B, Epiphany 2 - John 1:43-51 "Come and See"

 The first recorded words of Jesus in John’s Gospel are with two disciples of John the Baptist.  Jesus asks, “What are you seeking?”  Literally, what are you worshipping, or what do you desire or want?  To which the two disciples of John the Baptist ask “Where are you staying?” and he replies with the invitation “come and you will see”.

One of these disciples is Andrew, a fisherman.  He tells his brother Simon he has found Jesus.  Did he find Jesus?  Not really! Jesus really found him through the proclamation of John the Baptist, Behold the Lamb of God. 

After this Simon is given the name Peter after Andrew announces he has found the Messiah, the Anointed One.  A king, long lost since King David.

We arrived at the text today having heard Jesus proclaimed as the Lamb of God and the Messiah, and also that Simon was to be called Peter, the rock on which we know the church is built. 

Jesus then moves on to find Phillip and calls him to “follow him”.  And Philip finds Nathanael and immediately connects the man Jesus of Nazareth with the Word of God saying, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:45 ESV)

Ironically, maybe even with a sense of comedy, the Apostle John recounts that now, not just Andrew, but also Philip claims, it is he who has found Jesus.  The question goes begging, “Can we really find Jesus or does he find us?”  If we are honest, one might only begin to seek Jesus once the Word of God comes, as it had for Philip and Andrew.

So Philip tells Nathanael, and this man whose name means “gift of God”, in all his bluntness says, “What good can come out of Nazareth?” There is no deceit or subtlety or trickery with this fellow’s word; he says what he thinks and thinks what he says.  Nevertheless, Philip invites him to “come and see” Jesus, to find Jesus, just as he has found him and as Andrew has found him too.  

We are given a privileged view from the Apostle John in this text as he joyfully and faithfully reports Jesus’ word as it is Jesus who actually sees Nathanael first and says, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” (John 1:47 ESV)

It is precisely here the Apostle John begins to unpack the mystery of Jesus being not only one who comes from the backwater of Nazareth.  But as one who comes from God the Father, the God of Moses and the prophets, as the Son of God to teach and open their eyes to the Old Testament scriptures so they truly see heaven is open to them, simple men whom the Son of God has found and calls them to follow as the Son of Man, the servant of humankind.

You too are invited into this wonderful text to come and see Jesus, to see the irony, the satire, the silliness of these men, as they begin to grapple with something so extraordinary which John writes to us with delight after reflection on this event together with the events of the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit at the festival of Pentecost and life in the church as he would have remembered and recounted time and time again in the years after all this occurred.

This is not just John or Philip or Nathanael’s story, it is your story too.  Not only did Jesus find them and call them to follow him, he calls you and me to know and proclaim how Jesus found us, how he finds us today, and how he continues to find us who so often in our feeble narrow-mindedness think so often it is we who find him.  Yet despite our short sightedness the heavenly invitation still stands from the Son of God to “come and see”.  

After Jesus says, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” (John 1:47 ESV) You can hear the surprise in Nathanael’s response, “How do you know me?” Hear the comedy of the situation as throughout the narrative all have claimed to have found Jesus and yet now Jesus tells Nathanael he has known him as he has known all Israel. 

The love and the joy with which John unfolds the story of God meeting man in his sinfulness encourages us to come and see the joy and the love of God’s own Son who finds us even while we were sinners, and still as we continue to struggle with sin which should render us as nothing in Jesus’ eyes but instead invokes Jesus’ word to truly see, not with our eyes, but with the eyes of faith.  Eyes that not only see sin but lead the lips to be as blunt as Nathanael, without cheating and charade, and confess sin!

Nathanael’s honesty is just like that of a child who has not yet learnt to hide sin as we have learnt to do.  But notice how Jesus lets this child come to him; he does not hinder the kingdom of God from this true Israelite.

But it is the end of the story where John connects Nathanael with one Israelite, namely Jacob, that completely opens up the mystery of Nathanael’s nothing Nazarene as not only being a Rabbi or teacher, not only being the King of Israel but being the Son of God.  Don’t let our understanding and familiarity with God’s Word diminish Nathanael’s answer, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49 ESV)

Yes Jesus is!  He is the Son of God, the King of Israel!  He is the Rabbi who has just taught Nathanael that he saw him even before Philip called him.  We take for granted Jesus being Christ the King, and God the Son.  They did not understand all this until after the ascension and Pentecost, making their confession remarkable, even earth shattering! 

This is the climax of John’s revelation.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, and the King anointed not just of Israel but of all who believe in him.  We do well to see Nathanael blurting out a confession that was out of place for human understanding, but very much spot on because through Jesus’ word, Nathanael confesses something only that the Holy Spirit could bring out of this true Israelite.

Jesus answers Nathanael, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” (John 1:50 ESV)

 And Jesus continues, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51 ESV)

Here at the end of the story, the hearer is given the final piece of the puzzle.   Jesus is likening Nathanael to Jacob.  This is why Jesus calls him a true Israelite.  Here John evokes the hearers’ memory to recall Jacob’s dream when he was on his way to work for Laban and secure for himself a wife.  Jacob was running from his brother Esau after stealing his birthright.  And later he would return from Laban having tricked him too.

But despite all this he has a dream and it is with Jesus’ proclamation of these words, John ties all the threads together so the hearer knows Jesus has come to seek Israel. They are chosen to follow Jesus who is God’s Son, and will be anointed to his kingdom on the cross and live and rule eternally after his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father in glory.  The hearer is called to see Jacob, the one who dreams and sees the ladder with the angels ascending and descending on it. But see the greater thing that Jacob’s ladder is this seemingly nothing Nazarene called Jesus who is the Lamb of God, the sacrifice for all who struggle with God because of their sin.

So as you lie down before the Lord, as you are called to come and see, as you daily die to self and sin as you let your head rest on the Rock, the Word of God proclaimed in the church, come and see yourself as Peter called to be the Rock who receives forgiveness, whom Jesus finds and calls you to follow. 

Come and see Jacob who despite being a complete weasel and heel of a person became the Father of Israel and was called Israel, one who prevails with the power of God. 

Come and see Jesus’ invitation to Nathanael, the true Israelite, the true Jacob, to see the “greater things” even better than Jacob saw in his dream. 

Come and see through John’s Gospel, who saw God the Son descend and ascend at the crucifixion to forgive, at the resurrection and ascension to reign in victory over sin as King, at the bestowal of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Come and see the irony of being a sinner and a saint.  We might live with a limp as God needs to touch each of us in our struggle with sin. Just as Jacob, Israel, and the nation he became was led and known by God, you and I too are called to follow our Lord Jesus the Christ, Son of God. 

Jesus Christ connects heaven and earth, God with man, Creator and creature, Suffering Saviour with forgiven sinner, Son of man and Son of God, teacher with those being taught, the King of Kings with you and me.

Jesus says, “Come and See! Follow me!”  The Son of God has seen you.  He came down and he found you!  He still comes down with all love and forgiveness to save you. The Holy Spirit comes down to lift us up in the Written Word, so we might know and follow Jesus, the Word made flesh. Amen.

B, Advent 4 - Luke 1:30-35 "The Advent of Love"

How does one love?  How does one love with the right love?  What is the “right” love?  As we light the candles of Advent we light the candle of love.  As we wait and watch for the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ do we love waiting and watching for him?

If you are like me, waiting and watching, is a task that frustrates.  I want to wait and watch but without much notice I find myself waiting and watching for the things God will not find pleasing when Jesus Christ returns.  “How” I love comes down to “what” I love.  What do you love?  What you wait and watch for shows what you love?

When you love something or someone, love demands all other loves must die.  For humans, love usually expresses itself in desire, or what one wants.  When I want something all other things seem less important until I get the thing or person I want. When I get it desire then builds for the next thing I want to conquer.

As people of God you and I come up short in the love God wants us to have.  Why is it I find myself loving the stuff, I know and have been taught as a Christian, comes from the darkness within me? To my dismay I begin the day saying to myself I am going to follow you Heavenly Father, but somewhere each day I end up finding myself following my desire.  Love for God disappears, dead and gone, and in its place I find I love with a love that has me at the centre.

King David was no stranger to this frustration as the battle of love raged within.  David ruled with the promise that God’s steadfast love would not depart from him. But even being the anointed King he struggled.  David finds himself concerned that while he has a dwelling, a king’s residence, God does not.  And yet not long after his outwardly looking concern for God, from the roof of his very dwelling, he finds himself in the midst of lust and craving over Bathsheba, and then the death and cover up of her husband Uriah. 

I imagine after David was caught out in adultery and murder, he must have wondered, how he had got things so wrong!  Hear his plea for mercy and steadfast love...

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.  Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.” (Psalm 51:10–13 ESV)

When you and I get caught out we too wonder in our shame how we get things so wrong, how love is so corrupted within us.

How do you respond when you get it wrong?  Do you say, “It happens”, then forget about it and move on to the next disaster?

I suspect you do.  Why? Because we’re children of this generation!  We’re taught to watch and wait in all the wrong ways.  We watch our televisions and wait for the internet to load.  We bombard ourselves with information twenty-four hours a day, in front of the misfits and mischief of television, the internet, and social mediums.  Our lack of response and learning from love gone wrong is dictated by what we do most of the time.  And that is nothing because that’s what watching TV teaches us to do as we wait for the show to continue after each break.

The human spirit loves the technology of instant gratification.  The human spirit loves how it feels with little regard for the facts.  Television and the social media of our age care little for stopping and investigating what and why we fail, let alone do much about having it fixed.  Rather you and I have been taught to seek the quick fix of feelings as we watch funny failures and the feel good mountains of mindless media.

Do we feel the love? Can we feel the love?  Only for a fleeting second then no, nothing once again! When love is based on my feelings, this kind of love leaves me feeling dumb and numb.

So we return to the question, “How do we love?”  Its here we need to address the question.  The focus of the question is all wrong.   The focus needs to be taken away from us and our feelings.  We need a revelation from God on how we are loved to even begin to know what the right love is.

But you can learn from your failure.  You can stop and see how the techno-gods work destruction in you.  We need to learn they serve us by taking our focus from the things that serves us for eternal salvation.  Our craving for love, our ability to watch and wait with love, needs to be answered but not from within our human spirit being entertained to death but from the true source of constant, unwavering, unfailing, unfaltering, steadfast love.

This love came upon Mary most unexpectedly when Archangel Gabriel without warning appeared to her.

And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. (Luke 1:30–35 ESV)

When God’s steadfast love came to Mary, it came bring unknown knowledge and love to challenge the status quo of humanity’s misguided love. Imagine Gabriel as the power app of the day.  He was the facebook of God, the Studio Ten transmission, the Snapchat service, the good newsfeed sent to inform Mary.  Gabriel in the Hebrew literally means “the mighty one of God” and what a mighty message it was this angel brought from God.

This message of love through incarnation was like no other.  It would have been hard to hear and understand.  But Mary went on to allow the power of the Most High to overshadow her and we too can surrender to this Most High Love.

How do we love with the right love? We need to allow God to love us and we do this by yielding our human spirit to the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit leads us in God’s word.  The Holy Spirit also gives us the right perspective on God’s word so we might be found living under his word, hungering for love and righteousness because we realise just how much love and righteousness we truly need.

The Holy Spirit reveals what love is in the Word of God, the same Holy Spirit that conceived the Love of God incarnate in Mary’s womb.  The Holy Spirit reveals our need for this Steadfast Love too.  The fact is we cannot love God unless we have received the forgiveness of sins[1].   And we receive the forgiveness of sins as we believe and confess we are sinners. The Holy Spirit enables us to remain in Christ and confess him as our Saviour.  The Holy Spirit works in us throughout our lives teaching us more and more to abide in this Steadfast Love, as he works to kill off what we often love more than God.

Also a fact, without the forgiveness of sin there can only be terror in our knowledge of sin and death.  So let the Holy Spirit return you to the home of repentance and confession of sin before Jesus Christ.  Let him lead you from the haughty house of feelings where the words of love echo around it in emptiness that leads consciences into pride or despair.  Let this love die so the Holy Spirit can build you up with the steadfast love of God in Christ Jesus.

You and your human spirit cannot create this true love but you can receive it and let it flow through you to others.  Let it flow through you as forgiveness.  The Holy Spirit, through the word of God, has brought us to Jesus and our Heavenly Father, he is bringing us to Jesus and our Heavenly Father now, and he will continue to bring us to Jesus and our Heavenly Father.  So let us pray for the full incarnation of God within us and for all whom we forgive this advent of Christmas...

Holy Spirit – be, come, do, give, forgive, lead and deliver as we wait and watch for the only wise God who in glory reigns together in triune steadfast holy love, now and forever. Amen.

---

[1] Apology IV:311 

B, Advent 2 - Psalm 85:1-7, 2 Peter 3:9-13, Mark 1:1 "20/20 Vision"

We have lived and are still living in the year 2020.  What’s your 20/20 vision like in the year 2020? Through what glass have you been viewing the year?  It’s been an interesting year to say the least!

If you haven’t noticed there’s been a lot of anger in the world in recent days. 

Anger in creation as temperatures soared and our country burned.

Anger in politics as China challenges over our supply of resources; and anger as they continue to build their military hornet’s nest in the South China Sea.

Anger in the United States as its president favours seizing and holding onto power through whatever it takes, rather than serving in an office under the authority of God!

Anger amongst people as Covid-19 blooms in the population!  Restricting our freedom, killing our kingdom building and its treasures! And destroying many families through death!  Some 1,526,281 people have died (to date — December 5 2020) since the Coronavirus first started killing on January 9, 2020!

How have these things been alerting you to have 20/20 vision?  How is your sight?  What picture are you seeing?

We Christians have a part to play in the year 2020.   We’re called to see and help others to see the deeper reality through the lens of God’s Word.  But being a part of this world our vision is often obstructed by the very same ideologies and idolatry with which the world struggles.

It’s no wonder we struggle to give the reason for our hope in a world that’s spiralling deeper and deeper into hopelessness.

Have you noticed how you are becoming angrier and angrier with others?  We see injustice in every institutional system, including the church. We see the corruption of God’s creation as a civil community and as the environmental ecology is being wrecked?

Where does God fit into this reality?  Or a better question is this: what is your god in this reality?  The reality of your anger and the reality of creation’s corruption! In what do you trust, in these days?  From where do you get your 20/20 sight in the year 2020?

Tell the world, “In the word of God we hear God is a God of love” and you will probably get a responding question, “If God is a God of love, then why is there so much suffering in the world?”  Then we can tell them we suffer because of our sin, and because God is a jealous God he wants us to give up all things we love more than him. God is returning and in his love and anger he will sort out those who trust in him from those who don’t. 

Our culture and its political correctness tempts us to doubt this, and so we as individuals and church sin in our lack of belief and our fear to point others to him.

Psalm 85, the psalm for the second Sunday in Advent, Year B, in the Revised Common Lectionary is used omitting verses 3 to 7.  This is what these verses say.

LORD, you were favourable to your land; you restored the fortunes of Jacob.  You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath; you turned from your hot anger.  Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us!  Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations?  Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?  Show us your steadfast love, O LORD, and grant us your salvation. (Psalm 85:1–7 ESV)

God gets angry.   So If God is a God who gets angry, why does he show us his love?  After all God has every right to be angry with us!  Especially us in the church when in fear we stop his message of hope going out into the hopelessness of the world!  What kind of faith are we proclaiming to the world and to God?

Psalm 145:8 says more succinctly what is said above, The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 145:8 ESV)

God’s love does not exist in a vacuum.  God’s love always fills the empty, the weak, or that which seems like nothing.  Think of a stronger solution always running into the weaker, concentrating the weaker with the stronger. 

And next to love stands anger.  Anger exists as a result of bad love.  Blocking the flow or reversing God’s love so that the weak dilutes the strong. What do you reckon will happen when God’s church dilutes his holiness and in the process makes God impure and impotent?  God doesn’t let it happen and he gets angry.  If he did allow it he fails to be God and cannot be the love he claims to be in his word. God’s anger and love stand together against our reversing flow of impurity.

In this light we see how we add to the diluting and destruction of our world, especially a world that needs healing and a weak community that needs the concentration of God’s love to reverse the climate change within us and around us.

In the days of John the Baptist, people were waiting for God to act.  He opposed the political incorrectness of the day and he wasn’t found to be “keeping up appearances”, pleasing the masses!

Yet we find the masses coming to John.  But for what?  To repent, to confess their sin and to be baptised in preparation for the coming of their Saviour!  John was being the conduit through which God’s call came.  And those who were prepared by John were allowing the strength of God to flow into them and through them to their weakness and the weakness of the world around them.

See the reality found only in the Son of God and his word.  We know Jesus came to the Jordan and was baptised to fulfil all righteousness.  We know Jesus Christ because we have been baptised into him and all righteousness has been fulfilled for us in his death and resurrection.  As God’s people, in 2020, we’re called to be a channel or an open tube of love through which Jesus can flow to the world. 

God has every right in showing us his anger when we fail to be the vessels through which he flows.  Surely God has withdrawn enough in these days for us to get a 20/20 view of our failure, to see like those who heard John the Baptist and responded with a confession of sin.

But Jesus Christ, God the Son, reversed the flow of sin without diluting the love or the anger of God the Father.  He reversed the flow so the flow of love can continue through us to those around us. 

As much as people want us to believe we can, we cannot fix the world.  Only God can.  Yet we can be a part of the healing by allowing God to flow though us as we forgive and proclaim how we have been forgiven and what God has forgiven in each of us.

So see the great love God has for this world and we who live in it. See the arrival of our Saviour, weak and lying in a manger. See him weak and destitute bearing the anger of God on the Cross.  See him reversing the flow of sin and suffering.  See his patience with you so you can be patient with others who cannot see the hope we have despite the dissolution and death of everything and everyone because of sin.

In the first words of Mark’s Gospel account it says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1 ESV)

Jesus’ death and resurrection was the just the beginning.  Today the gospel continues and in the future it will be fulfilled.  Put God’s word under the magnifying glass, in doing so you will not only see your sin but you will magnify God.  See the steadfast love of God in his anger being poured out on his Son in exchange for your sinful hopeless situation. 

Therefore, in Jesus Christ know this: you can do the greater works of believing; these are the mega works Jesus promised to his disciples living in the midst of strife with a 20/20 vision of him. Jesus says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. (John 14:12 ESV)

These mega works are works done as forgiven sinners.  We believe, therefore we speak of the joy of being set free from the reality of our sin, so others might be freed of fear and sin.  We can do this when we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us to Jesus, to feed us with Jesus. To daily reverse the flow and flush the pipes so God’s love of confession and forgiveness can flow from his power into our weakness. Let’s be found doing the greater works of God when Jesus once again arrives at the resurrection of the dead and the final restoration of this world.

Hear the promise of God which was fulfilled in your baptism and will bring you through all fiery trials and temptations. 

The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.  Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness,  waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!  But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. (2 Peter 3:9–13 ESV)

Be found by God doing the mega works of faith, confessing sin, believing and confessing God’s forgiveness. Let the Holy Spirit build in you a hunger for the righteousness that is found only in Jesus Christ.

Amen.

A, Pentecost 10 Proper 14 - Matthew 14:22–33 "Comply and/or Die"

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds.  And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,  but the boat by this time was a long way from the land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them.  And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.  But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear.  But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”  And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus.  But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.”  Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”  And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.  And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” (Matthew 14:22–33 ESV)

Sit up children of God and know that the day of salvation is drawing near despite satan raging against the church in these days. Interpret the times to the glory of God and proclaim life in the midst of pandemic death.

These are testing times.  There is no doubt our world is straining under the pressure of affliction at the moment. However in humanity’s struggle what is overlooked is, “why this has come upon us?”

There has been much busyness by governments around the world to stop the virus; to stop the deathly march of covid-19 and to bolster the economies of countries’ financial hopes.  These are testing times.

But why are we being tested?  Who is testing us?  What in each of us is being tested?

You and I are being tested, the children of God are being tested.  The denominations of Christendom are being tested as the turbid waters of these days churn in waves of pandemic flooding the planet.

Peter and the disciples were being tested too.

Why would Jesus force us to get into a boat and sail to “the other side”?

We are told Jesus set them in the boat and then sent them ahead across the lake while he dismissed the crowd.

You must go, it’s time to leave, the five thousand have been fed, and it’s time to be alone in social isolation.

It’s what one does in isolation that tells what one is really like!  What I do when I am alone, what I think about privately and what I desire in secret reveal what a person “is” in the presence of God.   And this is where the testing reveals the result.

In the last couple of weeks as the threat of a second wave of covid-19 threatens to sweep over us and border restrictions are being strengthened with more police and military personnel I thought to myself the military should have guns and enforce the closures with their weapons.  “Comply or die” I mused in the confusion of fear and self glorification lurking within my human spirit.

Contrary to this Jesus seems to force the disciples to cross the border from stability and food and fellowship with the five thousand into the darkness of isolation and waves of death that well up without notice on the Sea of Galilee.

Galilee was known as Galilee of the nations. Likewise the nations of our planet have suddenly been gathered into its own swirling whirlpool of suffering and testing.  And here Jesus tests by sending his disciples into what appears to be satanic seas and a hellish death.  Rather than “comply or die”, it would have seemed that they must “comply and die”.

In their exhaustion after hours of rowing against the wind and the waves, blisters on their hands, the feed of fish and bread long burnt away in their bellies and aching muscles tired beyond sleep, they believed Jesus had left them in social isolation.

You and I along with the rest of humanity always become zealous in socially isolating ourselves from God.  As individuals, as families, as church, as society and country, a human’s greatest desire is to be free from being the reliant creatures God has made us to be.  Yet now we find ourselves in social isolation; we wanted to be all alone and now we’ve got it! 

What St Paul tells the Corinthians, God calls us to hear!  

God chose things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. (1 Corinthians 1:28 ESV)

Paul also says to the Romans, (God) gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. (Romans 4:17 ESV)

Covid-19 has come from nowhere to everywhere in the blink of an eye.  Covid was nothing to us a year ago and a year later it’s bringing much of our existence to nothing!  On its arrival every god we sought to sustain us is being rendered completely useless and impotent. The human spirit is shaken to its core and it sees itself in the reality of a satanic sea without a saviour.

Then Jesus approaches us in our isolation.  Our reaction is fear.  The “comply or die” judgement we have wished upon others seems to have ensnared us.  We have become slaves to the oars of our own efforts; enslaved to the gods of our social loneliness.  Has our kingdom come?  Are we receiving the wages for what we’ve done?  What will this phantom do who approaches us through the winds and the waves?  We know we have never fully complied.  In our selfish isolation will he make us now die? 

Jesus speaks to us in his Word?  “Sit up child of God!  Take courage children of God. I speak from my Word!  Have I got your attention?  I am your Saviour, do not fear.”  Return! Listen to God’s Word.  Pray for the Holy Spirit; don’t trust your human spirit! 

It’s right here Jesus takes the “comply or die” of the human spirit and turns it on its head.  It’s no longer the snare trapping us in our kingdom of social isolation and fear which waves and churns within.  God is calling from without saying, “Come!”  Step out from your human spirited kingdom into mine.

Jesus’ invitation to Peter was a call to “Comply AND die”.  So Peter steps out of the boat but as soon as he does his human spirit doesn’t want to die and he doubts; he two faces himself!  Trusting not in the face of Jesus rather he once again sees his reflection in his sea of social isolation from Jesus and begins to sink.

The more Peter tries to save himself the more he falls into the deadliness of his situation.  The more I try to comply with my own desires, the more it kills! This not only affects me but all others I have been called to serve.  Not only do I fall into a sea of suffering I pull everyone else in around me too.

But Jesus’ call to “comply and die” is not compliance with the self!  It’s compliance with him and his Word.  Having been tested we realise we’re nothing without him, and the hope we place in ourselves is a dead hope.  But in complying with Jesus we’re called to die and as we do we cry out to our only true hope, “Lord save me!”

Jesus reached out his hand and saved Peter and those within the boat.  They worshipped him as the Son of God.  Jesus was opening their eyes to his kingdom.  Not a kingdom of laws and compliance from death, but rather a kingdom which called them to put to death faith in themselves and trust in the King who saves from death through death.

Our human spirit, governments all around the word, and satan call for compliance OR die.  Fear is not far from us in these times of turbulence on this pandemic planet.  But Jesus has complied and in doing so he also died.  He calls us to comply and die.  Comply with him which frees us to die to self.

Despite our social isolation, when we die to self, when we allow the Holy Spirit to daily drown the human spirit Jesus brings you into compliance with his kingdom.  And this is a good kingdom with a good end.

Just as Jesus said to Peter in the boat, “Take courage, it is I! Come!” Jesus says to you “Behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”(Revelation 22:7 ESV)

As we in the world are tested for Covid-19, God tests his children with his Word saying, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.  Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”  “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”  Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. (Revelation 22:10–14 ESV)

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:17 ESV)

Jesus says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!  The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen. (Revelation 22:20–21 ESV)