I'm not the world’s greatest when it comes to computer games. When the kids are blasting their way to the end, I'm still struggling away on level one. We used to have a game on our old computer based on the Disney film The Lion King. The beginning was real cute. Just before the game started,
one of the characters from the film, Timone, came on screen and said "It Starts."
Today is the first Sunday of Lent. We are
on the road to Easter. Over the next several Sundays we will be confronted by
a number of passages that call us to travel with Christ. We start here with a
passage that speaks of Jesus beginning His mission in Galilee. He is baptized. He is empowered by the Spirit. He is declared by a voice from heaven to be the Son of God. He
faces temptation in the wilderness and beats it. That was the preparation. Now the real business gets under way. "It
starts."
(Mark 1:14-15) “Now after John was delivered up, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe in the gospel.”
In this verse we see that “It Starts”…
·
With a Challenge. “Now after
John was delivered up.” There are challenges that we must face.
·
At the Chosen Time. “The time is fulfilled, and
the kingdom of God is at hand.” Now is the time for us to receive and declare the Good News.
·
With a Choice. “Repent ye,
and believe in the gospel.” We are invited to say “Yes”
to the message of Jesus Christ.
The Challenge
It starts with a challenge. The journey will be a hard one.
It will involve struggle and pain, opposition and death, but it will lead to a glorious resurrection morning. The journey begins "After John was arrested."
John was a family friend of Jesus.
He was someone that Jesus had high regard for, whom he called the "Elijah" of God sent to prepare the Way. But look where it had landed him! Now he was on death row
in the darkness of Herod’s jail.
John’s fate foreshadowed that of Jesus. Jesus
is to preach a similar message to John. A message about repentance and a coming
Kingdom. The sort of message that led John to jail. It would lead Jesus to a cross. It is impossible to know what
was going through the mind of Jesus as He began His ministry, but we do know that as He drew near to his death, He prayed
to His Father that if there were any way that cup could pass from Him, then it would be so.
What should we expect as we walk the path of discipleship?
Blessings, riches, health, and wealth? Is that why the first disciples
left everything to walk with Him? That's not what the bible tells us. "Whoever wants to be my disciple," says Jesus, "Must take up his cross and follow." When He spoke like that a lot
of people weren't interested anymore. They turned back. But that was the terms from the start. That was the challenge
Jesus faced as He began the journey to Easter.
You and I face challenges in our own lives. Mine
are not yours, and yours are not mine, but they are real challenges. Whatever
life may hold in front of us it is not going to be all sweetness and light. If
we are to walk into the future with Christ as our King it will make us opponents of those who don't want the kingdom of God to invade their personal kingdoms.
The church today faces many challenges. Some elements in society are openly hostile to
the Christian message. Others couldn’t care less. We live in a culture that has sold out to materialism and self-indulgence. The church itself often reflects
the values of a compromised world rather than being a radical movement to bring the justice and love of God’s Kingdom
to a hurting world. These are challenging times.
People react to challenges in different ways. Some
take the defeatist point of view. "There is nothing that can be done. We've left it too late. The problems are too big, too complex. Nothing will change, it will only get worse."
Others react with denial. "Problem, what problem? Why do you always look on the dark side? Let's NOT talk about
it." Others simply delay. "Why do
today what you can put off until tomorrow?"
All this is in stark contrast to the way Jesus begins to bring in the Kingdom. He just strolls out into Galilee and says ‘Now
is the time to put things right’. "The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand."
The Chosen Time.
The fulfillment Jesus spoke of was found in His own self.
He was there, and He was then. The Kingdom He came to bring was not far
away. It was (and still is) at hand. It
is nearer than we imagine and closer than we dare believe. He was not only there
and then, He is here and now. The time has come and the Kingdom is still at hand.
We pray every Sunday, "Thy Kingdom come, thy will
be done on the earth as it is in heaven." We recognize that whilst
the Kingdom is near, it is not fully here. It is, as Bob Dylan called one of
his albums, a ‘Slow train coming’. Slow, not in the sense of being
ponderous or hesitant, but slow in the sense of plowing purposefully onwards, unhindered by people’s plans.
You can interpret the word near in different ways. If you nearly pass an examination it means you failed it. If
you are driving on the road and you swerve to avoid something, then you nearly hit it (although you actually missed it). If you think, as I sometimes do, of family that are a long way off, you may describe
them as being near to your heart, even though they are actually thousands of miles away.
When the scriptures speak of the Kingdom they do so with this element of ambiguity. Yes the Kingdom has come, in Jesus Christ. No it has not yet fully arrived. It is near. It is at hand.
Jesus begins His ministry with the message that the power of God is available to those who open themselves to the Kingdom
and its way of loving service.
Do you see? The Kingdom is not a static place. It's a movement. It's a happening. Right now you are either going with its flow or you're out of it. It's either moving you or you are digging in your heels and singing "We shall not be moved." It's either changing you or you're still the same old unredeemed miserable self that the Devil would be
proud to have as a friend.
Getting back to my Lion King computer game when Timone came on the screen and raised
his hands to say "It starts", you either got twiddling away on those keys or you lost your life and you were out of energy,
and you stayed on the same level and then it was ‘Game Over’. Jesus
walks into Galilee announcing that the time is now to face the challenges of the gospel.
It starts.
And as it starts there are choices we have to make. "Repent
ye, and believe in the gospel."
The Choices We Have to Make.
The gospel challenges every part of our lives, all that we are doing and all that we are. To be a disciple does not involve defeat, denial, or delay but does demand decision.
The time is right. But, right for
what? What exactly are we supposed to be about?
Jesus says, "Repent… and Believe…”
Repenting is not just saying sorry. As we
were reflecting during our Ash Wednesday service, saying sorry isn't enough. What
we need to do is rebuild our fragmented relationship with God and in the process rebuild our relationship to His world and
our relationships with each other.
To repent means to actively do something about the things we're sorry about. We don't repent of our sins by going about in sackcloth and ashes telling everybody what awful people we
are and how miserable our disobedience to the will of God has made us. That's
not repentance. That's self-indulgence or self-pity.
In the Old Testament, Old Noah, when he learnt of the flood that was coming, didn't start
saying "Oh, no it's raining. I'm going to get wet and drown." He set about building
the boat – Chopping down trees, hammering them together, stocking up with resources, instructing his family on how to
deal with things. A lot of those around him thought he'd lost his mind, but who
cares what they thought! They weren't the ones who knew the kingdom was near. They weren't the ones who saw the rainbow. They
weren't the ones who knew the power of the covenant.
We are the people of the New Covenant. We don't look to a rainbow but to a cross and an
empty tomb. And as we do so, we are changed.
We see what sin is capable of in the crucifixion of our Lord. We awaken
to the possibilities of grace as we gaze at the empty tomb and hear the words of our Risen Lord through His Spirit’s
voice in our hearts.
Repentance involves choice. Do we choose to
spend the time listening for the voice of the Lord amongst the many other voices that call us to follow them? When we hear His words, do we choose to follow? All the time
we have to make choices. Repentance is closely related to belief. Jesus says, "Repent
and believe." Believe, not just in anything, but believe in the gospel, believe
in the good news. Believe that the Kingdom is near.
Believing is saying Yes, God has revealed His
love to us in the life of His Son Jesus Christ. Saying Yes, He died for our sins that God’s love may permeate our lives.
Saying Yes, He was raised to life on Easter morning. Saying Yes, His Spirit came in power on Pentecost morning. Saying Yes, His love can transform my life
on this Sunday morning in the year of our Lord, Two thousand and six!
Yes, He can provide me with the grace and resources I will need to see me through this
coming week. Yes, He can use a life as insignificant as mine to be a channel for
His love. Yes, the things I do and
say in the coming days will matter to Him (And because they matter to Him will have an eternal value!).
Yes, because He is a God of all hope, I will have hope in my heart; because He is a God of Peace, I will seek
to be a Peacemaker; because He is a God of love I know I am loved by Him and so will seek to love others.
To believe is to say Yes to the good, wonderful,
amazingly beautiful, awe inspiring, death defying, enabling, transforming, renewing, life changing, love bringing, good news
of the Gospel.
Say yes to that, and "It starts!" We are on the Easter Road. To use computer game terminology,
when we've battled through the levels, cracked all the codes, collected all we need for our travels, and the screen lights
up with the message "Well Done, Game over," we'll be able to say, "Thank God, life is not a game. All the world is not a stage, and we are not simply players."
We are God’s children whom God loved enough to send His Son to die upon a cross for;
God’s children who though sometimes defeated will be raised up; God’s children over whom God rejoices and whom
He longs to have a deeper relationship with in this life and the next. We declare on this first Sunday of Lent as we journey
towards Easter, “It Starts.”
May it start in all of our hearts!
Rev. Adrian J. Pratt
