a sermon from 7th Nov
?Why is it that Jesus says to these people Come follow me and they just do, they just drop everything there and then and go?
What’s Jesus doing in heaven?
What are you like at Waiting? I’m rubbish at waiting. But there are different sorts of waiting and there are different ways we deal with it.
Over this last year you might have booked a holiday and then prepared to go, and you get your mindset ready and your car full of petrol and your Lateral Flow tests are all negative, but at the back of your mind is this nagging fear that suddenly this might not happen.
I was supposed to go to Ipswich earlier this week to catch up on my inLaws and have a bit of moment to let my soul catch up with me but then No, its not happening. And its exhausting. It might happen the week before Advent!
The book of Hebrews calls us to wait. Other translations say Wait Eagerly, Wait Expectantly, the Greek is an emphatic sort of waiting. Wait Eagerly
If I say lets Wait Eagerly for Christmas. You know what to do with that. You’re not waiting to see if Christmas will happen, you’re waiting in a way that prepares you for it.
It will come, Christmas will happen. But what will it look like? Well, we are getting on with preparing things.
Maybe what’s helpful here in our bible reading is not the call to Wait, but the call to Wait Eagerly. Eagerly? There’s a lot we cannot control whether we’re talking about Christmas or whether we’re talking about the Return of Jesus – but if we’re told to wait Eagerly, then maybe we do know what to be doing.
Wait Eagerly for Christmas – means get on with buying your presents and cards and getting ready to get the tree out – can you tell I like Christmas and I’m not that person who only gets their tree out on 24th!
Wait Eagerly for Jesus. Hebrews tells us that Jesus is in heaven and we are given another reminder of the promise of the return of Jesus and the advice is to Wait Eagerly.
So then I say stuff the waiting – the waiting isn’t a call to be passive, it’s a call to trust, and in that trust to live, to live the life of faith.
So Wait for Jesus means relax, trust Jesus, He will return. Meantime.
Wait Eagerly for Jesus. So – Live Eagerly, Love Eagerly, Forgive eagerly, Give eagerly, Worship eagerly, pray eagerly.
Because Jesus in heaven isn’t passively waiting either. He isn’t sitting there looking at his watch and thinking, no not yet, no not yet….
Instead we read how Jesus is in heaven – the phrase in today’s Hebrews reading is ‘to appear for us in God’s presence’ elsewhere in Hebrews it’s a bit clearer – Jesus is interceding for you in heaven. Jesus is praying for you.
You know how we preachers are always telling you to pray more? Well fair enough, but on those days when you cannot pray, you’re too tired, you’re at the end of your energy, end of your wits, and you’re sinking and it’s all too much and who cares about God and faith and church, because your world is busily drowning you – its on those days – I don’t want you to pray, I want you to remember that Jesus is praying for you, with you, He is interceding in heaven.
Now for a moment Pause and be slightly overwhelmed at the awesomeness of Jesus. His sacrifice is the once and for all sort. For centuries the High Priest has been doing this sacrifice, throughout the year lots of little sacrifices and then once a year the Day of Atonement there would be one big sacrifice – Lev 16 I think, remind me to preach on it another time. Now Jesus does this one sacrifice, but its not of an animal, its of himself, and the implications, the effect of this is huge.
This sacrifice brings not only a clean conscience, a removal of my sin today, but it removes the sins that stain my soul from yesterday, and it will be there still strong and powerful for my sins of tomorrow.
And more than that this sacrifice doesn’t just cover me, it covers you and you and you and me and it cleanses back and forth through time. If I was preaching this sermon in a Pentecostal church at some point someone would shout Hallelujah! Thank you Jesus!
So for a moment be overwhelmed at the love of God in Jesus Christ, be moved to worship, moved to repentance, move to cry out for more of His love to be poured into our hearts.
And now we wait. And now do you see that this is a different sort of waiting? This is an eager waiting.
What is Jesus doing in heaven? He isn’t waiting, at least not in the clock watching, waiting for a train sort of waiting, Jesus is in heaven having brought about the gift of a clean conscience for us, and so cleansing us to come into the presence of God and so Jesus in heaven is praying for you and for me.
And there are days when I need that. When I struggle with prayer and I don’t know why I bother and then I remember, that Jesus is in heaven praying for me. And so I just sit, and allow that prayer of Jesus to wash over me, to revive me, to let me be eager once again to wait for him.
So we Wait Eagerly for Jesus. And that means to Live Eagerly, Love Eagerly, Forgive eagerly, Give eagerly, Worship eagerly, even to pray eagerly.
Jesus is walking with Simon and Andrew and he sees James and John and you heard the Gospel reading – Without delay he called them – without hesitation – I love that – there’s that eagerness in Jesus and in his ministry.
And they drop everything, why? Well for you, in the light of the sermon thus far, the light of the sacrifice and its enormous implications across time and space, maybe that would be enough for you – but what about these fishermen?
I’ve spoken to you before about the TV series called the Chosen – its only on You Tube, its free, its slow, and I’ve only seen series one, so I have some catching up to do.
In the TV series, the fishermen get to see Jesus do a miraculous catch of fish, they have met him a little, they’ve seen how he is with people, Andrew is confident that this Jesus is the One – So here the fishermen follow Jesus because they too are now convinced that Jesus is the one, the hopes and fears of all the years, the one they have been praying for for generations, the one Hebrews describes as appearing at the Culmination of the Ages – great phrase.
But its more that. In times of old, If a Rabbi wanted you to be one of his students, he would interview over and over, exhaustively to test your knowledge of the scriptures, to see if you’re good enough, to see if you have it within you, enough brain, enough character, resilience, moral fibre, to be able to not only absorb this Rabbi’s teaching but to then take it further, to take that teaching out to others. Do you have it in you to hear what I say, to learn from me and then to live out my life – do you have it in you to do what I can do?
And if the Rabbi thought that maybe you were worth investing in, the Rabbi would end the interview saying Come, follow me.
Jesus goes up to these fishermen, who perhaps have seen Jesus’ character, kindness, compassion, miraculous powers, so when Jesus unhesitatingly says Come follow me – Jesus is saying: I believe in you. I believe in you.
Why do the fishermen just drop everything – because here’s someone who believes in them. You and I have had to struggle through life with people muttering – Oh you’ll never amount to anything, and putting you down – and then in the grown up world we’ve found a tough environment where everyone wants to prove they’re better than you and we struggle against the tide – but Jesus says – I believe in you – you have it in you to hear my teaching, to absorb my love, to live my life. I believe in you.
And that’s a messiah worth following. Worth eagerly waiting for. He’s busy in heaven, praying for you, and mean time our job is to eagerly wait, eagerly pray, eagerly worship, eagerly give, eagerly forgive, eagerly live, eagerly love. Amen.