Sunday Service 3rd November
Touched by the past
3/11/24
Call to worship
Hymn 146(JP): Just as I am
Time for all
Hymn 54(JP): God forgave my sin
Reading: Hebrews 12: 1-2, Hebrews 11: 29-40 Gil
Prayer
Hymn 743: Behold what witnesses unseen
Sermon
Prayer
Hymn 519: Love Divine
Benediction
Welcome to our meditation for 3rd of November
Over the last few weeks we have been thinking of past Biblical heroes and how they could help us in our spiritual journey today.
We carry on with that theme today...after our reading from Gil.
Sermon
If only we would be like them, if only we could be like them...those heroes of the past, those Biblical heroes that did amazing things.
God worked through them.
God did wonderful things through them.
But God couldn’t do anything like that with us.
Not in our wee place, not with people as insignificant as us.
I wonder.
I wonder if that was the message that the writer intended to send out to us...I suspect not.
I suspect the writer of Hebrews wasn’t trying to guilt us into work.
‘Those people in the past did wonderful work, and now you are letting them down by letting it all go to pot.’
I was fortunate to be the minister of Castlemilk West when they celebrated their 40th anniversary.
And at that point all the previous ministers were still alive.
So we invited them all back to give a sermon.
Now I’ll be honest...the reason we did that was at the thirtieth anniversary they had had a big meal and before the meal they were going to allow the three ministers that existed at that point to give a five minute talk...basically telling people how wonderful it was, or had been, to be their minister.
But the first minister felt that five minutes for him was a disgrace as without him there would have been no church, so he spoke for 15 minutes...telling everyone that if it wasn’t for him and his time there then there wouldn’t be a church now.
So the second minister, who followed, felt that he deserved as much time as the first minister because he had to fix all the mistakes of the first minister, so he spoke for 20 minutes...telling everyone how big the church had become in his time....not like what the church was now.
Then the present minister at that point felt that he had all the mistakes of the first two ministers to sort out so he took half an hour to basically tell everyone how wonderful the church was now and that it was better now than it had been in the past.
So instead of 15 minutes between them they talked for over an hour and the meal that had been cooking for all that extra time, the meal that all the ordinary folk were really there for, was overcooked and not as good as it could have been.
And they were determined not to go through that again.
So instead we gave all the past ministers their own Sunday slot, and it meant that I had three weeks off so I wasn’t complaining.
What was strange was how the first two ministers basically gave us a talk like I earlier explained.
‘We were better in those days, the church was better in the past. You have let the faith down because you are not as strong now as what we were then. You need to get off your backside and work. We are so disappointed in you.’
I felt then that their sermons had a lot more to do with the egos of the past ministers than it did helping us in our problems of today.
And I don’t think that was the intention of the writer of the Book of Hebrews.
The writer of Hebrews has so little an ego that we don’t even know who wrote the book.
Although we may read this list of folk and think to ourselves,
‘They were so much better than we were.’ I don’t think that was the intention of the writer.
He felt his role was to encourage a church that was already struggling, already felt they weren’t good enough. The writer knew that they didn’t need someone telling them that other folk could have done it better, they already felt that.
What they needed was someone giving them hope that they could overcome their struggles...and I think that is what he was trying to tell them.
I said the first two ministers of Castlemilk berated the church for not being as strong as it was in their day.
The third minister was very different.
He came along and gave a message that no one expected.
He told them that the world they were facing was so much harder than the world that previous ministers, including himself, had had.
When the first ministers started in Castlemilk there was over 45,000 folk and no shops.
There was nothing in Castlemilk; no swimming baths, no cinemas, no gym and no transport after 7.30pm at night.
There was nothing in Castlemilk for anyone to do.
This was in a time when there was 1, maybe 2, channels on the TV...if you had a TV.
So if a church put on a bingo tea hundreds of people would go to it because there was nothing else.
If the church had put on a show for talented cats probably hundred s of people would have come to that just to break the monotony.
But...the minister said...the world was very different...it was harder.
And our job wasn’t to be better than the church of the past,
our job was to be faithful when the world got harder, not to give up, but to rely on God’s strength to help; us.
I think that was the message of the writer of Hebrews as well.
He wasn’t asking us to look at the spiritual heroes of the past and ask us, ‘Why aren’t you as good as them?’
He was asking us to look at the heroes of the past and say, ‘You are just like them, and as God was with them in the past, so he will help you here today.’
Some basic facts we forget.
We look at the best that they did, and compare their best with our normal and say that we don’t match up to them.
But if we actually look at their history we see that they were struggling most of the time too.
The Israelites...cross the Red Sea in faith...but also complained for 40 years that they wanted to go back to Egypt.
Gideon...became a great tactician for God and helped them fight the Midianites...but when the angel came to him he didn’t want to do anything. This was too big a problem for him...in fact he talked about the good old days when God helped his people, not like his today when they were struggling and God seemed far away.
Barak...Barak refused to do anything unless someone was with him because he was too scared to take responsibility.
Samson...Samson was a drunk, a womaniser and a bully who failed to listen to God at any time until he was broken by torture and suddenly realised he had wasted his life.
Jephthah...Jephthah lived with the stigma of being borne out of wedlock to a prostitute and was rejected by all his father’s family. He was used by the Israelites because they thought of him and his men as expendable.
David...don’t get me started on David and all his flaws.
Suffice to say that David was the best king that the Israelites had...but the prophets felt that the Israelites should never have had any kings, that God should have been their king. So David was the best of a bad bunch, but he was still part of a bad bunch.
And these are the heroes...
And I think that was the message that the writer of Hebrews wanted to give us.
First of all that our life is tough, but so was theirs.
Each generation has its own troubles to face.
We may have different troubles, but we still have troubles.
No generation has it easy.
We may look back at the past when we felt that the church had it easier, but they had their own problems, and they struggled with them, just as we struggle with ours.
Thomson Revel was the minister of St James in Pollock in the 1970’s.
He had numbers going to that church that we would be so envious of today.
I knew Thomson; I knew some of the struggles that he went through.
That the people of the church looked past him to the good old days of the church and complained that his church wasn’t as good.
Thomson was also the only person in his street with a car and an indoor phone.
So the number of times he would be woken up in the night asking if he could take someone to the hospital or use his phone to call the police.
Ministers today would rarely complain about that.
But they complain that they are competing with every other minister, and church, in the world; that their congregations watch a brilliant service in Manila, or in Chicago, or in Brasilia and ask why their service couldn’t have been as inspirational as that.
We did some research in who watched our service online...and we discovered that for some weird reason there is a wee cohort of people in Milan that watch our children’s addresses.
I now feel guilty that there is some wee priest in Milan doing his best and his congregation are moaning why they can’t have Eyeball the Alligator doing their sermons.
Each generation has its problems.
New generations, new problems.
That is one of the points the writer of Hebrews wants to make.
Don’t compare yourself with the past; it’s not a fair comparison.
But the other point the writer is trying to make is just as important.
The world may have changed, but God hasn’t changed.
God was with all those flawed people as they tried their best to follow his path.
And God is with us, flawed people, as we try our best to follow his path.
And you know what; even more encouraging is this....
Some of those heroes of the past didn’t even try their best.
Some of those heroes of the past gave up,
or did their own thing,
or even went against what God would have wanted them to do...
but when they realised their stupidity,
when they realised their mistakes, and they turned to God,
God was there beside them, waiting to help them.
He had always been beside them, waiting to help them.
And that is the same for us.
When we have given up,
when we have been half-hearted,
when we have been indifferent,
when we have been scared,
when we were just so tired that we just couldn’t be bothered any more...
God has stuck beside us,
waiting lovingly for the moment that we realise we need him,
and he has patiently smiled as we returned to his care.
That is the message of hope that the writer of Hebrews has wanted to give us.
That is the message of hope we need to hear and believe in.
And I think that is the message of hope we need to give to others.
Flawed as we are...God is still there for us.
Flawed as others are, God is patiently waiting for them.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
We sometimes see the heroes of faith as driven, committed, courageous.
That they have the knack of doing the right thing, in the right place, in the right way.
That the pick the right moment and make such a difference.
And often that doesn’t seem like us.
We want you to make us bold that we might act—
yet not too confident as to think we can do it all ourselves, in our own strength.
We want you to make us willing that we might put ourselves forward—
yet not in a way as to be offensive and arrogant to others.
We want to be sure of who we are, what we believe—
yet not in a way that closes us to new understanding and denies the possibility of change and growth within ourselves.
If anything, we want to be open to your promptings...
ready to use words and actions that can influence others and bring change for others, change that helps others have a better life, a more compassionate life.
Help us o have enough courage that we can talk gently about what we believe in,
and that our actions are reflective of a heart of caring love rather than judgement.
Help us to be careful as we seek the right things,
that we seek to create a community of care,
that we seek to influence the world in whatever way we can;
our families, our neighbours, our friends, the strangers we bump into,
to be open to the possibility of a community of faith that are invested to share your work in the world.
This we ask in Jesus name
Amen.
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