bliss, called heaven. Those who do not choose to believe and confess will be sent when they die to a place of everlasting torment, called hell.
Now apart from one exception, this is certainly one way that Romans 10.8-10 can be understood, when read in isolation from the rest of the New Testament, but there are some problems with this understanding. The exception, the part of that popular interpretation which you can’t get from Romans 10, is the bit about everlasting hell being the fate of all people who fail to believe in the resurrection and lordship of
Jesus before they die.
Hell? No!
Many people believe this to be true. In fact many people believe it is the very heart of the gospel and defend it fiercely, harshly criticising and trying to silence people who have discovered from their study of the Bible that it is not true.
People who insist on this idea of everlasting punishment in hell should at least pause for a moment to consider why in all of his New Testament writings and in all of his sermons and conversations recorded in Acts, Paul never mentions hell at all, not even once! (Don’t take my word for this, check it for yourself!) Surely, if everlasting punishment in hell were the fate of unbelievers, Paul would have warned them about it?
Hell is a hot topic () and I’ll be coming back to the subject in future sermons and bible studies, but let’s set it aside for now and turn to other questions raised by reading Romans 10.8-10 in the simple and isolated way outlined above.
Other Questions
1. The odds are stacked against the majority of the world’s population even hearing the facts about Jesus, let alone responding in the required way. Think about it. What about the millions of people who are brought up in strict Muslim countries where christianity is outlawed? Or as Rob Bell put it in his recent book Love Wins , “What if the missionary gets a flat tire?” If God desires the salvation of all people, as the Bible clearly teaches, wouldn’t he at least make sure everybody had an equal chance?
2. Elsewhere in Romans, Paul teaches that sinful human beings are incapable of responding to God without his direct intervention by the Holy Spirit (8.6-7). Then in chapter 12 we find that faith itself is a gift and that a spiritual transformation of the mind is required. Taking our little section of Romans about believing and confessing on its own makes the rest of Romans quite puzzling.
3. Then there is the teaching of Jesus which is all about turning away from evil, about following him and about the life of the Kingdom of God. 90% of his teaching is about these things, not about avoidance of punishment for people who do not believe certain facts about him. And why would Jesus speak so often in the obscurity of parables, making it difficult for people to understand and respond? Why not make it clearer? If a confession of belief in Jesus before death was so critical for each person, wouldn’t Jesus have spent his time warning about this and urging people to make their confession of belief, instead of on providing the temporary relief of healings and teaching about a Kingdom most people would be unable to join anyway?
4. Then there’s the failure of this idea of salvation to address the problem of sin. Let’s take the case of Danny, the young offender I mentioned at the beginning. What if the Judge, having found Danny guilty of his crime had then sentenced him to be set free and declared innocent, on the condition that Danny accepts the Judge has the authority to do so. That might seem very merciful of the Judge, but how would it address Danny’s crime or make it less likely for him to commit further crimes? Take this lemon. I can stick a label on it that declares it to be an orange, but really, it is still a lemon!
Is there a better reading?
For a better understanding of what the New Testament really teaches about belief and salvation I want to begin by telling you the rest of Danny’s story. Danny was recommended as suitable for a radical new scheme (Dance United, see www.dance-united.com) which, instead of sending them to prison, put young offenders into a demanding, disciplined dance programme, based at the Bradford Dance Academy (It was an idea originated by someone working with street children in Ethioopia). So to start with, somebody believed in Danny enough to put him in the programme.
Even so, Danny was very skeptical at the start of his sentence. He also quickly discovered that it was not a soft option! One of the instructors, Lucy, writes that the offenders who begin the programme “arrive scowling and reluctant. They have been living on rubbish food, smoking massive numbers of cigarettes, living a nocturnal lifestyle and getting up at four in the afternoon, so they are wildly unfit and have no energy. Our first job is to change their health profile.”
Danny’s health and fitness improved quickly. He also learned new skills and became confident and motivated. Performances had to prepared and he was determined not to make a fool of himself. Later in the programme, Danny and the others were taken into primary schools to teach dance to small groups of children. After this they were encouraged to reflect on their own school experiences and were given help to improve their reading and writing, as well as learning about choreography and the history of dance.
Lucy writes “We expect high standards from our young offenders, but we also want them to know we care about them and are here if they want to talk.” The programme designer Andrew Coggins adds “Prison and other sentences that are just about teaching them a lesson do nothing to address the fundamental problem…
(Lemons come in, lemons go out. With a few extra bruises.)
…The reward (with the dance scheme) is to see their families crying with delight and pride, and people from the criminal justice system clapping. All of which reinforces the idea that they are valuable not valueless, as so many feel when they arrive: I’m convinced they’ll go out better citizens this way than if they’d been on a tough punishment block.”
So how did it turn out for Danny? He gained his silver Arts Award, went back to school and gained more qualifications there. Two years on he started a course for Gifted and Talented dancers with a prestigious Dance Company. And he wrote this:
“I’d had all these other punishments and none had made me want to change my ways or rethink my life. Coming here I was shown that I can do good. My family’s dead proud and my mum smiles now.”
How does this relate to the Gospel?
Hopefully you can see how this relates to the gospel. Psalm 103 says:-
“God does not treat us as our sins deserve … as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.” (Ps 103.10,13).
The writer of Hebrews adds:-
“God disciplines us for oour good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12.10-11).
God does not sentence us sinful human beings to pointless or never-ending punishment; he sentences us to dance classes. Now for some of us the idea of attending dance classes may indeed be hell and a severe punishment, but we might also recognize that the classes are for the purpose of healing and improving us, freeing us from our unhealthy lifestyle.
By including us in Christ (putting us in the orange, as it were) God shows us that he believes in us. The missionary or preacher’s role is still vital, in telling all people what God has done for them, in calling them to join in the dance. But this is just part of something bigger that God is doing, and which in the end is irresistable.
In Romans 10.5 Paul writes “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart”, and we remember God’s promise through Isaiah “My word … will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55.11)
Friends, our faith is not a matter of saying we believe the facts about Jesus in order to avoid punishment. God believes in us and has included us sinners in the death and resurrection of his faithful Son, Jesus. And God, in his perfect love and justice, has poured out his Spirit on all people and has sentenced us to dance to his music, with joy and with discipline, and to teach the world to dance with us.
“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10.15)
Romans 10.5-15
Introduction
A couple of years ago a 15 year-old criminal named Danny found himself in court yet again and waited, in shame and resignation, for the usual sentence of imprisonment in a Young Offenders’ Institution. To his amazement, Danny was sentenced to dance instead, and so began an incredible transformation of his life. His story caught my attention because it matches the gospel story in many ways. We’ll come back to Danny later.
The main bible passage we are looking at today is Romans 10.5-15, a key gospel text which has inspired many great missionaries down the ages to take the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. Paul himself was of course the church’s first and greatest missionary (having been its most vicious enemy) and it is likely that his purpose in writing his letter to the Roman church was to gain essential support for the mission he planned to take the gospel to Spain (see Romans 15.23-29 – Robert Jewett’s commentary argues this case very clearly).
Back to Romans 10. ‘ “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” ’ (quoting Joel 2.32, also quoted by Peter at Pentecost, Acts 2.21) writes Paul. And he famously goes on: ‘How, then, can they call on the one whom they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”’ (quoting Isaiah 52.7). Romans 10.13-15
Context
• Romans 10 builds on Paul’s explanation of salvation in chapters 1-8, by considering how people actually come to be saved.
• Chapter 10 also needs to be seen in the context of chapters 9-11, in which Paul addresses the puzzling and for him distressing question of the rejection of Jesus by most of Israel and he wonders whether this means God has in turn rejected Israel from participating in his salvation plan.
• Paul’s argument in 9-11 moves from despair and anguish to the glorious expression of hope in 11.32 and the joyful praise song of 11.33-36.
Three clear messages about salvation stand out in Romans 10.5-15.
1. That salvation is not something which can be or even needs to be earned. Jesus has done all that is required. Paul has already said as much in 9. 16 ‘It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy’, and he now takes a familiar passage of the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 30.12ff, and shows that Jesus has fulfilled it by his faithfulness in descending from heaven and by being raised from the dead, so that the very word of God is now present in the mouths and hearts of believers, resulting in their salvation.
2. That salvation is a universal gift and not confined to one favoured group of people (verses 11-13). ‘…the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ (Romans 10.12-13, quoting Joel 2.32 – also quoted by Peter in his Pentecost sermon)
3. That God wants those who have received salvation to spread the good news, that is, to work with God in his stated mission to save and heal and restore all people and all things (verses 14-15).
What about Belief?
We now need to consider the important matter of belief, which Paul tells us is the way that people get to receive their salvation. Now the usual way of reading Romans 10.8-10 makes it very simple and it goes something like this:
The essential facts about Jesus, that he rose from the dead and that he is now Lord, are presented to all people by preachers and missionaries. Individuals then have a choice to either believe this information to be true or to reject it as false. Those who believe it to be true should confess their belief and when they do so they are officially saved, sola fides, by faith alone. This guarantees that, when they die, they will go to a place of everlasting bliss, called heaven. Those who do not choose to believe and confess will be sent when they die to a place of everlasting torment, called hell.
Now apart from one exception, this is certainly one way that Romans 10.8-10 can be understood, when read in isolation from the rest of the New Testament, but there are some problems with this understanding. The exception, the part of that popular interpretation which you can’t get from Romans 10, is the bit about everlasting hell being the fate of all people who fail to believe in the resurrection and lordship of
Jesus before they die.
Hell? No!
Many people believe this to be true. In fact many people believe it is the very heart of the gospel and defend it fiercely, harshly criticising and trying to silence people who have discovered from their study of the Bible that it is not true.
People who insist on this idea of everlasting punishment in hell should at least pause for a moment to consider why in all of his New Testament writings and in all of his sermons and conversations recorded in Acts, Paul never mentions hell at all, not even once! (Don’t take my word for this, check it for yourself!) Surely, if everlasting punishment in hell were the fate of unbelievers, Paul would have warned them about it?
Hell is a hot topic () and I’ll be coming back to the subject in future sermons and bible studies, but let’s set it aside for now and turn to other questions raised by reading Romans 10.8-10 in the simple and isolated way outlined above.
Other Questions
1. The odds are stacked against the majority of the world’s population even hearing the facts about Jesus, let alone responding in the required way. Think about it. What about the millions of people who are brought up in strict Muslim countries where christianity is outlawed? Or as Rob Bell put it in his recent book Love Wins , “What if the missionary gets a flat tire?” If God desires the salvation of all people, as the Bible clearly teaches, wouldn’t he at least make sure everybody had an equal chance?
2. Elsewhere in Romans, Paul teaches that sinful human beings are incapable of responding to God without his direct intervention by the Holy Spirit (8.6-7). Then in chapter 12 we find that faith itself is a gift and that a spiritual transformation of the mind is required. Taking our little section of Romans about believing and confessing on its own makes the rest of Romans quite puzzling.
3. Then there is the teaching of Jesus which is all about turning away from evil, about following him and about the life of the Kingdom of God. 90% of his teaching is about these things, not about avoidance of punishment for people who do not believe certain facts about him. And why would Jesus speak so often in the obscurity of parables, making it difficult for people to understand and respond? Why not make it clearer? If a confession of belief in Jesus before death was so critical for each person, wouldn’t Jesus have spent his time warning about this and urging people to make their confession of belief, instead of on providing the temporary relief of healings and teaching about a Kingdom most people would be unable to join anyway?
4. Then there’s the failure of this idea of salvation to address the problem of sin. Let’s take the case of Danny, the young offender I mentioned at the beginning. What if the Judge, having found Danny guilty of his crime had then sentenced him to be set free and declared innocent, on the condition that Danny accepts the Judge has the authority to do so. That might seem very merciful of the Judge, but how would it address Danny’s crime or make it less likely for him to commit further crimes? Take this lemon. I can stick a label on it that declares it to be an orange, but really, it is still a lemon!
Is there a better reading?
For a better understanding of what the New Testament really teaches about belief and salvation I want to begin by telling you the rest of Danny’s story. Danny was recommended as suitable for a radical new scheme (Dance United, see www.dance-united.com) which, instead of sending them to prison, put young offenders into a demanding, disciplined dance programme, based at the Bradford Dance Academy (It was an idea originated by someone working with street children in Ethioopia). So to start with, somebody believed in Danny enough to put him in the programme.
Even so, Danny was very skeptical at the start of his sentence. He also quickly discovered that it was not a soft option! One of the instructors, Lucy, writes that the offenders who begin the programme “arrive scowling and reluctant. They have been living on rubbish food, smoking massive numbers of cigarettes, living a nocturnal lifestyle and getting up at four in the afternoon, so they are wildly unfit and have no energy. Our first job is to change their health profile.”
Danny’s health and fitness improved quickly. He also learned new skills and became confident and motivated. Performances had to prepared and he was determined not to make a fool of himself. Later in the programme, Danny and the others were taken into primary schools to teach dance to small groups of children. After this they were encouraged to reflect on their own school experiences and were given help to improve their reading and writing, as well as learning about choreography and the history of dance.
Lucy writes “We expect high standards from our young offenders, but we also want them to know we care about them and are here if they want to talk.” The programme designer Andrew Coggins adds “Prison and other sentences that are just about teaching them a lesson do nothing to address the fundamental problem…
(Lemons come in, lemons go out. With a few extra bruises.)
…The reward (with the dance scheme) is to see their families crying with delight and pride, and people from the criminal justice system clapping. All of which reinforces the idea that they are valuable not valueless, as so many feel when they arrive: I’m convinced they’ll go out better citizens this way than if they’d been on a tough punishment block.”
So how did it turn out for Danny? He gained his silver Arts Award, went back to school and gained more qualifications there. Two years on he started a course for Gifted and Talented dancers with a prestigious Dance Company. And he wrote this:
“I’d had all these other punishments and none had made me want to change my ways or rethink my life. Coming here I was shown that I can do good. My family’s dead proud and my mum smiles now.”
How does this relate to the Gospel?
Hopefully you can see how this relates to the gospel. Psalm 103 says:-
“God does not treat us as our sins deserve … as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.” (Ps 103.10,13).
The writer of Hebrews adds:-
“God disciplines us for oour good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12.10-11).
God does not sentence us sinful human beings to pointless or never-ending punishment; he sentences us to dance classes. Now for some of us the idea of attending dance classes may indeed be hell and a severe punishment, but we might also recognize that the classes are for the purpose of healing and improving us, freeing us from our unhealthy lifestyle.
By including us in Christ (putting us in the orange, as it were) God shows us that he believes in us. The missionary or preacher’s role is still vital, in telling all people what God has done for them, in calling them to join in the dance. But this is just part of something bigger that God is doing, and which in the end is irresistable.
In Romans 10.5 Paul writes “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart”, and we remember God’s promise through Isaiah “My word … will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55.11)
Friends, our faith is not a matter of saying we believe the facts about Jesus in order to avoid punishment. God believes in us and has included us sinners in the death and resurrection of his faithful Son, Jesus. And God, in his perfect love and justice, has poured out his Spirit on all people and has sentenced us to dance to his music, with joy and with discipline, and to teach the world to dance with us.
“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10.15)
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Feeding of the 5000 - All Age Sermon
Matthew 14.13-21 The Feeding of a Large Crowd
READY STEADY COOK
• Who has seen this British TV programme?
• I need some children to demonstrate how it works (…)
• What a challenge - to make a great meal in a short time from a few cheap ingredients. Today’s Bible story is about an even bigger challenge!
I WANT TO BE ALONE
• Who said those words? (Greta Garbo)
• Different reasons for wanting to be alone (some good, some selfish … examples?)
• Jesus had a good reason to want solitude. Does anyone know what it was? (see Mat 14.1-12). But as he and the disciples sailed to a quiet place, a big crowd (attracted by Jesus’s teaching and healings) followed on foot.
• This makes what happened next all the more remarkable. How would YOU react if you really needed some time on your own and suddenly a great crowd of people arrive - needy people who you could help?
• Jesus responded with compassion (a very strong emotion). In Mark’s version of the story (and earlier in Matthew 9.36) it says he had compassion because he could see that the crowd were like sheep without a shepherd.
• So he healed the illnesses of all the sick people in the crowd.
IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?
• This took a long time and the disciples (v15) urged Jesus to send the crowd away to buy themselves some food in the villages (maybe the disciples were worried about having to share their food, maybe they wanted some time alone with Jesus, maybe they were looking out for him – he must be exhausted and needed to rest and grieve).
• Jesus replied “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” The disciples reply “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish” (John’s gospel says they got this food from a boy in the crowd).
• And Jesus said “IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?!?”
• Actually he didn’t – I just read that on somebody’s teeshirt the other day (its a quote from the famous boxer, Muhammad Ali).
• Jesus in fact went on to teach the disciples an important lesson, at the same time making sure nobody went home hungry.
JESUS SEES THINGS DIFFERENTLY
I’m going to ask the children to hand out some cards with Bible verses written on them. These verses will help understand what happens next.
• When Jesus looks at the tiny amount of food and the big, hungry crowd, he sees things differently from the disciples – Why do you think this is ..?
• He’s God (see John 1.1, Colossians 1.15, Hebrews 1.3) !
• He’s got history. What Old Testament story can you remember where hungry people are fed by God in the desert? That’s right, Exodus 16, Moses, manna etc. A story you might not know, in 2 Kings 4.42-44 is also very interesting – let’s hear that now…
• He knows how the story will end – not just this little story, but the whole big story of the history of everybody and everything. Let’s look at a few Bible verses about that now …
DISCIPLES NEED TO LEARN
• … to see things Jesus’ way.
• … not just by understanding and believing something, but by doing something!
LET’S ACT OUT THE REST OF THE STORY
1. Jesus asks the disciples to give him all the food they have got (this doesn’t take long!)
2. Jesus tells the people to sit down on the grass, ready to be fed (the disciples are thinking he’s going to look really bad when there isn’t enough food).
3. Jesus looks up to heaven, gives thanks to God, breaks the bread (do you think he broke the fish as well? Mark’s gospel says he did. Matthew left that bit out – maybe it got a bit messy!) What do these actions remind you of..?
4. Jesus gives the broken food back to the disciples to feed everybody with (do you think they are nervous?)
5. The disciples feed the crowd until everybody is full.
6. Then comes the biggest surprise for the disciples, when they collect the leftovers and find … they have more than they had to begin with – in fact 12 baskets full (one for each disciple or representing an infinite supply).
CONCLUSIONS
• Let’s try to pull together what this story means for us as followers of Jesus today. Let me start with a question. What do you think when you look at the physical needs (eg…) and the spiritual needs (eg…) of all the people in the world around you – and consider your own resources?
• Do you have just enough for you and your family, or too much or too little? Does it seem that there is just not enough to go round – whether we’re talking about food, water and medicines, or about peace, safety, hope and love? Maybe there isn’t enough and it is only possible for some people to be happy and secure and healthy, well fed and hopeful…
• JESUS DISAGREES. He challenges us to see things differently, to believe differently and to behave differently – putting our faith in him into action.
• Jesus challenges us, not necessarily to sell all we have and give it to the poor, but to give him control of all we have.
• Jesus calls us to follow him by stepping out in faith and meeting all the physical and spiritual needs we can see. And if you’ve got TV or Internet, that’s a LOT of needs.
• So how far can it go? How many people can receive the food and drink they need, the healing, the forgiveness, peace and safety they crave, the salvation from sin and death and evil they need?
• Think back to the crowd in our Bible story. Who can remember how many people were fed (don’t forget the women and children … so maybe 10-15,000?) That was a vast crowd from a huge area, at a time when the population was much smaller than now. For instance Nazareth had about 500 people then.
• NOBODY left that day without being healed and nourished physically and spiritually. And what about the leftovers. What do they tell us?
• Think back also to those Bible verses about how the story is going to end.
• One lesson from the story is that a little can go a long way (a little food, kindness, compassion)… especially when we hand it over to Jesus. And surely there will be enough for everyone.
READY STEADY COOK
• Who has seen this British TV programme?
• I need some children to demonstrate how it works (…)
• What a challenge - to make a great meal in a short time from a few cheap ingredients. Today’s Bible story is about an even bigger challenge!
I WANT TO BE ALONE
• Who said those words? (Greta Garbo)
• Different reasons for wanting to be alone (some good, some selfish … examples?)
• Jesus had a good reason to want solitude. Does anyone know what it was? (see Mat 14.1-12). But as he and the disciples sailed to a quiet place, a big crowd (attracted by Jesus’s teaching and healings) followed on foot.
• This makes what happened next all the more remarkable. How would YOU react if you really needed some time on your own and suddenly a great crowd of people arrive - needy people who you could help?
• Jesus responded with compassion (a very strong emotion). In Mark’s version of the story (and earlier in Matthew 9.36) it says he had compassion because he could see that the crowd were like sheep without a shepherd.
• So he healed the illnesses of all the sick people in the crowd.
IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?
• This took a long time and the disciples (v15) urged Jesus to send the crowd away to buy themselves some food in the villages (maybe the disciples were worried about having to share their food, maybe they wanted some time alone with Jesus, maybe they were looking out for him – he must be exhausted and needed to rest and grieve).
• Jesus replied “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” The disciples reply “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish” (John’s gospel says they got this food from a boy in the crowd).
• And Jesus said “IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?!?”
• Actually he didn’t – I just read that on somebody’s teeshirt the other day (its a quote from the famous boxer, Muhammad Ali).
• Jesus in fact went on to teach the disciples an important lesson, at the same time making sure nobody went home hungry.
JESUS SEES THINGS DIFFERENTLY
I’m going to ask the children to hand out some cards with Bible verses written on them. These verses will help understand what happens next.
• When Jesus looks at the tiny amount of food and the big, hungry crowd, he sees things differently from the disciples – Why do you think this is ..?
• He’s God (see John 1.1, Colossians 1.15, Hebrews 1.3) !
• He’s got history. What Old Testament story can you remember where hungry people are fed by God in the desert? That’s right, Exodus 16, Moses, manna etc. A story you might not know, in 2 Kings 4.42-44 is also very interesting – let’s hear that now…
• He knows how the story will end – not just this little story, but the whole big story of the history of everybody and everything. Let’s look at a few Bible verses about that now …
DISCIPLES NEED TO LEARN
• … to see things Jesus’ way.
• … not just by understanding and believing something, but by doing something!
LET’S ACT OUT THE REST OF THE STORY
1. Jesus asks the disciples to give him all the food they have got (this doesn’t take long!)
2. Jesus tells the people to sit down on the grass, ready to be fed (the disciples are thinking he’s going to look really bad when there isn’t enough food).
3. Jesus looks up to heaven, gives thanks to God, breaks the bread (do you think he broke the fish as well? Mark’s gospel says he did. Matthew left that bit out – maybe it got a bit messy!) What do these actions remind you of..?
4. Jesus gives the broken food back to the disciples to feed everybody with (do you think they are nervous?)
5. The disciples feed the crowd until everybody is full.
6. Then comes the biggest surprise for the disciples, when they collect the leftovers and find … they have more than they had to begin with – in fact 12 baskets full (one for each disciple or representing an infinite supply).
CONCLUSIONS
• Let’s try to pull together what this story means for us as followers of Jesus today. Let me start with a question. What do you think when you look at the physical needs (eg…) and the spiritual needs (eg…) of all the people in the world around you – and consider your own resources?
• Do you have just enough for you and your family, or too much or too little? Does it seem that there is just not enough to go round – whether we’re talking about food, water and medicines, or about peace, safety, hope and love? Maybe there isn’t enough and it is only possible for some people to be happy and secure and healthy, well fed and hopeful…
• JESUS DISAGREES. He challenges us to see things differently, to believe differently and to behave differently – putting our faith in him into action.
• Jesus challenges us, not necessarily to sell all we have and give it to the poor, but to give him control of all we have.
• Jesus calls us to follow him by stepping out in faith and meeting all the physical and spiritual needs we can see. And if you’ve got TV or Internet, that’s a LOT of needs.
• So how far can it go? How many people can receive the food and drink they need, the healing, the forgiveness, peace and safety they crave, the salvation from sin and death and evil they need?
• Think back to the crowd in our Bible story. Who can remember how many people were fed (don’t forget the women and children … so maybe 10-15,000?) That was a vast crowd from a huge area, at a time when the population was much smaller than now. For instance Nazareth had about 500 people then.
• NOBODY left that day without being healed and nourished physically and spiritually. And what about the leftovers. What do they tell us?
• Think back also to those Bible verses about how the story is going to end.
• One lesson from the story is that a little can go a long way (a little food, kindness, compassion)… especially when we hand it over to Jesus. And surely there will be enough for everyone.
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