Thinking the unthinkable.
Changing the unchangeable.
An impossible dream!
Or is it?
At Hy-Way on Wednesday I found myself
sharing my recollections of teachers who had made a difference in my life. I think back and know how much I owe to
inspirational teachers. I have many
vivid memories of school days.
Some are quite vivid.
And still disturbing.
The kind of memories that send a shiver
down your spine.
I would be ten. I can picture myself in the playground at Mayflower Junior
School in Leicester
when the conversation was of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I would have been 9 at the time. We seemed to be standing on the brink of a
third world war and this time it would be nuclear. A moment’s memory.
Eight years later I found myself in the
sixth form – I can picture it now walking home along the London Road , past Duke’s Drive, late in
the evening after a showing of a film banned from broadcast on the BBC – the
War Game. We lived in the shadow of the
nuclear bomb.
To end the cold was thinking the unthinkable,
it would involve changing the unchangeable.
Then the Berlin Wall came down. And the unthinkable happened, the unchangeable changed.
The death of Basil D’Olivera recently
brought back to me memories of the Anti-apartheid campaign, stop the seventies
tour in the wake of the D’olivera affair when the apartheid regime in South Africa insisted D’olivera be dropped from
the England side.
The end of apartheid was thinking the
unthinkable, changing the unchangeable.
Then that moment when Nelson Mandela walked
free. And the day of the first elections
in South Africa . The unthinkable was happening before our very
eyes, the unchangeable was changing before our very eyes.
Jesus was in the business of raising our
horizons, of getting us to think the unthinkable and change the unchangeable.
And the world he lived in was just as
troublesome. The massive thing for Jesus
and his people was the massive might of the Roman Empire
– the power that ground down the Jewish people and so many peoples the world over.
How the people longed for the Kingdom of God to break in. For the kingdom of heaven to come. For God’s will to be done on earth as in
heaven. But that was to think the
unthinkable it would involve changing the unchangeable and that was not happen.
Yet, that was the message of Jesus.
The kingdom of God
has come near – repent and believe the Good News.
Tough.
Because it was not very evident.
That’s the message that runs through the
Gospel accounts of Jesus.
By Luke 11 Jesus is very much on the road
to Jerusalem . As he travels sharing that good news in word
and deed he prays. He teaches his
disciples about prayer.
Your kingdom come – that’s the prayer –
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Not possible. Unthinkable.
Keep on prayer he says – a story of the friend at midnight who keeps on
asking, and then the wonderful rhythms
Ask and it will be given you
Seek and you will find.
Knock and the door will be opened for you.
Ask seek knock.
Keep at it.
And it is a struggle.
Jesus recognises the problem. It seems as if people are in thrall to powers
that are beyond their control. There is
a very real sense of evil around. And that gets a hold of people.
Jesus in the business of breaking the power
of the demons that get a hold of people.
When you read about demons, Beelzebul, the
ruler of the demons. Don’t think
personal devils, don’t think people who now we would think of as ill.
Instead think people who are trapped by
powers beyond their control that are so destructive it seems unthinkable that
their power could ever be broken.
And Jesus confronts those powers, jesus
overcomes those powers. And the message
of Jesus breaks even those unbreakable bonds.
There’s talk here of breaking the bonds of
the strong man. Setting people free.
Does Jesus have in mind here the powers
that hold people down. There’s no other
way of describing them – they are demonic.
But he breaks those bonds.
Olga was telling me how lovely it was to
receive that long service certificate last week because it was the eleventh
anniversary of her mother’s death.
In some ways that seems like yesterday.
In some ways it seems another age.
As we approached the millennium we had such
high hopes with the ending of the cold war, the ending of apartheid, even the
down-sizing of GCHQ.
Then came 9/11. The Afghan war now in its eleventh year, and
showing little signs of resolution, the Iraq war. The rise in terrorism. All that’s happening to Christians and many
others in Iraq ,
Egypt ,
the middle East. The hope of new-found
freedoms or the opening of Pandora’s box.
The financial crisis.
It feels as we are in the grip of forces
beyond our control.
At the heart of our Christian faith is that
not even the most unthinkable, unchangeable of forces for ill can defeat the
goodness of God. That’s to hold on
to. That’s the conviction.
Jesus drives his point home with two
illustrations to a restless crowd.
It’s not possible to change the situation
the people are in with the Roman powers that be. It’s unthinkable.
Just as he had done in that sermon in the
synagogue of Nazareth ,
so here Jesus turns to two stories from the prophets that tell of Gentiles who
so it would seem could never be changed … yet who are changed.
The first story comes from the former
prophets and is told in I Kings 10 and it is about the Queen of Sheba coming to
Solomon and being changed. The
unthinkable happens.
The second story is much more difficult to
date.
How sad that we trivialise the story of
Jonah to debates about a whale.
AS far as Jesus was concerned the story of
the whale is in many ways incidental to the story of Jonah.
Unique among the prophets in containing a
single story, complete with prayer.
Jonah has a timelessness about it that speaks into any situation when
people are in the grip of monstrous, unshakeable powers.
The monstrous unshakeable power is Nineveh . The story is a larger than life story. Nineveh
is the massive power that is massively destructive. It destroys anything to do with God and God’s
people. And it’s quite understandable
that Jonah flees in the opposite direction.
There are indications that this is a larger
than life story, the like of which Jesus revelled in. Three days in the belly of the biggest fish
the world has ever seen.
Then when Jonah eventually gets to Nineveh it is the biggest
city the world has ever seen. It takes
three days to walk from one side of the city to the other. Think of it. Say four miles an hour, ten
hours of walking each day, that’s 120 miles across from side to side. You are talking a city three times the size
of London . This is a monstrous, larger than life utterly
impossible to destroy city.
And Jonah warns the people of the wrath of
God.
And the story is told wonderfully. The people listen. And they change their ways. And God changes his mind.
And that makes Jonah incensed. He had wanted God to destroy the city –
instead God has mercy on the city of Nineveh .
This is a truly shocking story.
And it is the shocking nature of the story
that Jesus picks up on.
Never mind Solomon and the Queen of Sheba –
in Jesus there was someone far greater than Solomon who could make the unthinkable happen, and
change the unchangeable.
Never mind Jonah and the way the people of
Ninveh changed, in Jesus was one far greater who could change the unchangeable
and make things happen that even to think about was simply unthinkable.
There are powers that be around at all
sorts of level that seem to be unvanquiahable.
We look to the victory of Christ.
Let’s hold on to that.
With that big picture in mind – then we can
do the little things. And each little
thing that is in accord with that big picture will make a difference.
It’s great to see Maurice back in church
after being in hospital. Maurice had
spent the day in hospital watching TV.
The news. And there were pretty
grim things happening. That day it had
been the deaths at a football match in Egypt – horrific in their own right
but somehow symptomatic of the powers that can be unleashed in our dark world.
We sat reflecting on the world and the fact
that we cannot make a difference. But
wait a moment we can make a difference.
Think where you are in that hospital
bed. The hospital system is stretched,
some say almost to breaking point.
Nurses we were hearing this week are worked off their feet. Your attitude with the nurses can make a
difference – it you are awkward that absorbs time from the nurses. If you share a smile with them, help them,
what a difference that makes.
Interesting thoughts to share. The difference each of us can make, no matter
how small the thing we do.
We do it because we are not going to be
defeated by the powers that be for we look to one who wins the victory.
Let’s see that bigger picture and echo the
words of Paul …
in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us. For I
am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor
height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate
us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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