nobrokenreed

Gospel of John viii

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“a host always serves the best wine first, he said….But you have kept the best wine until now” John 2: 10

I was listening to a Youtube mix this week, and a U2 song came up. In the background of work, a few lines caught my attention:

“I was drinking some wine and it turned to blood, what’s the use of religion if you’re any good?”

Here, in this simple story found in a book that most people today would like to discard, lies the answer to that question; and every other. When the new wine turns up, everything changes. Religion begins to make sense for the first time. We see the complete picture of God, because everything is fulfilled in this simple person of Jesus.

The new wine comes when everything else is exhausted. When all our attempts to rectify our lives come to nothing, so often then we eventually turn to God. When the world does finally run out of answers, when it has tried every vain attempt to solve the problem itself, the new wine – Jesus, will come again. The new wine always comes at the end.

The new wine is abundant; there were 6 ceremonial jars, each of around 25 gallons – that’s 600 litres of wine that came at the end of the wedding. I am always amazed at the sheer abundance of God, the God that gives so unceasingly, and so unquestioningly. We don’t deserve any of it, but he pours it out anyway in bigger quantities than we can ever hold.

The new wine is pleasing; it is always the best. When you read the hosts response, you get a picture of sheer astonishment at the quality of the wine that came at the end of the wedding. This was no local plonk being served up, this was Chateau Mouton Rothschild of the very best vintage. It would have provided a great sense of pleasure to those who were able to indulge. Refreshment for all.

Mostly though, the new wine saves; above all, Jesus came to rescue his bride back from destruction. His gentleness, his love and compassion, his genuine desire for us to follow him so that we can be saved by him lies at the heart of the Gospel. The wedding was saved from an embarrassing collapse, and few would ever know who had saved it. The new wine, which comes at the end of our attempts, pleases us and rescues us.

There is one more thing to add, and that is we can do nothing to earn it. The good wine comes to us in spite of ourselves, and we must gratefully receive it. It is free, it comes from outside of us and we must drink deeply from its draft. When we truly learn that lesson – and perhaps only when we learn that lesson then the obedience that Jesus demands, comes to us.

The new wine changes; in the Old Religion, we saw people strive – and fail, to please God through their own efforts. In Jesus, we see a gift given to us in spite of all our own undeserving. When we grasp that, when we drink deeply, then our motivation changes. Obedience is not from obligation, but from a sense of desire, of devotion. The new wine is far superior to the old wine.

Drink my friends, and drink deeply for a long time. The new wine is here, and it will not go away.

The joy of making disciples

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Last weekend we went away down the Coast and dropped in on some people we’d never met before. They were ‘acquaintances’, friends of friends so you never know how it might go. But, for four hours – us, them their friends and family spent a wonderful time together.  We laughed, we ate, drank, talked, prayed, healed and loved.

In a world that can barely seem to stand side by side for a moment, what is that drew strangers together for an evening of such intense joy? Well, behind it all stood the towering figure of Jesus, the divine man of such startling contrasts. Humble, simple, loving and yet forceful enough to draw together those who seek to serve and obey. The same Lord who demands total obedience is the one who gives total freedom in return. He alone keeps us together in love, in spite of the fact we cannot see it. It is not always tangible – sometimes it is just an experience, yet one where we know his presence.

That night as we sat around the table, each person shared stories from the past few weeks and they almost all centred around him, our Lord and Saviour. We told of others who had been set free when they too had encountered him, some who had been healed, yet more finding peace in lives that had never had any. We heard of night turning into day, death moving to life in people’s lives, all on account of this simple carpenter from Nazareth.

This is what Paul, inspired by the Spirit of God said of this simple carpenter, our Jesus:

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,
for through him God created everything
in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see
and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through him and for him.
He existed before anything else,
and he holds all creation together.
Christ is also the head of the church,
which is his body.
He is the beginning,
supreme over all who rise from the dead.
So he is first in everything.
For God in all his fullness
was pleased to live in Christ,
and through him God reconciled
everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth
by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.

The one lesson we all took away from that night, is that given who he is, we need to share more of him. He alone is the answer to this life, and the more we share that with others, the more we see the reality. There is nothing trite in the phrase, Jesus Saves.

When we see what he has done, we can see why you would not want to keep such a thing a secret. Paul continues:

This includes you who were once far away from God.

You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions.  Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.

For many people, the notion that there is a God who so completely and utterly accepts them, on account of what Jesus has done on their behalf is simply staggering. For those who have spent a lifetime under condemnation, it takes a while to sink in, but when it does, it is life changing.

It needs to be life changing for us who believe as well. May you dwell in his presence this week, with this carpenter, this King, this Lord. But let us also share him, this Jesus who saves.

Gospel of John vii

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“The next day there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus‘ mother was there” – John 2: 1

Commonly recognised as Jesus‘ first miracle is the turning of water into wine, one of four of his ‘messianic miracles’ – miracles that supposedly only God could do. But the richness in the story here early in John’s Gospel is vast and belies its simplicity. It reveals some of the deep characteristics of God, traits that we have trampled on and made a mockery of over the centuries since Christ walked.

What is it about Jesus that makes him so compelling for the world, for us who choose to follow him?

A Palestinian wedding in Jesus‘ day was a true celebration; marriage was the joining of a young couple and the bringing together of great families. A young couple was brought together while being carefully nurtured into the surrounding life of the town, not discarded off to start life on their own in another place. Betrothal happened months or even years before, an engagement where the couple were already committed to marriage without the living together. There was little more serious in the community than a wedding, as the community understood the foundation of the family in its own survival.

Celebrations would last at least a week, and would frequently involve an entire village! It is worth reading more widely on the wedding celebration in those days, but God is no dullard when it comes to celebration – and there he is, right in the midst of the dancing, drinking and joy that carries on. It is we who have blunted the enthusiasm for God’s celebration, in our austere interpretation of the law and saturation in the ‘thou shalt not’ culture. Not so Jesus, who ate and drank with sinners, and immersed himself with everyday life.

This would have been a poor village family, lives tormented and tortured by the Romans and their own religious elite who dwelt in the more luxuriant cities, and for them a wedding was a relief from the drudgery and grind. The parents of the bride would host the celebrations, and central to it all was the food and wine. To run out of wine midway through the festivities was to invite terrible shame and embarrassment on the hosts and the young couple.

It is here then, that we begin to see a new picture of God, one who comes willing to us to remove our shame. In his display of such willingness to roll up his sleeves and be part of our world, we see this God – this beautiful Christ, so ready to come to our rescue. Jesus does the miracle, because he has the opportunity to remove the shame for a young Palestinian couple. He does not stop and ask questions as to their worthiness beforehand, the readiness to put right what is wrong, simply pours out of him throughout his life.

God’s readiness to take away our shame is a picture of the entire Bible, but in this Jesus we have the opportunity for it to be removed once, for all time. We get things wrong when we think God is the big teacher with the stick. For this ordinary family – for you, for me, we have a Saviour so willing to join with us in our daily lives, to walk, to strengthen, to help, to love. For many though, even especially ‘Christians’ this is simply too much. We prefer our own ways, to walk in our own strength, our own moral preeminence.

‘Do as he tells you’ says Jesus‘s mother to the servants. Will we allow ourselves to come under him today, this gentle, this lovely Jesus, the divine personality who has our best interest at heart. Will we trust him today with our lives, he asks us?

Gospel of John – making disciples IV

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“the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Come, follow me’.”  John 1: 43

In Miraculous Movements, Jerry Toursdale cites a story where a young muslim man hears the story of Jesus on the radio in a remote town in Africa. The man was so transformed by the message, that he went and told everyone he could about it in the town; he had nothing to add, as he didn’t have a Bible and couldn’t read, but eventually he found another old woman who told him she was a Christian. ‘Now we are two’ she told him. Without any literature between them, and the only knowledge of Jesus coming from what they had heard from others, they began to draw the town to Jesus. They simply told others of Jesus from the stories they knew and from this an entire movement grew.

Sally and I meet dozens – literally, of people who have sat in church all of their life and yet have no knowledge of a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. They have no assurance. It alarms us – what has happened?

Somewhere along the line, we substituted ‘following Jesus‘ with learning more about him. There is no doubt we are to learn about Jesus, principally through reading his Word and being ministered to by the Holy Spirit. Discovery Bible Studies, where small groups of believers gather to discuss the Word of God are an ideal way to learn. Jesus taught his disciples, and Paul taught his newly formed churches in a similar fashion, and expected others to do the same. The problems come, when we stop following Jesus, and our faith becomes an academic exercise.

Jesus principally calls us to follow him; there isn’t a single reference in the Gospels to Jesus ever calling us to worship him, but on numerous occasions, he calls everyone who would be a believer to be obedient to his calling. A large part of that calling is to share his Love for mankind into our local community, and to make disciples in the process. Such a calling to follow Jesus is hard work, and herein lies the crux. It is far easier to define our faith by ‘attending church, Bible Study or weekly meetings’ than the far more esoteric call which demands, ‘follow me’. But obedience to this calling is central to Christendom.

There is a trend in the world, that is hidden in plain sight for all to see; where believers, often at great cost, take up the call of Jesus to follow him, and go into the world and make disciples, the church moves at great pace. God works, miraculous signs and wonders occur, and the hardest hearted of men, receives a heart of flesh from God. For example, Nepal is now the fastest growing Christian nation in the world, and small, organic church is the fastest growing religion in the world. God is very much still on the move, far ahead of us.

But, where we as believers decide to ignore Christ’s calling, and instead take the much easier route of teaching ourselves more and more about God, without ever really knowing him, the church stagnates. As we fail to obey, so God stops moving, and our growth depends on our own strength. Over time, as we see now in many places, our faith becomes a religion and our religion begins to gain political overtones. Finally, the coup de grace happens, when, in order to keep the doors open, we agree to say only what those in power would have us say, and we exchange the truth of God for a lie.

So where lies the West today? Many have mulled this over many times before the Lord. The answer, strangely enough, would seem to lie with us, the believers. Throughout history, God waits for his people to move out in faith, before he responds. But, oh what happens when he does. It would seem now that God is waiting again for us to begin to follow his Son in obedience, and to proclaim the truth about a relationship with God, through Jesus Christ. There is resistance, largely from the established church – but many people in the West are beginning to take Jesus at his word, and to follow him as Philip and the disciples did when Jesus first showed up. A movement is happening again. At the core of it, people are knowing Jesus, rather than just learning about him

But, friends, here is the question, why would you want to live any other way? Our Saviour is calling us, each of us – “come, follow me”. Can you not hear those words, ‘well done good and faithful servant, come into my rest’ as we join the heavenly family for eternity. (Col. 3:1-4)

Would you have it any other way, than Jesus as Lord?

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