Sermon: What's God About? Importance of Seeing the Big Picture

Date Preached: Sunday 25th July 2010

Bible Reference: Luke Chapter 11 verses 1-13

I’ve never been a great watcher of soaps – even though I had a tutor up in Oxford (Michael Green) who would recommend them to his students going on Christian missions – because, he said, that’s what people would probably be talking about. He probably had a point. But I sit there dutifully for a while, completely lost as far as the following the story is concerned, because I only see bits, now and then. And I’m sure it drives Sue bonkers when I always have to ask what’s going on. And it’s so easy to get the wrong end of the stick dipping in and out, like I tend to do.

So what did you make of that ‘bit’ from Genesis? It’s easy to understand it as though Abraham is the generous and merciful one, bargaining and pleading with God to calm him down and getting him to agree to keep the killing to a minimum. “See”, people will say, “that God of the Old Testament is a vengeful, hateful being.” But that’s not what the story is about at all. In the verses immediately preceding the ‘bit’ we get in our reading God is debating about whether or not to let Abraham in on his plan – which isn’t about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (at all), but about his larger plan – about how the powerful exploit the weak, about making Abraham a blessing to all the nations – about a plan to rescue all of us that reaches its fulfilment in Jesus.

So what’s going on in the conversation between Abraham and God is a lesson from a master teacher. God doesn’t tell Abraham the plan, but does allow him to discover it, allowing him to set the pace as he comes to realize how much it matters. What we’re witnessing is a deepening of their relationship – because Abraham discovers that as his own instinct for justice and mercy increases, he finds it matched by God’s at every turn. There’s a kind of teasing pleasure in God’s attitude as he dares Abraham to test him further and further, waiting for the penny to drop – waiting for Abraham to realize that what he’s asking for is what God already wants – indeed was intending all along. Ah the value of learning something about the bigger picture – and the motivation behind something that at first glance seems quite strange!!

And its Jane Williams’ view that the same kind of learning about the nature of God is going on in Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew has this as part of a discourse on hypocrisy and forgiveness in the Sermon on the Mount. But Luke uses it to talk more generally about prayer. The disciples no doubt have watched and heard Jesus praying, many times, and there’s something about his relationship with God that attracts them and makes them want to learn. Jesus’ response to their request to teach them how to pray is quite brief and very clear – he simply teaches them a prayer. He doesn’t teach them about the importance of stillness, or correct posture, or centring the mind – helpful though those things are. Jesus simply teaches them to talk to God: to bring the whole muddle of our lives to him, the sublime and the mundane – so in one breath we can ask for the coming of the kingdom and our daily bread.

It’s in talking to God and listening to what he says, that we get to understand what he’s about – just like in any relationship - you have to spend time with someone to get to know them. Abraham gets to learn that God is indeed a just judge – not just as a philosophical idea or concept, but in his own experience – and it changes him.

So when we pray for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer, we learn not only that forgiveness matters to God, but that it also matters to us, and that we need to share it with each other.

In the gospel reading, Jesus tells the funny story of the irritating friend to get the disciples to see that prayer is something basic - like breathing, part of our day-to-day life – not a thing that’s somehow shut up in a small box to brought out on Sundays, or when we have our backs against the wall and feel desperate for help. Here’s what Jane Williams says as she comments on this passage:

Praying is not something carefully sanitized, so that we bring to God only what we know he will like. Jesus is encouraging his disciples to bombard God, to tell him everything, to talk to him constantly, to involve him in every part of their lives…And as you pester, as Abraham did, as the persistent friend did to the sleepy householder, you will learn more about God, and about yourself in relation to him…You might say the message from all today’s readings is ‘Go direct to God and accept no substitutes.’ It’s so easy to substitute something else for God, often for the very best of motives. We don’t like to show God our incomprehension, or our humour, and so we gladly bring less and less of our real selves to prayer.”  

It’s easy to become distant in any relationship; to get stuck with certain stylized responses to another person – and it’s the same if our prayers are always formulaic because it probably means we know less and less about God and how to recognize him. In fact if we’re not spending time getting to know him it’s possible to construct all sorts of strange ideas about him – like the parishioner who after reading ‘the da Vinci code’ said to her vicar, a good friend of mine – “well how about that, I didn’t know Jesus was married” (duh!!).

Notice that Abraham had the courage to go straight to God and question him, and – yes - Jesus encourages us to do the same. God’s big enough to handle our questions. So in Colossians Paul is reminding the Christians to go direct to Christ, and not let anything else, however good it may seem, get in the way.

As we live out our purpose as a church in this world, we quickly realize that growing as Christians is a process. We can become Christians in an instant when we receive Jesus into our lives as our Saviour and Lord, but it takes a lifetime to work out what it means to live out our faith. So our focus should not just be on ‘knowing’ but on ‘growing’ & discovering stuff). The Bible always links information with a change of life - ­ we’re to become what we’ve begun.

So the truth of the gospel isn’t just a conceptual thing - belief always needs to lead to action – and changed conduct – which is why Jesus railed at the religious leaders of his time because there wasn’t much evidence of the grace and love of God we’ve been talking about these past weeks in stories like the Good Samaritan. What seemed more important to the religious folks of the time was how they appeared to others – and how they protected their own reputation in other people’s eyes, rather than becoming like Jesus (they call it ‘impression management’ these days).

Faith that doesn’t have any impact on one’s behaviour isn’t really true faith at all. Indeed the book of James says it clearly in chapter 2:17 “…Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”

If we’re feeding and growing as a Church we’re less likely to be led astray – or duped by false ideas - because there are a lot of them still around. It still astounds me that there are some folks who’ve been going to church faithfully for years – and then when something like the Da Vinci Code comes around – (entertaining, but errant nonsense) they don’t seem to know how to combat it. So let’s get serious about our faith shall we? And if there are questions that have been hanging around for you, or you’d appreciate someone to pray with you - come and ask, or join the bible study that’ll be starting again in September. Let’s commit ourselves to growing together this next year.

The Apostle Paul as he ministers to these little churches like the one in Colossi has an unswerving confidence in his conviction that it is Jesus the Christ who occupied the centre of creation and salvation - and is utterly without equal; that the Christian life isn’t about trying to be good, or follow the rules, but about the amazing grace of God that can change us if we let it. And if you read his letters he doesn’t argue this from the arrogance of his intellect, but (as Jane Williams says) from “a rooted humility” – a servant heart – that, like that of his Lord “is warmly and wonderfully kind”. Our Lord and God is so wonderfully patient with us – and wants us to grow strong in him…. Amen.