The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John,

Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:33-37)

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I read a story once about a king, who wanted to know how his subjects lived, how they worked, how they enjoyed their leisure – if indeed they had leisure.

When he asked his advisors, about these things, they fobbed him off with reassurances, and vague examples, to set his mind at rest.

They didn’t want him getting upset about things.

He kind of knew this, so one day, he went through the palace rummage room and found some clothes that an ordinary person would wear. And that night, he dressed in those clothes and while everything was quiet, he slipped through a back door in the palace, and went into the city streets.

He saw his subjects walking, talking, and seemingly happy, but he needed to know more than could be seen in such a short time, so he went further, into parts of the city where poorer people lived, and what he saw made him want to make changes.

He wanted his subjects to be happy, and secure.

Then he went back to the palace, and entered through the same door  he had used to leave, but as he was walking back to his quarters, a guard challenged him.

“Who are you?”  The guard asked. He said, ” I am the king.”

The guard was sceptical at this man in ordinary, definitely not kingly garb, and called for help.

Officials came and agreed this man didn’t look like the king so they questioned him on subjects in which the king was known to be proficient.   

It was well known that the king was wise, and was knowledgeable on many subjects.

So they asked him questions on the scientific knowledge of the time. 

He couldn’t answer.

They asked him questions drawing on ancient wisdom, the history of the nation.

He couldn’t answer.

Then it was remembered that the king was an expert swordsman, the best in the country, but when he was tested, again, he failed miserably.

He didn’t look like a king. He wasn’t wise like a king. He couldn’t use a sword like a king. 

And of course he wasn’t wearing a crown.

How could anyone think he was the king?

The ruler, the procurator of Palestine, a man named Pilate, Pontius Pilate, met a man who some claimed was a king.

The religious leaders had been kicking up a fuss about this man.

Jesus was his name. They said he was a threat to peace and order. 

He had claimed to be a king, they said.

And they wanted him dead. 

He had said things about God and about the Temple that had them worried.  If he were allowed to continue, then people might realise that God was available to everyone at any time, in any place, and you could talk to Him just like that – in prayer – anyone could!. 

You see, Jesus came into the world to witness to the truth. He came to tell the truth about God, the truth about ourselves, and the truth about life.

Instead of having to be trapped inside a matrix of rules and regulations, people would know that just asking God for forgiveness, and living a life of love – love of God, and love of neighbour – was all that was required, to be in God’s good books.

This was dangerous stuff. If this kept up, the temple would be deserted and all those who depended on it for a living would be out of work.

The whole edifice would fall down.

Clearly this man had to be stopped. And the sooner the better.

But they couldn’t order him killed themselves.  Only Pilate could sentence a man to death. But Pilate wouldn’t condemn a man to death for a religious crime.

So they told him that Jesus had said he was a king, and that he was a danger to law and order.

Palestine had always been a powder keg. The people had risen up against the Romans more than once. So they figured this would get Pilate’s attention.

Yet, Pilate tried to avoid the responsibility of condemning Jesus. He told them,   “You take this man and judge him according to your own laws.”

But he could not evade his responsibility. He could not evade Jesus.

No-one can evade Jesus. He is right there in your face. 

So Pilate has to examine Jesus and see if there is real cause to crucify him.

This is an interrogation.

Pilate is a powerful man.

He is looking on an accused person  who has been scourged until his back is raw to the bone. This is a  man who has been betrayed by his friends, deserted by his followers, tortured, and by all accounts should be a broken man.

And yet there is something about this Jesus.

He doesn’t look like a king, and yet  “Are you the king of the Jews,” Pilate asks him.

Jesus asks,  “Are you asking this on your own account, or did someone tell you about me?”

“Your own people brought you here,” Pilate says, “What have you done?”
Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

“So you are a king,” Pilate says.

He doesn’t look like a king, and yet,  there is something about this man.

Isn’t there?

You see, Jesus isn’t a man caught up in a web of circumstance over which he has no control.

He isn’t being hounded to death.

His death is part of God’s cosmic plan to save humankind.  Jesus is going to the cross willingly.

Out of obedience to the Father.

Pilate brings Jesus out to the people and says, “See, the man.” 

At first we might think he is trying to awaken compassion in the people. That he is saying,  “ Look at this poor bruised, bleeding creature. Look at this wretchedness. Can you really mean to hound such a pitiful creature to death?”

Does he look like someone claiming to be a king? 

You can almost hear his tone change. His view of Jesus has been transformed. It is as if after his talking with Jesus, he himself  wonders at the majesty of the man. 

There is an aura.

Could he really be a king?

Here, some scholars think, Pilate instead of  “See the man,” may instead be saying.  “See!  This is indeed a man. “

You see the story of Jesus is not the story of a man whose life is out of control. Rather it is the story of a man whose last days were a considered and triumphant march to the cross.

His will not be a kingdom of conquest, but a  kingdom of love.

He told his disciples, while on their journey to Jerusalem,  that when he was lifted up – crucified – he would draw people to him. 

His sacrifice would be the means by which the lost would be found; the downcast lifted up; the sick in heart healed; those trapped in sin…. freed!

It would be the action of a king who loved his people.

You know, from time immemorial, armies have marched across this world, laying waste, killing, pillaging, conquering. The kingdoms they built have all but gone from memory.

When I was a little boy  at school in England, we had a map of the world on the classroom wall. Most of the map was coloured red. That was the British Empire.

It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire.

In other words, it stretched from one end of the world to the other, so at any time the sun shone on some part of it.

Apart from a few islands here and there, it has, over the past fifty years, all but vanished.   

Empire builders have found out over millennia, that you can’t win the hearts  of people by force.

Jesus would win the world by love. 

There is a legend,  told about the return of Jesus to Heaven, after his time on earth. Even there, he still bore the marks of that cruel crucifixion.

The angel Gabriel approached him and said, ‘Master, you must have suffered terribly for people down there.”

“Yes,” said Jesus, “I did.”

“And do they know and appreciate how much you loved them and what you did for them?”

Jesus said, “Oh no!  Not yet.

” Right now, only a handful of people in Palestine know.”

“Gabriel was perplexed, “ Then what have you done to let everyone know about your love  for them?”

“Jesus said, “I have asked Peter, James, John, and a few more friends to tell others about me.

Those who are told will tell others, in turn, about me.

And my story will be spread to the farthest reaches of the globe.

Ultimately, all of humankind will have heard about my life and what I did for them.”

Gabriel frowned, and looked a little skeptical. He well knew what poor stuff human beings were made of.  He said, “Yes, but what if Peter and James and John grow weary?  

” What if the people who come after them, forget?  What if way down in the twentieth century people just don’t tell others about you?

“Haven’t you made other plans?”

And Jesus answered, “I haven’t made any other plans. I am counting on them.”

Jesus was, and is still counting on his followers to spread the news of his love throughout the world, into the hearts of men and women everywhere.

He is counting on you and me. Soldiers for Christ.

Soldiers whose only weapon is love itself.

In the service of our king.

Amen.

Is God some larger-than-life figure, powerful and mighty, sitting on a throne in Heaven, and looking down – sometimes approvingly, sometimes critically – on His creation?

Or is God for you, a person who walks with you; someone who knows your doubts and worries, and shares them with you?  …..the person who experienced life here on earth at its nastiest,   but who did not flinch, and who finally was tortured, and put to death – not for anything he had done wrong, but for the things he had done right?

Or is God what animates you? Is God, someone who sees your powerlessness, your life in a rut, and who somehow infuses you with the spirit, the energy, the need to get out of the rut, and go on a great adventure?

I suppose the answer to that question could be different depending on the state of your life at the time of asking.

I guess we experience God in all of His three persons, during our lives haven’t we?

There are times when I take a walk down to the beach, and just sit there, on that rocky jetty, and listen to the lapping of the water, and feel the wind against my face, and look out across that great expanse, and I just know that a Creator God is responsible for it all. And I feel a peace, and an affinity with the earth, and all that God has made, and I know Him as God, Creator God, Loving God.

And when you feel like that, the cares of everyday living and loving fall away, almost as if He or She has taken them from you, and a great sense of freedom ensues.

Reluctantly you pull yourself away, and head back to the everyday world.

In that everyday world, unfortunately, when  I read the newspaper, and watch the television news,  I hear about the latest suicide bomber; new statistics on how many women and children have been killed in the latest war,fresh evidence of climate change we are told has come about because of our misuse of creation; new statistics that tell us how we are poisoning the very air we breathe, and a ghastly litany of humanity’s lack of humanity.

And I despair.

Then I remember a baby, born into a working-class family, placed in an animal’s eating trough for a crib, in a shed, in a place called Bethlehem – a place in the news these days – and how that baby grew to become a man who took on the immense task, not of changing the world, but of changing people – so that people could change the world.

And I recall how this man gathered around him twelve friends, and inculcated them with his love of people, and his belief in our ability to change, and how somehow, his death, which many thought would shut them all up, did the opposite, and that young man’s message of  salvation – did in fact change the lives of many for the better.

And perhaps more important than the message, if that is possible,  is that this young man died specifically for my salvation – so that I could change – and not be punished for the way I had been…………

………….that his whole reason for being was to call us back from selfishness, and wickedness, and being stuck in sin, and open to us the possibility of real life – life that gives, and is fulfilled; life that is involved, life that will go on for ever.

And  remembering all this about that young man called Jesus, I experience hope. I know that everyone who suffers has a loving brother – someone who himself suffered – to be with them, and to travel with them, even in the midst of the filth of this world – and to bring them to a knowledge of that God who created us to love him, and to love each other.

Not to abuse; not to use; not to manipulate; not to hurt; not to degrade; but to love and uplift, and to encourage, and to help, and to care for.

And that sounds such a wonderful place to be, such a wonderful goal to which to aspire, but alas, something that could be too tough, too difficult, just too hard to manage by myself.

But then I remember how those men and women who followed this man Jesus, how they too must have felt inadequate, and ill-equipped, and just not up to it, and yet they did in fact make a difference.

And I remember that they didn’t do it by themselves. Yes they had Jesus’s teachings to guide them – but so do we. They had more than that. They had a life-changing encounter with another person of the God we love. They  had an encounter with the Holy Spirit.

And remembering this, I rest assured, that whatever I try to do in His name, His Spirit will be there to give me the strength, the courage, the wherewithal to do it.

You might be thinking, “How can that be?   It’s ok to say that, but how can people be changed so profoudly? “

Eighty or more years ago, a man by the name of Adolph Hitler, took control of a nation and by his  rhetoric, by his evil will, he turned thousands of good people into monsters who could torture and kill in his name, without compunction.

Beginning a little time before that, a man named Stalin took an ideology of materialism, of an economic system,  and using that ideology, turned thousands of  formally good people into torturers, killers, informers, oppressors – guards of the gulag.

So don’t tell me that the Creator of the universe  – the God above all gods, the one who placed the stars and the planets in their courses – that this God  can’t take  ordinary good people – like you and me – and do miracles through them.

Because he is greater than evil. He is stronger than ideology. He is more powerful  than rhetoric, than spin doctoring, than advertising.

Than advertising?

Do you know that the average child is exposed to more than a thousand hours of advertising during it’s formative years?

And do you know what advertising tells us? It tells  us that we bring happiness into our lives by the shampoo we use, the clothes we wear, the jewelry we buy, the car we drive. 

A thousand hours of propaganda!

God can even counteract that.

I read that there is a movement among young people these days to search for something beyond themselves, beyond the facile messages of advertising jingles.

There is a need.

For a Creator God, and a Saving God and an Enabling God. A Trinity.

There is an emptiness that needs filling, a hunger for something more than the pap that is fed to them twenty four hours a day by this culture of consumerism.  

And we have that.

Don’t we?

We have a God who delivers.

We have a God who saves.

We have a God who is willing to give power to those who ask.

It’s about time that we Christians started telling people what we have. And how to get it. If we are going to do one tiny bit of what those first disciples accomplished.

I don’t know about you, but I want this world to be a little bit better than it was when I came into it.

Else what’s the point?

And people are doing it you know.  People are leaving this place a little better  than when they came.

I see it all the time.  In the families that people leave behind. In the legacy of care and love that people leave behind them. In the monuments to their care for the kingdom that they leave behind.

You know what I am talking about.

I don’t have to tell you.

So why am I – telling you?

Because I want others – those who have never darkened the door of a church, who have never  known salvific love, others who have a need and a hunger, and a desire to be better, and do better, and leave their portion of this place better – I want them  to know what we know.

But they won’t know if we keep our joy to ourselves.

Let’s bring this God of ours out and share with everyone else.

This God of ours being God the Holy Trinity. The God who created all that we have and all that we are. The God who sacrificed Himself to save us. The God who everyday fills with power, those who want to bring about change.

Created. Saved. Empowered.

United in God, and in the Church, and determined to make this world a much, much better place.

Amen.

I remember as a little boy in England, asking my grandfather about the First World War.

He told me that he had walked fifteen miles with some other young coal miners to Pontefract Castle, to enlist. Unfortunately, or fortunately, during the routine medical, he was found not to meet the rather low health requirements. He was given a cup of tea and a muffin, and set out to walk the fifteen miles back home.

He didn’t, then, go to war, but he did tell me something that spoke volumes about it.

He said that a young friend of his, a miner like himself, had volunteered, and after only a few weeks of training, had been sent to the trenches. After a while, this young man came home on leave for a week or so, and his friends gathered around to ask him what war was like.

He told them about his first trip over the top – when he and thousands more had come up out of the trenches like dead men coming out of graves, and had charged the German positions.

“Charged,” was an exaggeration. The ground was so muddy, and there was barbed wire everywhere, so the charge was rather like a walk.

This was his first time, remember, and after very little training.

He was trying to run forward with his fellow soldiers, and noticed strange whistling noises in the air.

“Hey,” he called to the soldier on his right, “What is that noise? Is it birds?”

“No,” his friend replied, probably with some exasperation, “Them’s bullets.”

That young man went back to the trenches after his leave, and didn’t come home again.

That story impressed a little boy, more than stories about bravery and bloodthirsty battles. I knew there was something pathetic about the whole thing even then.  

Of course, men were sent to the front with too little training.  With trenches, barbed wire, the machine guns, mines, and so on, warfare had changed, and the generals on both sides didn’t know how to cope.

There was a phrase at the time, that went something like: Heroes led by donkeys.”

So men were sent to certain death in fruitless charges that made little or no difference at the time.

War is hell.

War brings out the worst in people and ironically, it brings out the best.

You know why war is hell?  War is hell because it reduces people to the level of objects.

The man aiming his gun at you from a hundred yards away isn’t a husband, father, son, brother. He is some thing that has to be eliminated.

And in his mind, so are you.

It has to be, I guess. We wouldn’t want to kill those whom we saw as warm, breathing, God-fearing family men.

And neither would they.

And if generals allowed themselves to think of the men under their command as fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, then they wouldn’t be able to send them into battle.

No, war makes us all into objects.

Civilian deaths aren’t called civilian deaths any more, they are called ‘collateral damage.’ They are not even accorded the dignity of their human-being-ness.

Now history tells us that if someone attacks us and we don’t retaliate, then we will also lose our human-being-ness. We will be enslaved.

So, we have to fight. We have to go forward to defend our country.

And the heroes were those who knew that, and were frightened when they came face to face with the machines of death, and yet, out of a need to protect their families, or the pal next  to them in line, or just to stay alive, shoved their fear down deep inside themselves and went forward anyway, and some died and some lived, and they were all heroes.

Ironically, it also brings out the best in us.

But war isn’t what God wants for us.  We are not objects to Him.

We are precious and dear, and valued, in His eyes.

And those who went to war on our behalf, should be precious and dear and valued in our eyes.

Didn’t I read, just in the past couple of years, that a tomb of the unknown soldier had been opened and genetic material recovered, and the ‘unknown’  soldier identified?

And that soldier’s family finally knew where their son had lain.

Because that son was and is precious and dear and valued.

And that’s what we are supposed to try to do today when we remember those who fell in two world wars and the Korean conflict and in numerous peacekeeping missions since: to see them as someone dear and valued.

Thirty years ago I took our younger daughter to the UK to meet her family there, and to see the places that had figured in my early life. I took her to the village where I was born, and I showed her where my father had lived, and I showed her the Cenotaph.

I pointed out to her the name Sgt. Richard LLewellen Jones on that memorial. He was one of my two uncles who went to war.  One uncle came back. The other didn’t. 

That moment was the defining moment of that trip for Alison. Here in a faraway land, on a little village green was a monument to those who had died defending their country, and right there was a name to which she was connected – Sgt. Richard Llewellen Jones. 

This was not just a name any more. But someone who had been flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. A person. A son, husband and brother, an uncle lost in battle.

Not an object. Not any more.

You know, Isaiah tells the children of Israel that there will be peace. There will be normal commerce. He promises them peace and freedom. 

Because they are God’s people.

People as a whole. They have had a covenant, as a people, with God. .

Jesus brings us a different way of covenanting with God. He brings a vision of a God who knows and loves each of us individually.

This God doesn’t take vengeance on us because of what we have been. Instead, He shows us His love in the way He died for us.

He didn’t make us die for Him, as we deserved, perhaps, but instead He died for us.

That’s a big difference, isn’t it?

It’s the opposite of how we are supposed to be in war. It’s the opposite to the way we are supposed to be in business.  It’s precisely the opposite of what the world expects us to be.

One of the great slogans of the last century was that of P.T.Barnum – “Never give a sucker an even break.”

That’s a far cry from dying for somebody, isn’t it? 

But not everyone held to that sentiment. 

The ideals of  Jesus in most dire  circumstances:    a soldier risking his own life to bring back a wounded buddy;                   an airman deliberately crashing his stricken aircraft rather than bailing out and leaving it to come down in a populated area;                 a sailor risking his own life to get men nearer to their landing point;             medics going out under fire to bring back wounded men;              women driving “ambulance trucks,”             nurses working in forward hospitals under bombardment,      because they were needed.

Even there, in the midst of all that horror, people loving and caring for, people – not objects.

Isn’t it a pity that that sentiment could not always prevail everywhere? 

If we hadn’t been taught that the others were so bad, that they were different, and their difference made them less than human, then there would never be a war.

But even in peacetime you still see traces of that objectifying of other people – denying them their human-being-ness – in business, in sport, in everyday life, as people strive to get ahead – ahead of the other guy, at all costs.

We have just witnessed just south of here, an election process where more than one candidate specifically singled out those who were different – Mexicans, Muslims, blacks and women.

We have to be on guard against that. 

Else it will become easier for some political leader to get us to see some others as objects. Easier to victimize them, easier to go to war.

If Jesus died for me, and for you, then he died for everyone.

One of the biggest revelations about God’s love, and our human need for God came to me when at the age of about ten, I found some war souvenirs that my uncle – another uncle, who had been in the struggle for Berlin, – had given to my dad.

Among them I found a German soldier’s belt. It had a chrome buckle, and on the reverse side of the buckle, were the words, Auf Gott vertrauen wir- In God we trust.

What a surprise that an enemy, someone who would have killed my uncles if he had them in his rifle sight, who fought for an evil regime, should believe in God – in the same loving, caring forgiving God I believed in.

What a bigger surprise to come to understand, that God does indeed love them, as He loves us.

And if that were the size of our human love, then again, there would never be war – if we could see everyone as valued and loved. 

Today we remember the children of God – those who died to ensure our freedom.

People.  Not just names.  Not just objects.

Fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, uncles.  Sisters, wives, daughters, mothers, aunts.

And we remember those who came back, and give thanks for them all.

And vow it will never happen again? 

Amen.

The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to John.

 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.  “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

‘Come and see, Lord,” they replied.Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.  “Take away the stone,” he said.“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”

 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴² I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”

 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

(Jn 11:32-44

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Our Western provinces salesman,  told me once of a practical joke he and a friend played on a neighbour.

They stayed up late. They waited until a good hour had passed from when they saw their victim’s houselights go out, and then they got ladders, and lots of black plastic, and duct tape. They spent a good couple of hours blacking out every window of their neighbour’s house.

They laughed so much while doing this, that they nearly fell from the ladders, but they completed the job, and went home to sleep, worn out, and smiling at the thought of what their neighbour and his wife would do when they woke up at a time when it should have been light out, and found themselves in darkness

Of course, it was a bit of an anti-climax. The neighbour and his wife had clocks to tell them the time, and they could see that the windows had been tampered with.

But it was a good idea, wasn’t it?

It would have to be a better idea than that,  to keep me up until the early hours, though.

That episode brings me to something a couple of us were talking, about, a week or so ago – the relativeness of time. How falling asleep, you are not aware of time. Do you know what I mean?

Have you ever woken up feeling as if you have been asleep for a long time, to find when looking at the clock that it has only been a few minutes.  I know the opposite is mostly true – you wake up after a night asleep and feel like you only had five minutes. 

There are stories of people who have been asleep – in a coma – for twenty years, say, and have woken up, thinking they have been sleeping for just a few hours. They are astonished when they are told that twenty years have passed.

So the idea that came out of our short discussion was that when we die, and are laid to rest,  the time between our dying and our actual ascent to heaven – assuming that’s where we are going – which could come at the end of time, will seem instantaneous.

Coincident with that, then, is an assumption that if say a wife dies ten years before her husband, then it would seem to be only an instant  before he joins her.

We like to think that when we die, we immediately go to Heaven, and that may be, I am only indulging in a little speculation here, because we have John’s Revelation for our first reading today.

John has had a vision, and in it he sees that at the end time, God will live among us. He has promised to be our God, and that we are his people.  It is a wonderful idea of what heaven will be like.

The promise is also seen in the Old Testament and in Paul’s’ writings. Ezekiel, has, “My dwelling place shall be among them.” 

God’s promise in Isaiah  is , “Tears and grief shall be  no more….. and sorrow and sighing will flee away ……I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people…..no more shall be heard the cries of weeping or the cry of distress”

….. then, promising the end of death, God says, “ Death too,  shall be gone,” and then ” God will swallow up death in victory and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces.”

This vision of John’s, of God living with His people, in a new Jerusalem so beautiful, it can hardly be described, is a promise for the future, but it is also a comfort in today’s world, especially  for all those who mourn.

We know that death is not the end. Dying is not dropping down some big black hole to nothingness. It is the gateway to closer communion with God, in the place prepared for us.

This day is set aside for us to remember the saints.  The saints of the church. And I don’t mean only those whose names are in the canon, but those we have known, ordinary men and women, passed away, and also those we still have with us.

We remember those who by their very being, their being among us, make the days seem brighter,  and who somehow manage always to have time, love, and concern for others. 

And I mean you.

Those who mourn will be blessed, but even better for us who are still in this world, death is swallowed up in victory for those who know Christ, and the power of his resurrection.  In other words, we don’t die.

The story of Lazarus in today’s Gospel shows us Jesus’s power over death, and presages his own death and resurrection, his own victory over death.

In Jesus lives are made new. And that means that  we have no need to carry with us the bad memories, the burdens laid on us by the past. 

God says, through Isaiah, “Remember not the former things, do not consider the things of old. Behold I am doing a new thing.”

How many of us are affected by the things of our own past? How many of us have problems that come from our past – childhood, or later – that still have an impact on us today?  And which we wish we could get rid of?

Paul says that God can take a person and recreate them. He can  make a new person out of them.

Because as John  says, all things begin and end with God. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

Somebody once compared a life that has been changed by Jesus to a piece of embroidery.

You look at a piece of embroidery and the picture or pattern woven there is exquisite. That is life with Jesus.

Turn  the piece over and you see all the thread, tangled, confused, with no apparent purpose or design – that typifies life before Jesus.

But there is more, since John tells us that God has prepared a beautiful place for us, a new Jerusalem. A place of such beauty that it is hard to describe.   The prophets have said it has streets paved with gold, and walls studded with precious gems, and no need of light from sun or moon, since it will be lighted for ever by the light of God.

So, we go from this life, this old life, to that new life, seamlessly, it seems, slipping out of our old worn-out bodies, frail and diseased as they may be, into a new existence, with no pain, no tears, no worries, no hardship, in a place custom made for our happiness.

This isn’t to imply that we should give up on life and look forward to death.

The early martyrs, thrown to the lions ran forward eagerly to meet their deaths.  They were convinced  they were  going to that  better place. They were eager to be with Jesus.

But, Jesus himself  asked God, if it were at all possible, to spare him from that death on the cross.  In his obedience, he went to his death willingly, but he had no death-wish. He wanted to live. He had work to do. Things to accomplish. Life to live. Love to give. He went to the cross knowing it was his destiny, and his Father’s plan.

So it is with us Christians, we have no death-wish. We have a life wish.

In fact, the best Christians I know are so full of life, they won’t quit living until they die.  This is contrary to those who seem to have given up years ago, and just continue to exist.

We know, don’t we,  here,  in our heart, that in time, we will inherit immortal life, and join our brother Jesus in that special place, but life is too precious to give up right now.

There is too much to do.

We want  to make this  world better.

Pity those without the vision. Pity those who are merely passing time, waiting for   death to catch up with them. They have no belief in the afterlife, and it seems, no belief in the present life. They spend  it  so cheaply.

George Burns, who worked hard until the day he died, said, “If you were to go around asking people what would make then happier, you’d get answers like, a new car, a bigger house, a raise in pay, winning a lottery, a face-lift, more kids, less kids, a new restaurant to go to – probably not one in a hundred would say a chance to help people. And yet that may bring the most happiness of all.

“I don’t know  Dr. Jonas Salk, but after what he’s done for us with his polio vaccine, if he isn’t happy, he should have that brilliant head of his examined. Of course, not all of us can do what he did.   I know. I can’t do what he did. He beat me to it!!

“But the point is, it doesn’t have to be anything that extraordinary. It can be working for a worthy cause, performing a needed service, or just doing something that helps another person.”

Cast your mind back and remember those saints who were part of this church in years gone by. Or the ones who influenced your life for the better, in school, or in some other place or time.

Then think about the saints who are among us right now. They are the ones who spend busy lives doing God’s work,  not letting faulty knees, or bad hearts, or creaky joints hold them back. 

And are still doing it.

And just won’t stop!

Go and do likewise.

Amen.