Christ is Risen:
There is a period in History called the PAX ROMANA : under Roman Rule there were roads that weren't full of potholes and Highjackers and travel throughout the empire was possible. Something that wasn't possible before . Piracy was dealt with, no not illegal copying of DVD's and music , but marauding bandits on the trade routes were dealt with, partly because Julius Caesar was once captured by Pirates and when he was able he went back and sorted them out, built quite a reputation for himself in doing so too.
But it would be true to say that for most people, Roman Rule brought peace. Well if you were a Roman, if you were a pirate or say a Jew, or a Christian life wasn't so peaceful especially in the years after Jesus' ascended into heaven. For Christians life under Roman Rule in the first two Century's was anything but what we would describe as peaceful…
Yet Jesus said - when he appeared to his disciples - peace be with you, my peace I leave with you , not as the world gives you, do I give it to you.
World peace the PASX ROMANA, was an apparent peace, it looked good on the surface but it was not an enduring not a lasting peace, it wasn’t long until the Roman Empire fell and plunged the known world into chaos…….. God's peace, on the other hand, was the real deal it is still being offered today.
There was an art competition once and the theme was "Peace" and all around the gallery were pictures of sunsets, and butterflies and landscapes of Hawaiian beaches, but one picture, had those green blue storm clouds that look like the end of the world is coming …...and in the centre a waterfall , a raging torrent, flood waters, and a judge said to the artist - I think you missed the point - the theme is peace!!
And the artist said - yes I know - look closely…
And there behind the raging waters on a little dry ledge, sheltered from the water and by the water .. was a dove on her nest - perfectly at peace…
The Disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said… Peace be with you. And then he said look at my hands, that were pierced for you! Look at side that was pierced for you….
I am peace - I come in peace, I come to give you peace - real peace, that nothing can take away from you.
All of us are locked up in our …. Well in our context we are locked up behind "trellidoors" with a button connected to Blue Security.. For fear of ….. Everything…
All of us are locked up behind hardened hearts because of the hurt that we have endured… the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, the persecution of the world against us.. The weak economy, the prejudices of life experience, unrealised expectations, we are locked up behind misgivings about the promises made to us by the world and sometimes behind the misgivings about what we thought God was going to do for us…
Yes we are all together.. But we are all locked up in our way… and we are all in fear… in our own way…
But Jesus steps into our lives and says… Peace be with you.
And he says that this peace comes from God this is not a peace that comes from a realisation in ourselves that we need to be friends, this is not a peace that comes from a unity of purpose among people, this is a Peace that comes from God. It is a promise, it is a reality, it is a reminder that throughout time God has been with us , caring for us and doing what counts to ensure that we have life and life in abundance.
Like that little dove we are surrounded by storm clouds and flood waters… but we can be at peace, for God is with us and in us and around us and for us.
That Peace which God has given us comes from the fact that we are set free from the tyranny of Sin, Jesus has paid the price for us and set us free from the power of sin in our lives and we are set free to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God and Father.
There is a lot going on here…
This is an interesting time on our Church Calendar as we focus on the appearances of the Resurrected Christ to the Church before his ascension. As we focus on a Saviour who has set us free by paying for us… by purchasing us, be ransoming us… in the ancient world a relative of a slave could buy the person and set them free, he was called a Kinsman Redeemer - he would purchase the person pay the going price and give the person their freedom. Many people became slaves in the ancient world because they could not pay their debt's so this is language that they understood.. Redeemer,
in the middle ages a custom developed that if someone saved your life you served them because you owed your life to them, ( you may remember a TV add that used this to illustrate their point - not that I can remember the point nor the product)
well actually the disciples really began that custom when they realised that they owed their lives to Jesus because He had set them free.
In the season of advent we focus on the two "comings of Jesus" the first as Babe in the manger and the second as the King in the clouds. But during Eastertide we focus on this period of him Being neither the babe in the manger nor the King coming in the clouds; but as the risen Christ having conquered death and quiet clearly He is the Messiah, and he is standing hear saying PEACE BE WITH you, and he breathes the Holy Spirit on the Disciples and he sends them saying as the FATHER HAS SENT ME SO I AM SENDING YOU, forgive as I have forgiven you, take this message of forgiveness of sins and spread it throughout the world.
Fascinating - he doesn’t say go and tell people about forgiveness, he doesn’t go out and say have bible studies about how people have been forgiven, he doesn’t say sing songs about forgiveness… he says IF YOU FORGIVE ANYONE they are forgiven, if you do not forgive they are not forgiven.
WOW!
That is harder than telling people hey "JESUS LOVES YOU!" or maybe having a bumper sticker to say it for you.
This takes a whole different kind of living - Jesus won forgiveness by carrying a cross and being nailed to it and in that agony saying - "FORGIVE THEM FATHER"
Forgiving others is never easy - but it is at the heart of being a Christian. We need to step into everyday life and say - "PEACE BE WITH YOU, as the Father has forgiven me so I forgive you"
I do not count…. I do not consider anything that divides us as relevant… I am not interested in our differences of opinion , we can discuss them freely because they will not divide us -
you see forgiveness is not just about wrong doing it is not just overcoming wrong actions against each other is about overcoming anything that would stand in the way of perfect harmony between us -
to forgive each other means to say - let us see each other as equals, both living under the grace of God.
Forgiving someone does not mean that we acknowledge that they are wrong or that they are inferior and that we magnanimously release them from their muddied state - forgiveness means that we meet each other down here where we are, it means that we acknowledge that we are not better than anyone else. But that we are in this thing called life together….
And we can only do this when we understand the times that we live in. We can only do this when we accept our created and redeemed state .. Created in God's image, fallen from grace through Sin and restored under grace by God's gift on Calvary… As St Paul said we need to resolve to preach (that is to live) Christ and Christ Crucified..
I have discovered that my theology of this period ( beginning at the resurrection and continuing to this day), was substantially flawed and thus the way I am living my life is deficient and thus debilitating in terms of living out my purpose.
Understanding the times is a crucial part of understanding what needs to be done. Life has a lot to do with timing. Jesus knew which PASSOVER to go to Jerusalem and the cross. If he had rocked up in Jerusalem the year before and tried to present himself as the Messiah, the story would have been quite different, as different as it would have been if he failed to go to Jerusalem that year saying - lets do it next year..
What I am saying is that with Jesus timing had a lot to do with the success of His ministry -How he got the timing right was of course by asking God: -
And yet I do not share his ability to get the timing right every time, possibly cause I don’t get the asking right nor the listening and hearing God, right.
I think that if we are to understand the scriptures as relevant to our daily lives we need to see the parallels between periods of scriptural history and our own lives.
In other words, when are we experiencing a Davidic moment or an Isaiahian moment or a Jeremiahain moment. When is the ship that we are on in stormy waters Noah's Ark or Jonah's ship sailing for Tarshish, or St Paul's sailing for Rome……. In other words our circumstances, where are they mirrored in the scriptures... or if you prefer, which part of scripture is mirrored in your live today. Do you think like that or is it just me. I kind of wake up and think I wonder which Narrative of life I am going to live out today. And half the time I cant work out whether I am David fighting for or against the Philistines.. ( You know what I am referring to) please don’t make me go of on a tangent and explain that one - just nod and go home and read about David's life… thanks.
I always struggle with whether the circumstances of life are a hurdle or a closed door. You know what I mean? Is the constraint before me an Angles like that which appeared to Balaam, trying to stop me from doing the wrong thing….or a flooded river like the Red Sea or the Jordon, which I am supposed to step into and
watch it part so that I can cross on dry land. Am I meant to do battle or wait ….
I don’t think that I am alone, I think that we all struggle to see which bible story we are in….. so to speak…. ( Don’t worry - we will figure it out together)
And for me the biggest misunderstanding I had was the same one that lead the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Scribes to have Jesus Crucified by the Romans.
In the OLD Testament Scripture there are two Mindsets towards the coming Messiah. The First was what we see in The Prophetic writings and speaks about a King of the Line of David who would establish His Rule over Israel and make Israel the most powerful Nation on earth….. in accordance with God's Covenant to Abraham, and in fact throughout time. Adam, Noah, Joshua Moses were all reminded of this covenant that God would rule over the earth.
The Second mindset we find in the Apocalyptic writings of Daniel and Ezekiel, The Revelation to St John and in a few other places. And it focused on a world beyod redemption an dthe new world that would replace it...
The Prophetic word was for this life on earth - to the extent that the Sadducees didn’t even consider a resurrection, but the Apocalyptic writings considered that this world was beyond redemption and that A New Jerusalem would be established, this world would not be redeemed but destroyed and the faithful would reign with God and the sinners would , burn in hell.
That's a nice one - unless you are a sinner…
And today we live with these two almost conflicting ideas leading to a confusion in our praxis, our action our living.
We are either so heavenly minded that we are only concerned with salvation getting us into heaven, or we are so focussed on the Gospel setting us free from the realities of life on earth that we
live in constant doubt as to our salvation, because we are still suffering even though we are saved. And so we are not able to forgive others because we are not sure that we are forgiven…
And it is into this dilemma of our daily lives that Jesus steps in and SAYS" ( Say it with me) PEACE BE WITH YOU!
Grace and peace - from God our Father who was and who is and who is to come...
Can we go to a quick commercial break - I would like to advertise our Tuesday afternoon Bible study were we will be looking at the book of Revelation and seeing how it addresses these issues of life now and life here-after, and on Sundays through out Eastertide up until Pentecost I will be addressing the same.
14h30 St Mary's Tuesday - be there.
But I need to conclude now before I do a St Paul and some poor soul falls asleep ...so let me get down to business: -
What I am saying is that we need to understand what Jesus did post resurrection to understand what we are to do till he comes again in Glory. On the cross,( and an aspect that we did not look at over Easter was that) On The Cross Jesus met both the first and second coming prophecies, because he came to set us free from Sin and to establish us as a Royal Priesthood. Let m ego through this slowly so that I don’t get confused.
The Jews expected two things to happen at the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. The one was an Exodus type deliverance that would establish the Nation with a King - salvation for this life if you want to express it like that .
The Other was the establishment of a New Jerusalem an eternal kingdom where evil would be overcome and righteousness restored.
Now at Calvary Jesus did both. He was Crucified (As we highlighted over Easter) because he didn’t seem to be overthrowing the Roman's and establishing a Kingdom.
But we know from the Early Church and especially from what we read in Acts, That it is not the Roman Rule that needed to be overthrown but Satan's and Jesus He did that. And thereafter it didn’t matter whether the Romans or the Goths or the Saxons or the Britons or the NATS or the ANC were in power.. Because our citizenship is in heaven and we are ambassadors to this world….
At Calvary Jesus also met apocalyptic expectation and created a new Order of things…. he would not reign from the Earthly Jerusalem but from the New Jerusalem.
Therefore Jesus achieved all this in the Cross and his Second Coming is not an event that will only happen in the future, although one day he will come in the clouds and unite heaven and earth the physical and the spiritual into one glorious kingdom …. But the second coming has already begun. We could say he is coming, he has begun to come and will continue to come until he has fully come.
Thus he did not come to Bethlehem and then leave only to return in the future, but he came and died, and in his resurrection has begun the Second coming …..he has commenced to dwell among us and will do so in greater and greater measure until all shall bow and all confess and all worship.
There fore we should not await his return, but participate in his presence until he finally unites us under his sovereign rule.
I pray that I have made at least a little bit of sense this morning. I pray that the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to the Scriptures, that the Risen Lord will bring you peace and joy and that as you live under God's grace that you will see and understand how wide and how deep and how high the love of God is for you.
Amen??? Are we going do this? Are we together - we going to live at peace??
Lets pray that God will strengthen his Church throughout the world to respond to the Risen Christ and give ourselves fully to this thing called life. And may we step out into the world and forgive
ourselves and each other because we have been forgiven and may we say - PEACE BE WITH YOU!
Amen and Amen.
