Holy
Trinity 4th September 2005
Introduction
Good
evening. Today is a special day in the life of Holy Trinity. It’s a day of
change, a day of renewal, a day of new beginnings. We have a new staff team.
Roger, Alex, Elaine and Rebecca are still with us, and they will provide
continuity with what has gone before. But Bill, Dave and Vic are joining us,
and they will bring fresh things to us, as they offer their own personality and
gifts to the staff team; and together as a church we will grow and change. We
must be kind to Dave and Debs, and to Vic, who are leaving behind their
familiar jobs, and we must be aware that they are adjusting to a new timetable,
a new rhythm of life. And we must be kind to Bill and Sarah, who are adjusting
to a different pace and a different world view. Moving continents isn’t just a
matter of getting all your stuff into an aeroplane instead of a removal van;
it’s a tiny bit more complicated than that.
How
then are we to adjust, us and them, as we come together? How are we to open
ourselves to the new things that God has in store for us, as we work to
implement our understanding of his purposes for us in this place? Lots of us
wear those bands, WWJD? So, WWJS? What would Jesus have said?
Well,
I think he would have taken us back to basics. Back to the principles on which
we are to found our common life together. Jesus was once asked by a theologian,
what is the greatest commandment? And for once he gave a straight answer. This
is what he said:
You shall love the Lord your
God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This
is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love
your neighbour as yourself. (Matt 22.37-39)
So
the principle on which we must found everything as set out on our common life
is love. So, Roger, Bill, Elaine, Alex, Vic and David: in everything you do you
must love God, and you must love the people he has given you to care for. And
the same applies to the rest of us, for to many of us God has given the
responsibility of leadership, of care for others. We are a church committed to
a shared life of ministry, a church where there are no passengers, a church
where everyone has a part to play. And for many of us, that means loving others
– the members of our cell group, of our young people’s group, of our music
group. It’s not complicated, is it, as Jesus put it. Just love God, and love
your neighbour. And yet although it’s simple, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It
sounds easy, but it isn’t. It isn’t easy to love God, who we can’t see, when
difficulties press all around us. It isn’t easy to love other people, either,
when they are struggling, when they themselves are not loving, when they are
wounded, when they are have lost the plot. Often I look at people and think, how
can it be that God loves this person, when they are so far from him in the way
they speak and in the way they behave?
So
how do we do these things? How do we love God? And how do we love the people he
has given us to care for? If we are to do this task we will need more than
human resources, more than just a set of good intentions. We will need the
resources of the Holy Spirit himself. And that is what we are going to think
and pray about this evening.
Let’s pray…
Renewed
in God’s love
So,
the task we face as a team and as a church is to love God, and love others. How
are we going to do this?
Let
me read you the most beautiful verse in the Bible.
1
John 4.19 : We love, because he first
loved us.
This
verse was written by John, the youngest disciple of Jesus. Everything that John
said and did came out of the knowledge that God loved him. When he wrote his
gospel he did not use his own name. He just called himself ‘the disciple whom
Jesus loved’ (Jn 13.23). That was who he was. He was someone God loved. And
this is what John says about love (1 John 4.7-10):
Beloved, let us love one
another, because Love comes from God. Whoever loves
is a child of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for
God is love… This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that
he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.
He
sums it up, God is love.
And
he spells it out, We love because God
first loved us.
So
that’s how we do it. That’s how we love God, and that’s how we do this work of
ministry. We do it because we know that we ourselves are loved by God. And so this
evening I want to talk about how we can be sure that we have received God’s
love. I think that this is the most important lesson of all the lessons we can
learn in life, and it is the most important thing we can ever receive: the
knowledge that we are loved by God. Without it, most of what we do will fail.
Knowing
God’s love – Ephesians 3.14-21
When
Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus he knew that if they did not understand how
much God loves them, they would not be able to love God and love one another.
The love of God would not live inside them. And they would not be able to share
the love of God with the people around them.
It
is the same with us. That is how love works. I have a husband. I need to know
that he loves me. But it is not enough for me to know in my head that he loves
me. It isn’t a piece of information I’m after, is it, it isn’t something I can
read on a piece of paper or in a book. It’s rather more than that. I have to
know it in my heart. I have to feel his love.
And so it is with God. Last year I was in
Kenya. In Kenya the archbishop is very anxious that the church should recover
the love it first had for God. He is afraid that the church is growing
complacent, worldly. As the theme of the conference he had chosen the verse
from Revelation, ‘repent, and return to your first love’. This he felt was the
key to the future for the church in Kenya. And so we asked them, do you know
that God loves you?
They said no. Our church life is not about
relationship, it’s about activities – the choir, the MU, the men’s association.
I think that’s often true for us too. We are too busy doing things to stop and
allow God to love us. So they chose a conference prayer: Lord, renew your church, and start with me. We prayed that God
would send his Holy Spirit and assure them of his love. And he did. Some people
were filled with joy. Many heard God speak to them. A little boy was healed.
Everyone received a new confidence.
This
is what Paul wants for the Ephesians. When he writes to them, he tells them
that he is praying for them. And what he is praying is this one thing: he is
praying that they would know that God loves them. He prays that they will know
the love of Jesus that goes beyond knowledge - the love that lives not just in
their heads but in their hearts also. He prays that they will feel the love of God. It’s one of the
most beautiful prayers in the Bible. Let’s read it.
Ephesians
3.14-21
For
this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and
on earth derives its name.
I
pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through
his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power,
together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is
the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may
be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
This
is our prayer too. It is the prayer we should pray for ourselves, for one
another, and for our church. For me it has been a very important prayer. It is
a prayer that we will not just understand God, but that we will experience him.
It is the prayer that makes our faith come alive. It is the prayer that gives
us the power to love God and to love others. It is the prayer that heals us. A
14th century mystic wrote this about God: ‘By love may he be caught
and held; by thinking, never’.
Rooted and
grounded in love
First,
he uses the picture of a tree. Here it is,
drawn by William Mather of SOMA for us to use in Zambia. Paul prays that the
Ephesian church will be rooted in
love, and William has drawn deep, red roots, red to remind us of Christ. A
Christian who knows that he is loved is like a tree with deep roots. If you do
not know that you are loved, you are like a tree with shallow roots. It may be
a beautiful tree. But in times of drought, your leaves will wither and die. In
times of storm, you will crash to the ground. But if you are rooted deep in the
love of Christ, you will reach water deep underground even when there is no
rain, and you will stand firm in wind and storm. That water is the living water
of the Holy Spirit, who brings life to your mind and heart, who renews you in
the knowledge that God loves you, who empowers you to love others. The Holy
Spirit is God within you.
So
this is Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians, and his prayer for us too. That we would
know the love of God in our hearts. If we know God’s love, we can do anything.
If we do not, we will struggle, and it will all just feel like hard work. This
is how the Living Bible translates it: ‘may you experience this love for
yourselves, though it is so great that you will never see the end of it or
fully know or understand it. And so at last you will be filled up with God
himself’.
Let
me ask you a question. When do we most need to know that we are loved? I think
the answer is, when things are not going well for us. When life is tough. When
things don’t work out as we had hoped. It’s then that we are most like a child,
a child who needs a parent’s love.
·
When I was in Kenya last year I met a man from Rwanda. He said, ‘I
didn’t know Jesus was all I needed until Jesus was all I had’.
·
When things are bad for me, I have learnt to pray Psalm 131: ‘oh Lord,
my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; but I have calmed
and quieted my soul, like a baby in its mother’s arms, my soul is like the baby
that is within me.’ Do you know that our relationship with God is modelled not on our relationship with our earthly
father, but on our relationship with our mother? It’s your mother who first
points you to God. It’s OK to climb onto his knee and ask him to put his arms
around you.
The love of
Christ on the cross
And God showed his love for
us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through
him. (1 Jn
4.9)
So
this is another way of thinking about the love that God has for us. We can
think about the cross. The cross helps us to understand that God is not only a
God far off, a powerful God, the God who made the world, the God in whom all
peoples believe. He is also a God close at hand, a God who loves us, a God who wants to know
us, and a God who sent his Son to tell us of his love. God is love. What is love?
This is love: not that we
loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a sacrifice for our
sins. (1 Jn
4.10)
There
are many ways of explaining the cross. But one of the oldest is to see it as an
expression of God’s love. Jesus on the cross, his arms held wide. That is the breadth of his love. We did not see it. But we must
not forget it. You were far from God. You had done nothing to deserve God’s
love. And yet he came close to you. He held out his arms. He loved you. He
loved you for no other reason than that he loves you. You can do nothing to
earn his love. You just receive it. It covers everything that you are and
everything that you do. That is the breadth of God’s love.
And
then Paul prays that they will know the length
of God’s love. God’s love stretches through time. God loved you before you were
born. Perhaps you have not always known that. I was not brought up as a
Christian, and I did not know God. But God knew me. He knew every day of my
life before even one of them had come to pass. I have 3 children. I love them.
I remember the day they were born. But it seems to me now that they have always
existed. It seems to me that they have always been a part of me. That is how it
is with God. We exist in eternity. We were held in his love before we were
conceived. And we will be held in his love after we die. I have a grandmother.
She died 15 years ago. She was 95 years old. But to me she still lives. She lives on in
eternity. She lives in the love of God. She is not dead, she is just not here.
And that is the length of the love of God. His love is as long as the lives of
all our ancestors, I say in Africa; and they all nod. That they understand.
And
then Paul prays that they will know the height
and the depth of Christ’s love. Think of the height. It stretches to heaven. Often
people have looked for God on the top of a mountain. We know that we cannot
reach to heaven, so we look to the mountains. The highest mountain I’ve seen is
And
lastly, Paul prays that they will know the depth
of the love of Christ. What does this mean? Well, ask yourself, what is it you
want to be loved for? What sort of love are you after? Why do I need God to
love me? I need him to love me because I do not love myself. Why do I not love
myself? Because I know that I have weaknesses. I have faults. I am not
satisfied with myself. I
know that in the depths of my soul there are things which are not good. And it
is into those depths that I need the love of Christ to reach.
And
Paul says that they do. Those things don’t matter. You are loved with a love
that goes right down into the depths. You are loved with a love that is truly
unconditional. You are loved not because you are perfect but because you are
you, made in the image of God, totally
acceptable to the Father who created and called you. When I begin to understand that
this is the kind of love I am being offered, it is a bit of a shock. It is, as
Paul says, more than I could have asked for or imagined. It makes me see myself
in a totally new way. It goes deep, deep into my soul. It goes far deeper than
any human love.
Loving one
another
So
God loves us. And that, if it runs like water in our hearts and stands like
rock beneath our feet, is what makes us able to love him and to love one another.
John goes on,
Dear friends, if this is how
God loved us, then we should love one another. No one has ever seen God, but if
we love one another, God lives in union with us, and his love is made perfect
in us. 1 Jn 4.11-12
And
that’s the task before us now. It’s something we have to do together. In fact,
it’s something which really can only be done together. And that brings
us back to our new staff team. It was in a team that I first discovered that
God loves me. I was away on mission, far from home. I was not sure I was a
particularly good team member, not sure I had much to offer; I knew God had
sent me but I wasn’t all that sure that he loved me. But in that team I
discovered something. I discovered that I was sent not as an imperfect individual,
but as part of a perfect whole. Paul tells the Ephesians that the church is
like a body, in which all the members are different and all are important. He
is writing to them together, teaching them to live their faith out together. And
as the days went past, I discovered that when the body functions together, it
has no weaknesses, only strengths. Because where one is weak, the others are
strong. And so I learnt to accept myself, to know that God loves me and
approves of me just as I am, for what I bring and not for what I lack.
So,
David. You have weaknesses. You know what they are. They burn inside you. Vic,
it’s the same for you. It’s the same for you, Roger, for you too Alex, Elaine,
Bill. But in a team it’s not your weaknesses that count, it’s your strengths. A
team united by love becomes a body of people who are adding together their strengths.
The body is complete, for it is the body of Christ. That is so in this staff
team. It’s so in every cell of this church, and in the church as a whole. We
add strengths and subtract weaknesses. And so it is that we learn to see one
another as God sees us, and in turn to become what we are made to be.
So,
we must love God, and we must love one another. Jesus said, By this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn 13.35). John, the disciple whom Jesus loved,
remembered it: If we love one another,
God lives in us, and his love is made perfect in us…(1 Jn 4.12). That’s the
way forward – for your cell, for this church, for this city, for this country.
A time of
prayer
And
so I would like us to pray together that we will know the love of God in our
hearts. We’ve looked at all the positives, the invitation to be rooted and
grounded in the love of God. But before we can pray we also need to clear out
some of the negatives. That is, we need to know what it is that prevents us
from experiencing the love of God.
Are you carrying a burden of
sin? John tells us that if we say we have
no sin, the truth is not in us; but if we confess our sins, God is faithful and
just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
So if there are things in your life which trouble you, things which keep you
from God, speak to him about them now, as we pray. Ask for his forgiveness.
Think of those things as a burden which you are
carrying on your head. You don’t have to carry it. You could just choose to put
it down. The invitation is there.
Or perhaps you are carrying
a burden of pain. Perhaps people have hurt you or rejected you. Perhaps your
life has been really difficult, and it is hard to believe that God truly loves
you. You don’t have to carry that pain either, you can choose to put it down. Offer
it to God and ask for his healing. He too feels your pain. Pray the prayer that
Paul prayed, and ask that you would be strengthened in your inner being through
the power of the Holy Spirit.
Or perhaps it’s just the
voices and values of the world which crowd in on you, hassle you, tell you you
need this and you need that, thrust burdens into your arms without you so much
as realising that it’s happening. But you don’t need these things. All you need
is to know that you are loved. I read a poem once by a man dying of cancer. As
he faced death, he asked and answered this question:
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
(Raymond
Carver)
Imagine
yourself on your deathbed. What do you want to take with you? For me, it’s the
knowledge that I am loved.
As
you pray, use the pictures. Think of the tree with deep roots. Think of the
house with strong foundations. Think of Jesus on the cross with his arms held
wide. Open yourself to God and ask him to speak to you.