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Our citizenship is in heaven

by Ken Francis

(Based on Ps 27, Luke 13:31-35, Phil 3:17-4:1)

These are troubling times, and if you’re anything like me you’ll have a heightened sense of anxiety about just what is going on in the world. Not anxious, not fearful … maybe just a bit unsettled. This is not the world we were living in ten years ago. I don’t need to list things, really, but – you know – Ukraine, the threat of a third world war, oil prices and inflation, Covid, global warming, divisions in society, violent protests, fake news … what is going on, and how should we be reacting?

The first time I ever heard the phrase “fake news” was after the US election in 2016, when Donald Trump claimed the crowd at his inauguration was much bigger than the one at Barack Obama’s inauguration. It clearly wasn’t, but Trump branded such inconvenient truth as fake news. Now anything gets labelled fake news, whether it is or not, and no one really knows what to believe. There are lies everywhere, but who can tell which ones are actually lies? Putin does. Does Zelensky?

Scripture has no explicit answers to these challenges, but does promote some clear principles and perspectives, and it behoves us to become familiar with it. We need a personal understanding of Scripture to guide us, and calm us, and give us accurate perspective during times such as these.

For example, Micah 6:8 is always helpful – “… do justly, Ken, and love mercy, and walk humbly with God.”
There’s some really helpful stuff in Philippians about being content, and not being anxious.

In today’s readings, Ps 27, says, “Your face, Lord, I will seek. [This is verse 8] Teach me your way, Lord [Right? I want to hear your perspective on things, Lord]; lead me in a straight path. Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes, for false witnesses [yeah? Fake news?] rise up against me, spouting malicious accusations.” BUT [v13], “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait [it repeats it] wait for the Lord.”
One time when Jesus was teaching about the latter days of history (in Luke 21), he said: “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”

So … wait for the Lord, and ‘Watch and pray’. That’s what we should be doing in these challenging times. Perhaps a good answer to the question, Who can we believe? Might be … You don’t have to believe any of them! Just watch … and pray.

In the Gospel reading: Pharisees warned Jesus that Herod was after him, and he should make himself scarce. Fake news? Well, Jesus ignores their warning. He’s in Galilee, by the way, but he’s on his way to Jerusalem. And he basically says, I’m ok. Don’t distract me. Herod – “that fox”! – he’s of no account. My time is not come yet, I still have work to do, and anyway, I’m not of this place! I’m bound for Jerusalem. (Then he launches into a moving prophesy about Jerusalem itself. Jerusalem is very much on his mind and heart, and he’s not concerned for his own immediate well being at all.)
I feel this is teaching us, as we try to figure out what is going on in the world, “Don’t worry yourselves: focus on … well, what should we really focus on? Him! What is really true? He is. He is the truth, and no one comes to the Father but through him. (John 14:6) We shouldn’t get caught up in dubious theories we’ve heard of via social media. That’s getting distracted. Deceived, even. St Paul says (in 2nd Corinthians), “I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” And in his second letter to Timothy, he writes, “… impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.”

Clear instructions to us from God’s Word in these troubling times.

In Phil 3 Paul reminds his readers – and us – that our citizenship is in heaven. [v20] We didn’t read the whole chapter, but Paul starts out saying, don’t listen to these pundits who say you need to get circumcised! In fact, don’t put any confidence in fleshly things at all. I myself, he writes, could boast about a lot of things … (and he lists a few from his outstanding record). Then, [v7], “But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. … I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”

Further on, “… one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Then, forwards to v18, “… as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. … Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, …” and so on, concluding with, “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you whom I love and long for, stand firm in the Lord.”

Our citizenship is in heaven!
Think about that, what that means. We are not even part of this mess. “Their mind”, Paul just said of ‘fake teachers’, “is set on earthly things.” Don’t get entangled in earthly confusions or conspiracies. “Our citizenship is in heaven.”

In one place in the Old Testament we are called “sojourners”. [A ‘sojourner’ is defined as “a person who resides temporarily in a place”.] There’s a verse that says, “… we are foreigners … and sojourners, as were all our [fore]fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow …” That’s us. We’re not home yet. Our citizenship is in heaven. We’re only sojourners – visitors … we are manuhiri, not tangata whenua …. The point again is, don’t get entangled in earthy things.

Well, what about justice and freedom and discrimination? Shouldn’t we be on the front line of those?

Yes – by all means. “Do justly and love mercy …”, remember? If God has called us to such things. Go for it. But not if it’s just a social obligation you might feel – and not if it’s going to distract you from God’s real purpose for your life. Get involved in a cause if you feel God wants you to, although, don’t forget, Jesus didn’t involve himself in temporal causes. So, be wise about what you concern yourself with.

One more example of how personal attention to Scripture can ‘blueprint’ for us how to deal with doubt and confusion: James gives some perspective in his Epistle: “Don’t be deceived,” he says. “… Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
“Religion (and here is James’s take on what we should be concentrating on) religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” (Jas 1:27)

Enough. Scripture guides us. Scriptural perspective can focus and calm us in the face of anything. It proposes: Be not deceived [by anything you read or hear], keep your eyes on the Truth [Jesus], and don’t forget that we are just passing through. Our real citizenship is in heaven!

I hope to see you there when we get home.

Wesley Day

by Megan Means

(Based on Mark 6:30-34)

So how have we done this week – acting on Jesus’s words?
Rate yourself one to ten – ten being excellent!

How is Lent going for you?
Rate yourself one to ten – ten being poor!

I have taken the choice to explore Wesley Day on this first Sunday of Lent.
I assume that we have all heard of John Wesley, the preacher, and Charles, his younger brother, the poet and hymn writer. Let us use our imaginations and hear this Lenten journey.
Let us try to go back to 24 May 1738, to the City of London, where we discover an anxious young clergyman called John Wesley, aged 35. He has just returned from a two-year appointment as a missionary in the American colony of Georgia. For various reasons, this placement had ended as an embarrassing failure and caused him, John, to question his vocation as a minister and indeed whether he was truly a Christian at all.

On this day, as was his custom throughout his life, John woke at 5am to pray. He opened his Greek New Testament, where he lighted on a verse from 2nd Peter (1:4): “There are given to us exceeding great and precious promises, so that through them we may participate in the divine nature.” He pondered upon this and later in the day, wrote to a friend:
“I see that God’s law is holy, righteous and good. I know that every thought, every movement of my heart should bear God’s image. But how deep I have fallen! How far I am from God’s glory! I feel that I am sold under sin. I know that I deserve only wrath… God is holy, I am sinful. God is a consuming fire; it must devour me the sinner.”

That afternoon John walked over to evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral, where he heard the anthem: “out of the depths have I cried unto thee.” What followed must be told in his own words:
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, it was, and while the preacher was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, and Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that Christ had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

In the year 1738, both John and Charles each had a spiritual experience and discovered the assurance of God’s gift of grace. However, sadly, their message received little welcome in churches, so they began speaking in the open air.

John took to preaching the Gospel to the poor of the new industrial towns. He was concerned that conversion was to be a positive experience and that it should lead to a life of practical holiness and prayer. Therefore, he set about providing classes for moral support and training in discipleship. A by-product of this training was that the converts learned new skills and bettered their social and economic circumstances.

Charles did a bit of preaching as well. However, his greatest contribution was the poetry within his hymns. He wrote over six thousand and these express his personal experiences such as the call of God, of God’s aroha/love, of repentance, of conflict with evil, and of a joyful devotion to Jesus.

One of the most compelling themes of the Wesley’s ministries was that of the boundless grace of God.
Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn grace or bring grace about, any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth. [Fredrick Buechner¹]

Historians may argue that one of the Wesleys’ greatest legacies was that, as they were open to accepting those who were different and encouraging a spirit of cooperation across denominational lines, their preaching and teaching on God’s grace changed the tone of the political debate in Great Britain during the late 1700s. While countries on the continent were fighting civil wars, England transitioned to democracy with relative peace. [Jerry MacGregor and Marie Prys²]

The experience of grace that both John and Charles had was so real that, even though their own lives were not always smooth and trouble free, they lived with a constant sense of gratitude which both sustained them and moved them to action.

The ‘grace of God’ means something like:
Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t be complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things happen. Don’t be afraid. God is with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. [Fredrick Buechner]

John and Charles Wesley’s own spiritual lives were forever changed by an experience of grace. It was not a once only experience, it was an ongoing one, and was the motivation for their work, their ministries, their ‘calling’, their vocation. They wanted others to understand the practical reality of God’s grace, the freedom it brings and the energy that it releases for the good of others.

When we think of our own lives, can we say that we have been so ‘bowled over’ by God’s gift of grace that we have been filled with a similar urgency of action to make it known?
And if we were to ponder upon this, and Jesus’s life of actions, how might we rate ourselves?

In this Lenten season, will the reality of grace, undeserved, and constantly given, continue to motivate our lives, and drive us to impart grace freely into others’ lives? Jesus showed aroha/ compassion for the crowd, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; are we doing likewise in these omicron days? Are we praying for grace to be imparted in others in this time of human cruelty in our world and grace in the actions of world leaders? Are we gracefully looking after ourselves, and taking time for self-care and rest?

A Charles Wesley quote says, “Be friends of everyone. Be enemies of no-one.” And John Wesley wrote, “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer
I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you,
Praised for you or criticized for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and fully surrender all things
To your glory and service.
And now, O wonderful and holy God,
Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,
You are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it also be made in heaven.
Amen.

¹Frederick Buechner

²Jerry MacGregor and Marie Prys

The Glory is in the Struggle

I think it was at the end of a cricket tour by a Pakistani cricket team. The team had started badly but finished well, and a media interviewer, seeming to want to get at the emotion and relief of hard-won success, asked a senior Pakistani player how he felt at winning a game at last. Long after I’ve forgotten the actual question he asked, I easily recall the cricketer’s answer:

“Winning is not the important thing. The glory is in the struggle.”

Whoa. What insight. What wisdom.

It brought to mind something my father (a banker) said when I’d finally paid off my house mortgage. “Be careful,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of people ‘go to the pack’ after they’ve paid off their mortgage. Their whole life has been focussed on that great freedom moment, and now their focus has gone. They no longer have anything to spur them on, and they implode.”

The point seems to be, embrace the struggle. Suck it up and even relish it. Because it’s in the struggle that gains are made and honour won. Not just in the object of the struggle itself, but in many aspects of development: character, learnings, faith, consideration of others, courage, initiative, overcoming obstacles, ….

There was a King, who had a boulder placed in the middle of a road. Then he hid himself and watched to see if anyone would remove the huge rock. Some wealthy travellers and important people came by and simply walked around it. Many loudly blamed the King for not keeping the roads clear. But none did anything about getting the boulder out of the way. Then a poor man came along carrying a bag of vegetables. Upon approaching the boulder, the man laid down his bag and tried to move the boulder to the side of the road. After much grunting and straining, he finally succeeded. On returning to the middle of the road to pick up his bag of vegetables, he noticed an envelope lying where the boulder had been. The envelope contained a sum of money and a note from the King, saying, “This money is for the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.”
The poor man understood what many people never do: Every obstacle is an opportunity to improve ourselves, and can lead to great reward.

The rival to embracing the struggle is anxiety. Worry. Therefore, embracing the struggle can be seen as an antidote to worry. A problem is a problem, and if you have a problem, you have one problem. But if you entertain worry over the problem, then you have two problems! Students who haven’t prepared for an exam have a problem. But if they worry, or panic, then they have double the problem. Better to keep calm, address the basic problem, and shut out worry. Not easily done, but that’s the objective. I have it on good authority (or maybe I dreamed it up somewhere) that, statistically, 90% of the things we worry about never happen. So, what has worry gained?

I wish your struggle small, but whether or not, I also hope you can harness the struggle, while it’s there, for gain.

Yes, the glory is in the struggle, and I’m very grateful to that great Pakistani sportsman for pointing it out.

“Count it all joy, sisters and brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” (James 1:2-3, ESV)

Ken F

Sermon on the Plain

by Pat Lee

(Based on Luke 6:39-49)

Today Jesus continues his teaching in the Sermon on the Plain, telling us about judging others and using parables as examples of the kinds of things that we need to avoid.
Matthew Henry, theologian, calls these parables “Sentences like Solomon’s proverbs”. Other commentaries on these verses endorse this, calling them ‘wise sayings’.
In the commentary A Plain Account¹, the writer says, “There are four short sayings here and each is a kind of ‘wisdom saying’. The analogies themselves are straightforward and easy to understand. V40 – good and bad teachers (be careful who you follow); v41-42 – good and bad judgement (be careful to recognize your own faults first); v43-45 – on good and bad hearts (be careful to develop your inward character); v48-49 – on good and bad foundations (be careful to protect yourself from trial by acting on Jesus’ words).

“Notice that v46-47 are not an analogy. … These two verses reveal the theme for Luke’s conclusion to the Sermon on the Plain. Jesus asks the question, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.” If these words bring to mind the judgment scene of Matthew 25:31-46, it’s because the concern of Matthew and Luke in the Sermon on the Plain are closely related.”

The two verses that precede today’s reading help set the scene. Jesus gives us a stern warning. It comes in the last part of v37, followed by v38: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.” Then comes the crunch. “… for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” These words could be a little daunting, but, if the following guidelines are observed, then we should have no problems.

Back to the four analogies. First, v40, on good and bad teachers. As a teacher, I know the importance for children to have a good teacher. On more than one occasion I had to pick up the pieces for the children who had had bad experiences. Some of these kids had gone backwards rather than forwards.
In every walk of life people need to be given good guidance. Have you ever given advice to someone without knowing all their circumstances? I must confess that I have, and I’ve been on the receiving end of bad advice as well. So, we need to be careful about the advice we give, but also about who is giving us advice. We all need advice from time to time, but is the person who giving it actually the right one? How often have you heard someone say, “My advice to you is….”, and it has turned out to be the wrong advice?

Second, v41-42, on good and bad judgement. Isn’t it easy to see the speck in another’s eye, but not see the plank in our own? When I first became a Christian, things were not good in my marriage at the time, but changed dramatically when Michael gave his heart to the Lord, some months later. Till then, my life had changed but Michael’s hadn’t, and he kept finding fault with everything I did. A Christian friend who was staying with us at the time said something I have never forgotten. He told me that Michael could see problems that he thought I had because they were actually the problems that he had, and, this friend, as an outsider, could see both of us. I think that is a very important truth. It is our own problems that we tend to see in another person, but can’t see them in ourselves.
So, be careful to recognize your own faults first.

Third, v43-45, on good and bad hearts. Be careful to develop your inward character. If we read St Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we will find a list of the ‘bad’ fruit. Things like jealousy, drunkenness, dissensions, and strife, but there are others not mentioned in the list like lying, cheating, stealing, pride, overwhelming desire for power, murder, and so on. We need only to look around and see what is happening in our world today. Our news on TV at night is full of examples of people who exhibit bad fruit, and our prisons are overflowing because of it.
But, in Galatians 5:22, we read this: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” These are the ‘good’ fruit we need in our lives. As Luke 6 v45 says, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.” These are the inward characteristics we need to develop. So, we need to guard our mouths lest they betray what is really in our hearts.

Fourth, v48-49, on good and bad foundations. (Be careful to protect yourself from trial by acting on Jesus words). As a child, I remember singing the song, The wise man built his house upon the rock, with actions, but I didn’t have the foggiest idea what it meant. However, I have come to understand that the foundation we need to build on is Jesus. He is ‘the Rock’; he is also the corner stone, and for some, he is a stumbling block. When we build on ‘the rock’ foundation, we can be assured that we are on solid ground and no matter what happens – and the floods will definitely happen – we will stand firm. Our faith will hold.
Some of us have been, and are going through some pretty awful trials in our lives. Our faith may be shaken for a time but it will bring us through because Jesus, ‘the Rock’, is what we found ourselves on.

In Resources for Preaching on the Parables of Jesus, William Powell Tuck says, “Jesus himself is the foundation on which life is built. Jesus had just delivered the Sermon on the Mount [referring to Matthew’s Gospel – today’s reading comes from Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’]. He had presented his chief teachings, and then he declared that the foundation that undergirded life was his teachings and his way of life. Jesus was declaring, ‘I am the foundation upon which life is built.'”

Further on in Luke (11:27, 28), Jesus addresses a crowd and it says, “A woman called out, ‘Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.’ He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.'” This echoes v46-47, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them.”
The writer of the commentary in A Plain Account suggests that, “These two verses should precede all four of our comparison analogies.” So, I stress, Jesus urges, whoever “hears my words, and acts on them …” Some versions use the word ‘obey’ instead of ‘acts’. Some people don’t like the word obey, because it seems to take away our free wills, our ability to choose for ourselves. Does it really? Or does it instead give us the security we need in our lives? Look what happened to Adam and Eve when they disobeyed in the Garden of Eden. They lost their freedom and became enslaved to the power of sin.

When we obey (act on) Jesus’s words, we are on the way to living a Christ-like life. The word ‘obey’ and its extensions are used over seventy times in the Bible, so we need to take heed.

Are we willing to act on Jesus’s words?

¹ https://www.aplainaccount.org/luke-6-39-49/