Predicitve Text - St Mary's 6th December 2009

Predictive Text - Isaiah 9: 2-7

Good evening. For those of you who don't know me I'm Karen, I'm a youth worker at St Hugh's and a member here at St Mary's. I have to admit right now that I'm not a biblical scholar. I didn't study theology at University. But please don't hold that against me as we begin to explore the Old Testament, what it said about Jesus and how the New Testament looks different in light of Jesus. Also as we approach Christmas how do the biblical text's inform our waiting and anticipation of Jesus coming again.

As I said I'm not a biblical scholar, however that doesn't stop me having a passion for the living word of God and trying to understand our historical context as Christians. I love the Old Testament, about 4 years ago there was some light shed on it for me, I lived in a dark world where I just read the New Testament. I think once it is put into a little bit of context we might start to look at it as a more relevant book to us than once imagined. It is often sold as the book of the Jews, text which has some lovely stories and poems, as well as the record of the judges and kings who ruled over the Jewish nation. If we start from this premise, we miss the point of the Old Testament and we won't get to the heart of what God is saying through the stories, poems and records.

So as with every good story lets start at the beginning. God creates the universe, the earth and Man, and He says “It's good”, then Man messes up big time and gets thrown out of the place where he can be in God's presence constantly. Of course, God is not going to give up that quickly on something he has created, there are various things that happen throughout the Old Testament which show us God's plan for restoring the relationship between God and Us. I'm just going to pick on a few, because if I could show you every one we'd probably be here all night.

The first one we'll look at is the story of Abraham and Isaac. This can be found in Genesis 22. God tests Abraham, who is very old, and asks him to sacrifice his only son. They travel for three days to a place where God had told them to go. Isaac is not stupid, he has a very wise father, recognises the set up for a sacrificial offering and quite rightly asks “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” to which Abraham replies, somewhat cryptically “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son”. At this point, Abraham ties up Isaac and places him on the altar. This is how we often misinterpret the text, there's no elaboration and emotion. You can't imagine for a second that this wasn't done without some sort of a struggle, tears and utter pain on Abraham's part. He had given God years of faithful service and been so obedient, and this is how God repays him? At the very last moment God saves Isaac and a ram is provided to sacrifice instead. And Abraham's fear and obedience are rewarded by a promise from God, his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and sand on the beach.

The parallels between this story and Jesus dying on the cross are plain to see, especially when they are laid side by side. We often teach Old Testament as just a story to interest young children, or as a story for the Jewish people, but the meaning for us today is clear. John 3:16 reflects this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son”. Isaac was given out of choice and obedience. Jesus was given out of choice and love for us that we might live and have eternal life. We begin to see God's salvation plan unfolding before our eyes with massive hints towards what will happen.

Another person who's life can be seen as a parallel for the life of Jesus is David, the shepherd boy born in Bethlehem and chosen as King even though he's the runt of the family. David defeated giants and won many wars and for all intents and purposes was a good king. The Jewish people expected their Messiah to resemble David. Well, we know now that he didn't, at least not in the way they expected. Jesus quoted David's Psalms several times throughout his ministry, Jesus knew his scriptures so well, they were woven into everyday speech. Again, when stories from the Old Testament and New Testament are laid side by side, we see things we may never have seen reading the stories separately.

In Jesus birth, life, death and resurrection he fulfils over 300 Old Testament prophecies. I choose one Isaiah passage because it's one of the verses used during advent. Verses 6-7 are used during this time of advent to show that Jesus is King over all and that for hundreds of years the Jews were waiting for someone to come and sit on the throne in Jerusalem and rule as a proper king should. This is one prediction they missed the point about. It's almost like when you get a text message from some one who has used predictive text, but they've forgotten to switch the word. I'm sure we each have a little bug bears with predictive text on a mobile phone. For me it's the shortening of “I have” I get “H've” every single time and it drive me up the wall. And believe me I've tried to teach my phone the right letters. If you know how to use predictive text it makes life easier and faster, if you don't it can be the most confusing and frustrating thing you've ever come across!

We find the same problem with the Bible, if we know how to use it and can begin to link all the pieces together we start to see with clarity and understanding of the wider picture, but if we miss a verse, or spell something wrong then we will struggle greatly and can change the meaning of the passage. A great way to do this is to grab a bible overview book that's really easy to read. I'm currently reading BOOK!

Back to the Isaiah passage, the Jews went down the line of the great kings and saw their Messiah as someone who would fit into their picture, but we know that's not the case. Jesus flipped the world on it's head, just by being born. There was nothing majestic about his birth, the first people to see him were the shepherds who spent their time away from any other human beings, they may well have been viewed as outcasts, not the kind of people you'd expect to be in the presence of a King.

This is not the only prophecy declaring the majesty of Jesus Daniel 7:13-14 and Zechariah 9:9, and there are the other prophets who told about the kind of king and person Jesus would be. So as the Jewish people miss the arrival of the coming King, everything for then on is a struggle. They've painted a wrong picture.

So here we see all the Old Testament points towards the coming of Jesus and the New Testament charts the life of Jesus, his death and resurrection, the restoring of God and Man into relationship again, and we have to live in the light.

Still today we get the interpretation of the text wrong. We take things said and done out of context and place them into our context where they can be more harmful than helpful. I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else. I was teaching the other day on 1 Timothy 4:12, which says “don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example to other believers in speech, in love, in life, in faith and in purity”. This verse has been underlined in my Bible for ages, but I'd only learnt the first part! How different does this whole verse sound, when you know that the example you set comes from Jesus, but also has wider implications for all the believers you come across. It's important for us to look at a verse in it's context, looking at who wrote it and who it was written for, and even the most basic knowledge can begin to help you see a bigger and clearer picture.

So I urge you to look deeper into the Bible this advent, as we await Jesus coming, we need to keep the main thing the main thing. We go back to John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not die but have eternal life” If we start from that point, we can't go far wrong. We need to take the bible as a whole book, as we apply it to our lives. We do love predicting stuff, whether it's Strictly, Xfactor or the Christmas number one. Lets not let our love of predicting things cloud our view of the Bible.

We know for certain that Jesus is coming! If we spend all our time trying to predict his return, we might miss it, just like some of the Jews did the first time around!

Disney's Enchanted/Love/1 John 4:7-12 - 14th December 2008, St Mary's Luton

Disney's Enchanted is billed as a modern day fairy tale. We meet Giselle in her homeland of Andalasia, she's your typical Disney princess-to-be waiting for her Prince to come. The only problem is her prince has an evil step-mother called Queen Narissa, who has been distracting him with Troll capturing duties for the last few years. Finally they meet, Giselle falls, having been inches from the trolls grasp, into Prince Edwards lap. And he declares “We shall be married in the morning!”. Of course Queen Narissa has something up her sleeve to stop that, and pushes Giselle, in full wedding attire, down a well. When Giselle lands she finds herself in Times Square, New York. There she falls on Robert and his daughter Morgan. In this clip we see Robert and Giselle talking about their opposite realities.

CLIP 41:25-50:10

Now I know I'm exactly two months early for St Valentines day, but tonight I wanted to talk about Love. Disney knows a lot about love, the corporation seems to have a monopoly on the romanticised version of Love. Pretty much every Disney character you come across is in love, whether its with someone who loves them back, or something unrequited, or just in love with themselves. They all manage to find themselves in Love. Fortunately for us tonight, Enchanted, as modern day as it seems to be, still has a hint of the classic love story, from the days of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Boy meets girl, boy helps girl, boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after.

Love in this sense is lovely, it's nice, its possibly a little bit sacrificial, one of the themes in this movie tells us, True Love's Kiss will conquer all. Nothing can take away from the power of True Love's Kiss, not even a last minute ploy by evil. According to legend “True Love's Kiss” only needs to happen once and then we've found our true love, the one.

Before we go too far into all this lovey-dovey stuff, I feel I have to mention the fact that Enchanted has it's own cynical character. Robert doesn't believe in romantic love, he's not at all spontaneous and is quite seriously dismisses Giselle at the beginning of our clip when he thinks her approach has lost him a massive amount of money. Love, of course, isn't just for girlie girls and it's not for the faint at heart either. If you are cynical about Love, I pray that God will start to show you something of what He knows of Love.

How do we know that He loves Us? We're going to hear our Bible reading now.

Bible Passage: 1 John 4:7-12

To echo a brilliant song, how do I know He loves me? This passage says that “God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him”. That's the good news, that's the gospel. How do I know that God loves me? He sent his son, to die on a cross to save my life, but not just my life, my family's and my friends. Lillie talked last week about how we personalise our gospel, but we have to remember that God sent his only son so that “whoever believes in him will not die, but have eternal life”. Maybe the cross is your True Love's Kiss when it comes to God, maybe you have found your one.

That's great and all, but I think there's more. Look around at creation, God created a fairytale to begin with, and he asked who is going to appreciate my creation? So he created man, someone in his own image. Don't you think it's funny that we create something and then invite some one similar to us to enjoy our creation too! He had created perfection in the Garden of Eden, a fairytale land. We have to have got this idea of perfection from some where, what about the ultimate perfectionist God? Everything in the garden of Eden worked in balance, just like a fairytale. I was travelling home from the Youthwork Conference with Gill and we were talking about the sunset, something that still happens every single day. It was beautiful. I think we can see God's love through creation. The gospel is a show of God's love for us, it's one symbol. But we are constantly reminded of everything he's done for us in creating earth. We should be looking for God's love in the places which we least expect it. Is that your True Love's Kiss, this are just two examples, there are many more. How does your God show that he loves you? As the song says “He'll find his own way to tell you with the little things he'll do”. That's how you'll know, he's your love.

If you are cynical about Love, I pray that God will show you His love in the little ways. You have to allow God to show you his love.

Another line in the song is “don't treat her like a mind reader”. I think we can do this to God some times, though for our own benefit I think we need to tell God how much we love him and to show our love as well. We often come before God knowing that he knows our inmost being, but by speaking those feelings out we can start to have a conversation with God about how we are doing and how we are being.

So how do we show God that we love him? An author called Gary Chapman writes about the way in which humans show love to one another. These are known as our Love Languages. And there are five. There is Words of Affirmation, Gifts, Acts of Service, Quality Time and Physical Touch. The idea of Chapman's book is that you identify your own love language and the ones of those around you. We can experience love in each of the ways, but we all have a primary love language. At the Youthwork Conference retreat day we used the image of a tree to help us reflect. We, of course, began with the roots. As we were sitting at dinner one person said 'I don't really understand the roots thing, it wasn't explained very well' We had been asked what nourishes us. I rephrased it as, 'what are the things in your week which you cannot go with out?' This helped him a little bit, and then he got out his knitting. How do you answer this question? If you are having a bad week, what have you missed out on? This should give you a hint as to what your love language is.

These love languages translate when talking about our relationship with God. Jesus says in Matthew 25 “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me” The doing in this passage is all acts of service. Feeding the hungry and looking after the sick. I think this would apply to all of the love languages, we show our love for God in the way we treat others. We speak our own love language a lot, but we don't speak other's naturally. To help others feel loved we need to show them love in the way they need to be loved. This is how we show our love for God.

So there are now only 11 days till Christmas. So how do we show our love to others because God love us. Do we take time writing our Christmas cards and letter with full of encouraging words to the recipient, rather than just telling them about our year. Do we send a little gift to every one on our street, or do we buy an ethical gift. Do we open up our home, or work over Christmas without grumbling. Do we just demand people time, time for them to get away, have a cup of tea. What can we do to best show our love over Christmas?

If you are cynical about love, maybe you haven't discovered how you give and receive love.

How do we know that God loves us? Creation, the Cross, the bible. God shows us his love in many ways. He'll show you in the little ways. And he loves us each in a unique way, tailored just for us.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

How do we share our love at Christmas? We do the things which God has asked us to do, we don't hide away, we share the story of the greatest love of all. And we let our light shine.