Principles and Practice in the Law - Exodus 20-26 through the eyes of Jesus

It is good to see the way in which churches are coming together at the moment in Cheltenham. Yesterday it was good to join with CCC church in the opening of their new home at the Pavilion in Hatherley. It has been great working with Ali Bates, their minister, whose husband had been minister of what was then the New Life Church, Bill Bates, but who died so sadly at a young age. Ali has been very involved working with churches recently and she quite deliberately made a point of asking me to say prayers for their new church home on behalf of the churches and from Highbury because it was not that long ago that their church broke away from Highbury. Clifford Small felt he carried out a healing ministry. I felt yesterday was an important moment in that healing process.

We had met together with the new Area Dean of Cheltenham Tudor Griffiths who is living round the corner from us on Thursday and reflected on working together as churches. It was good to have input from the new Principal of the Mission College, Redcliffe College in Gloucester. And then we found ourselves reflecting on the importance of building up the churches understanding of and involvement in Christians Against Poverty – maybe a significant response to the needs of the town as they are unfolding at the moment.

Then to go on to the Friday meeting reflecting on what The Big Society means for Cheltenham.

There is something very important for us to share as Christians and I believe we have something to share that is firmly rooted in the Bible …but we need to take care in the way we read our Bible.

Part of that initiative of working more closely together involves sharing in prayers for Cheltenham each day from 12-30 to 12-45. It’s in the oldest place of worship in the town, St Mary’s. On the wall are printed the Ten Commandments.

That’s no bad starting place for the needs of our society.

But we must read with care.

Read on in Exodus and I think three things emerge that we have to offer today. But care is needed in the way we read.

First a set of personal standards – in the ten commandments. Jesus offers us a great summary of them: Love God, love your neighbour.

Next the importance of having a framework for society. Notice what I am saying here. The importance of having a framework. What we go on to read in the next three chapters is a good sample of the kind of laws that were part of the framework for this ancient people.

Some would want to take them to the letter and say this is for today.

I believe we have to recognise the need for a framework – but take care in recognising that Jesus has opened up for us new ways of thinking that take seriously the need for a framework but prompt us to think through what is appropriate in the light of Jesus’ teaching and for us today.

Provision is made for the treatment of slaves – but I passionately as a Christian reject slavery and want to oppose the modern versions of it that are still around, sometimes rather too close to home here in Cheltenham in sex trafficking and the like. Slavery is wrong.

Next come laws about violent acts. Capital punishment – not just for murder but for a host of other things as well, not least cursing your parents.

I passionately oppose capital punishment for that range of things – as a Christian that is not acceptable to me.

Then come laws about the responsibilities of owners of beasts, and laws about repayment. Moral and religious laws follow.

Again they give me a glimpse of an ancient framework of law – but not one for today, something has happened with Chist to make a difference.

In chapter 23 there are more principles about justice and fairness. They ring a bell for me. I find myself saying amen when it says, Do not deny justice to a poor man at his trial.

I find myself as a Christian drawn to that principle of Justice and fairness.

Then comes the notion of the seventh year and the seventh day. A rhythm of rest where debts are written off in a jubilee year, where land lies fallow, where there is a day of rest.

There are principles there that I am drawn to as a Christian and want to affirm.

What’s going on here?

Am I picking and choosing at random in a way that demonstrates a disregard for Scripture?

No, I believe something else is going on. And in these sermons I am wanting to offer grounds for reading in a different way that still does justice to the Bible but sees it through the eyes of Christ.

By chapter 24 we see that this framework is part of a covenant that is sealed between God and his people.

First, there is a set of priniples in the Ten Commandments summarise in 2 that are for today.

Second there is a framework that shows the importance of having a framework of laws for the good of society, but has to be read with care.

The third insight is the need for a sense of something other. A sense of the reality of God.

This is something desperately needed in our day – but in a way that is true to what is described here and yet very different from it.

We begin a wonderful description of what will become the tabernacle. A tent that can travel with a journeying people, where they sense the presence of God with them in a very real way.

It’s where the commandments are to be kept, where sacrifices are to be made, where priests are to serve – and where the bread of the presence is to be kept.

A great deal of time is then spent exploring what this tabernacle means. Much later the tabernacle becomes the model for the temple.

We value the sense of the presence of God that I believe is vital to living in the world. But once again you could accuse me of picking and choosing. While I find the description of the tabernacle a fascinating glimpse of how this ancient people of God sensed the presence of God it’s not how I sense the presence of God.

Three insights – a set of principles for personal living, a framework of law for society, and a way of sensing the presence of God. And yet I appear to be picking and choosing the bits I want to follow.

I maintain that what I am seeking to do is not arbitrary. And to help explain what I mean I want to focus on one thing that held central place in the tabernacle, and interestingly it is something that holds central place for us here tonight as well. And that is bread that is placed on a table.

Bread baked from corn – bread that is the Bread of the Presence.

Inside the back cover of the Bible I took with me to the Holy Land I have a stalk with ears of corn. A modern version of pressing flowers – I put it through a laminator. It is a treasure.

It was wonderful to walk through a grainfield just as Jesus did with his disciples in Matthew 12. Jesus walking through the cornfields – it is a Sabbath – and the disciples do exactly as I was to do a couple of thousand years later. Though when I did it it was not a Sabbath. They began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

Now this is forbidden on a Sabbath elsewhere as that principle of the seventh day of rest is worked out in the Law.

When the Pharisees saw it, they castigated him. “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do n the Sabbath.” It is against the Law, against the Torah, it against these first five books of the Bible to do this on the Sabbath.

What Jesus does is very telling. He tells a story that comes from the next part of the Bible, the prophets. It is almost as if for Jesus that story acts as a commentary on the law. He draws on the story to throw light on what is important for him in the law.

He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests.

Jesus recognises that The Scriptures are not simply black and white statements that as it were stand for all time. He sees in them a process of dialogue and discussion going on. It is as if from one part of the Scripture a discussion is going on.

What’s more he goes on to point out that within the Torah there are different ways of looking at things – and some of the laws regarding what priests can do break other laws about what cannot be done on the Sabbath.

To read the Bible in the spirit that Jesus reads the Bible we must read with wisdom and seek the guiding of the Spirit of Jesus in prayer.

But in this passage in Matthew 12 I believe a principle can be seen that will help us in our reading especially of the Law of the Old Testament.

Jesus goes on to say in verse 6, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.”

What’s important is the presence of God with us. That presence of God is made real in the Tabernacle. Later, all that was said of the tabernacle is said of the Temple. But now something greater than the Temple is here. And that is Christ. It is no longer in a place, no longer in a tabernacle, no longer with all these instructions that the presence of God is made real. But it is where Christ is, there God’s presence is.

In the breaking of bread around a table, in the gathering together in his name, in the giving of food to someone who is hungry, in the giving of water to someone who is thirsty.

For us, it is in Christ that God’s presence is felt.

Then in this passage Jesus offers us something to measure all the detailed framework of law that. For me this is one of those verses that becomes a key to unlock the words of the Old Testament, and the detail of this law.

Again, Jesus draws on the prophets, this time Hosea, to read the Law in that light.

But if you had known what this means, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Ono the one hand the over-riding concern that takes precedence over the detail is God’s desire for mercy and not sacrifice. That’s why through the detail of the details of the law I am on the look out for the principles of justice and mercy that underpin that law. And all of it is under Christ who in saying that he is ‘lord of the Sabbath’ shows that he is lord of the Law.


Principles for living life personally in the ten commandments as summarised by Christ Love God and love your neighbour.

A framework of law built around justice and mercy, always remembering that Christ is lord of the Sabbath, lord of the Torah.

And the presence of God with us made real not in the trappings of the tabernacle, not so much in the bread of the presence, but the presence of God made real for us in Jesus Christ himself.

Exodus and Law Fulfilled in Jesus

In the opening section of the Old Testament there is one more story to tell.

The first five books of the Bible make up the Law, the Torah.

The first 11 chapters of Genesis contain a sequence of larger than life stories that tell of the beginnings of things but speak to the world of today in every generation.

From Genesis 12-50 there is a sequence of true to life stories that help us to understand who we are and how we relate to each other. They tell of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekkah, of Jacob and Rachel, and of Joseph. The last great story of Genesis tells the story of the sons of Jacob and Rahcel, the 12 brothers who become the clan

There is then one more story to tell. It is the story of Moses. Born in troubled times and rescued from Pharaoh’s purge of Hebrew male children, he is brought up in the Egyptian court until he intervenes when a Hebrew slave is beaten to death by an Egyptian guard. Moses fless to the land of Midian where he is welcomed as a refugee and an alien. He settles there and marries and has a son. It is while on the mountain top that he has an experience of God in the burning bush and is given the task by God of leading all God’s people from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land.

Moses is wary of speaking to the people unless he knows the name of God. God responds in that most mysterious of ways and identifies himself as I am who I am, or I will be who I will be, or I am what I am.

With the help of a spokesman, Moses then appeals to Pharaoh. A sequence of 10 disasters wreaks havoc with the region of the Nile where the Hebrew slaves are being abused … until at the very last they mark the lintels of their doors with lamb’s blood and the angel of death passes over.

Pharaoh is persuaded at last and lets God’s people go.

They escape through the Red Sea, and expect to go straight to the promised land.

It is not to be, however, and the people find they face a prolonged period in the hardships of the wilderness. They complain to Moses. And God provides each with their daily needs … and no more.

Still the people are not happy.

They reach Mount Sinai and there Moses encounters the presence of God on the mountain top and receives the Ten Commandments.

From then on the wandering continues and from time to time the people rebel. Set into the framework of the story of Moses and the liberation story of Exodus are law codes that shape individual behaviour and society at large. There are also law codes to do with ritual, worship and holiness.

For the Jewish people Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are the core of their Holy Scriptures. The bulk of the five books are built around Moses and so the Law, the Torah, is associated with Moses.

Each Synagogue would have its scrolls of the Law, the Torah, they would be read each week at the Synagogue.

Jesus was part of the synagoguge in his home town of Nazareth and from the very youngest age read the Torah, and reflected on it. By the age of 30 so steeped was he in the Torah and the Prophets and Writings that he was highly regarded as a Rabbi, able to teach from the Torah in a gathering of the Synagogue.

From the outset of his ministry something very curious happens.

By the time you get to Mark chapter 3 verse 6 still at the beginning of the Gospel you are left in no doubt at all that something very strange is going on. As Jesus speaks and teaches he is highly regarded: but those who are drawn to him recognise that it is ‘a new teaching – with authority!’ (Mark 1:27). He is prepared to touch the one suffering from leprosy, he is prepared to heal on the Sabbath, he is prepared to forgive the sins of the paralysed man. And he was flagrant about it. By the time he heals a man with a withered hand in the synagogue and on the Sabbath Jesus has succeeded in doing the impossible, he has brought together Pharisees and Herodians. The two sets of people could not have been further apart. The Herodians were content to collaborate with the Roman power. The Pharisees on the other hand went in the face of Roman domination and wanted to maintain the identity of the Jewish people by reasserting the purity of the Law.

What Jesus was doing was too much.

And yet it was something of a paradox. For while Jesus was prepared to break the law and engaged in what people recognised as a new teaching with authority, he yet had respect for the Law.

Matthew’s gospel hasn’t covered so much ground before Jesus preaches the first of what is to be come in Matthew a sequence of five great sermons. It is right at the outset in the Sermon on the Mount that he says quite categorically …

‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

What do we make of this curious set of circumstances?

The key to our understanding of this is a key to our understanding as Christians of the Torah and the Books of the Law. It is, it seems to me, vitally important for us to grasp it.

Jesus has come not to abolish but ‘to fulfil’ the Law.

Until heaven and earth pas away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, not one jot or tittle will pass from the law until all is accomplished.

The key to our reading of the Law lies in those two phrases – what does it mean for Jesus to say he has come to ‘fulfil the law’ what does it mean to when he talks about all being accomplished.

In Matthew, Mark and Luke the central point of the Gospel, the turning point, the hinge on which the Gospel story comes in a narrative that is full of mystery, awe and wonder.

Like the sermon on the Mount it happens on a mountain.

It’s 8 days after the moment when Peter has made his confession of faith saying to Jesus You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.

Jesus takes Peter, John and Jams and went up the mountain to pray. And while he was praying

And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him.
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That’s all Matthew and Mark report. But it is tremendously significant. Moses stands for the Law. Elijah is the archetypal Prophet. We will return to this moment and to him when we come to look at the Prophets, the second section of the Hebrew Scriptures we think of as the Old Testament.

It is as if these two figures of the Law and the Prophets who are seen on the Mountain, in the glory that is the shekinah cloud of God’s presence, endorse Jesus.

Jesus has maintained that he has come to fulfil the law and the prophets. This appearance of Moses and Elijah so central to each of the first three Gospels is making an enormous statement. Each of those Gospel writers is convinced. Jesus has fulfilled the law and the prophets – and he has received the endorsement of Moses and Elijah to that end.

Moses and Elijah are talking to Jesus.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to eaves drop on the conversation.

Luke enables us to do just that. Luke tells us what they were talking about.

In practically all the English translations you miss the point of his description of the conversation.

They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Four things are significant in that sentence.

First the word ‘they’. It has to be Moses and it has to be Elijah. They are the embodiment if you like of Law and Prophets. The major part of the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures.

They appeared ‘in glory’. That word ‘glory’ is a major key word. It is the tangible cloud of glory, the shekinah cloud that signifies in so many accounts of mountain-top experiences in the Torah the very presence of God.

They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure.

That’s where our English translations let us down. Luke uses a very specific Greek word. When I read it out you will immediately recognise it. The word translated ‘departure’ is simply the word Exodus.

The second book of the Torah is called Exodus because that is what it is about – the Exodus of the People of Israel from bondage in Egypt to freedom in the promised land. The settlement in the promised land reaches its climax in the establishment of Jerusalem as the city of God.

They appeared in glory and were speaking to him of his Exodus which he was about to ‘accomplish’

The word translated ‘accomplish’ there is the word ‘fulfil’

Jesus was about to accomplish his ‘exodus’ in the very place where the climax of the Exodus story is reached, albeit quite a bit later, in Jerusalem.

As far as Luke was concerned, and for that matter the other Gospel writers too, Jesus had fulfilled, brought to its fulfilment, accomplished, the Law. By the time his death and resurrection were completed a new Exodus had been accomplished.

Something new was here.

Matthew points out echoes of the story of Moses in all sorts of ways, in the birth of Jesus, the slaughter of the innocents and the flight into Egypt. He then structures his Gospel around five sermons of Jesus as if it is a new Torah.

Mark it is who puts the endorsement of Moses and Elijah, Law and Prophets, right at the centre of the Gospel.

Luke sees in Christ the accomplishment of a new Exodus.

And as for John – he sees in Jesus the one who lays claim to the very identify of God disclosed to Jesus when he uses that very phrase of himself, I am …

All four Gospels see in the death and resurrection of Jesus the fulfilment of the Passover. And that is sealed in the institution of communion to take the place of the Passover.

The excitement of all this is that we can treasure the account of Moses and the Exodus and the whole framework of law. But we cannot do that by simply lifting those laws from the Old Tesatment and abiding by them.

Because Jesus has fulfilled that Law, because of that endorsement by Moses, we must take into account the perspective Jesus gives on the law in his teaching.

And that is what we are going to do as we take a look at those law codes that shape individual behaviour and society at large, at the law codes that have to do with ritual, worship and holiness.

Turning Evil to Good - The Story of Jacob's Sons and Jesus

It must be sent for a purpose.

Some find great comfort in that thought as they grapple with awful circumstances they find themselves in, or as they struggle with yet another natural disaster.

I don’t find that way of looking at things so helpful. Indeed, I find it positively unhelpful.

Some things happen that seem to me to cut across all that is good and all that is of God. I cannot bring myself to believe that they were ‘sent for a purpose’.

I’m not sure I find that phrase in the Bible. Neither do I find that thought in the bible.

In the Bible I sense there is a reality of evil that cuts across the goodness of God. And that evil is not wiled by God for some greater purpose. Neither is it sent by God to achieve some greater purpose.

I find myself drawn to two different ways of looking at things.

No matter what may befall, God will always be with us. At times he may feel far away, but the reality is however God-forsaken circumstances may appear God is still there.

I am drawn to those last verses of Habakkuk.

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines;though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food;though the flock is cut off from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. 19 God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights.*

This is a faith to hold on to in the face of the awfulness of circumstances that are so filled with wrong as to be outside of the purposes of God. But God in the reality of that world is there with us.

This is so in the sheer awfulness of personal circumstances. It is so in the face of the sheer awfulness of all that has happened in Japan. I share this evening what I shared this morning. Shusaku Endo has become one of my favourite novelists. It came as a surprise to me to find that one of the leading 20th Century novelists in Japan should be a Christian. Not only that but through his novels he sought to express his Christianity in a way that would speak to Japan and its culture.

I have not often re-read novels I have read in the past. But this week I found myself drawn to pick up his novel ‘Volcano’. What caught my eye was a paragraph written by Richard A Schuchert, the translator in the introduction.

For Endo … the quintessence of Christianity lies in God’s loving compassion for his wretched children, His willingness to share with us in our suffering …Endo is attracted to Jesus the suffering companion of all men and women, more than to Jesus the wonder-worker; he is obsessed with Jesus the human reject eventually crucified, rather than with Jesus the glorious pantocrator.

In Jesus God comes alongside us, remains with us, and enables us not to stare awful circumstances in the face and echo the words of St Paul …

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 337No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor 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.

It is interesting that Shusaku Endo chooses to communicate the power of his message in helping people to hold to faith in the face of awful circumstances through the medium of the novel. It is in the telling of a story that the most profound truths can be explored.

We in the West need to be reminded of that.

Kenneth E Bailey spent a life-time teaching the Bible in the Middle East. In a recent book entitled Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes, he reflects on the contrast between the way we think in the West.

“In the Western tradition serious theology has almost always been constructed from ideas held together by logic. In such a world the more intelligent the theologian, the more abstract he or she usually becomes, and the more difficult it is for the average person to understand what is being said…

He goes on to observe that Jesus tells stories. We misunderstand what Jesus is doing in telling those stories if we imagine him siply to be a ‘village rustic creating folktales for fishermen and farmers.” Kenneth Bailey suggests that when we examine the stories Jesus told with care we discover that ‘his parables are serious theology.’ Indeed it is through his story telling that he emerges as an astute theologian.

Stories are of the very essence of the Old Testament. From Genesis 36 through to Genesis 50 is a story that is brilliantly told.

It is the story of Jacob and his sons as Genesis 36:2 reminds us. Think of it that way and it is the story of enmity that develops between the twelve brothers and Joseph, an enmity that is destructive and murderous in intent. It is telling that this is the story of Abraham’s descendants.

In this evening’s service we read the opening of that story from Genesis 36 and the ending of that story in Genesis 50. We then went on to read part of the story of Jesus in John 8 where he speaks of his disciples as those who hear his word, and find the truth, the truth that will set them free. There then follows a lengthy debate about what it takes to be descendants of Abraham.

John’s Gospel has sometimes been accused of having the seeds of anti-semitism. That is to misunderstand what is going on in that Gospel. It does not pit ‘Jew’ against ‘Christian’. Instead it describes the tragedy when Jew is at enmity with Jew.

And this is precisely the story that is told of Abraham’s descendants in this lengthy and prolonged ‘story of Jacob’s sons’. The story of Jesus echoes that story as the descendants of Abraham are at enmity with each other.

Part of the wonder of the story of Jacob and his sons is that at the end of Chapter 50 the twelve express the fear that Joseph will wreak his revenge now that their father has died. But in reality Joseph forgives and they are reconciled.

The wonder of the Gospel story is that it reaches its climax in the forgiveness Jesus holds out to those responsible for his death in the words ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’.

The story of Jacob and his sons reaches a climax with a very powerful message that is a message of forgiveness which finds its echo in the story of Jesus.

More than that the story of Jacob and his sons comes to a climax with an insight that provides us with a very real alternative to the view that God sends something ‘for a purpose’

Just as the story has a start so too it has a finish. It is a beautifully crafted story. So beautifully crafted that you can think of as the story of Joseph and his brothers.

That story is so well told you could almost turn it into a musical, a best selling musical that would run for years and years.

The fist time I saw Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was at its very first outing into the West End. It was the second half of a double bill. The first half of the evening was a one act play by Galton and Simpson, the creators of Steptoe and Son. It was called Jacob and Sons. And it was as you can imagine a bit near the mark.

The second half was a hit. And it was quickly expanded … and it’s been in production and on tour ever since!!!

The great thing about Joseph the musical is that it keeps so closely to the biblical story. And the story is so well told. And the awful thing about the Musical is that it misses the point.

As it comes to a great climax, the brothers and Joseph are reconciled and reunited with their Dad. And then Jospeh bursts once more into song. I have heard it so many times, I could sing it to you … but I won’t.

I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain to see for certain what I thought I knew,
And in the east the dawn was breaking, the world was waking.

So far, so good. That’s a wonderful image. And in a way it captures the climax to the biblical story.

The Joseph story marks the end of the book of Genesis and the tales of the great founding figures of the people Israel. We have moved beyond the stories of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob and Sarah and we have reached the story of Joseph and the twelve brothers. It is not without significance that Jacob has been given the name ‘Israel’ and the twelve brothers become the ‘founding figures of the twelve tribes of Israel.

In the east the dawn was breaking of the story that was to become the story of the People of God. The dawn was breaking, the world was waking.

But then comes that phrase that makes me want to leap out of my seat and shout out no. The problem is the tune is so catchy I find myself carried along with singing … any dream will do.

No, ANY dream will NOT do!!!!

That misses the point all together.

What’s interesting is that the biblical story comes to a climax with a scene that has a wonderful statement in it. That serves as the key to the whole story. The summing up of the whole point of the story.

It is very thought provoking.

In each of the commentaries I looked at in readiness for this evening, Genesis 50 verse 20 was identified as the key to the whole story of Joseph and his brothers. I love the way the Good News Bible puts it …

Joseph has been reunited with his brothers. They are fearful of what he will do to them. But Joseph forgives and then says these words …

You plotted evil against me, but God turned it into good.

I like the way the Revised English Bible puts it …

You meant to do me harm, but God meant to bring good out of it.

That captures something very special for me.

The debate Jesus has over what it takes to be descendants of Abraham leads into the story of the healing of the man born blind in John 9. That man born blind lives in a dark world – but into that man’s life Jesus brings healing and so the harm is turned to good, God brings good out of the awfulness of the circumstances that man finds himself in.

No matter what the harm, no matter the plotting, no matter the evil humanity can devise God will bring good out of it, God will turn it into good.

The whole story of Jesus in his passion that once again we will tell as Easter approaches, not least in a Palm Sunday evening service the choir are putting together that will enable us to celebrate once again the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version, the whole story of Jesus and his passion is the story of people who are out to bring harm and to do evil. And at the climax Jesus utters the words, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. It is as if God in Christ brings good out of the evil that has been done, he turns it all to good.

God sent it for a purpose? No, I cannot take that.

God in Christ is alongside us in the suffering of this world and he will not desert us. There is nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

This is the vision of Habakkuk and of Romans 8. It is the vision shared by Shusaku Endo of the Jesus who is our suffering companion. And it is the vision to hold on to.

God in Christ is alongside us in the suffering of this world. No matter how great that suffering, God will bring something good out of it. He will turn it to good.

This is the vision the story Joseph and his brothers has to share with us.

This, too, is the vision for us to hold on to!

Jacob invites us to come face to face with God

One clear Sunday night at Hy-Tec I remember joining the youngsters on top of Cleeve Hill. There above the town was the most magnificent comet that I have ever seen. It was remarkable to think that the last time this particular comet had been visible was 3 and a half thousand years ago in the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Looking up into the night sky in a spot far from any light pollution it is not difficult to sense you are gazing into the heavens. The ancients saw many things there – the seven sisters, the hunter, the bear are all mentioned in the pages of the Bible.

It’s not hard to sense that wonderful vision Jacob had of a ladder reaching up into heaven and down to earth and angels ascending and descending on the ladder. When he awoke there was nothing else for it but to place a standing stone there and to name the place Bethel – the house of God. It was as if in that moment in that vision God touched earth and the space between earth and heaven was filled.

It’s an image and a vision that figures large in John’s gospel on the lips of Jesus. The opening of John’s Gospel has echoes of the opening of Genesis. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God … and the word became flesh … and we have beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten son of the father.

In the second part of John 1 various people identify who this Jesus is and they use images drawn from the Scripitures of old – behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the messiah, and a long list of images culminates in words of Jesus himself as he echoes the vision of Jacob’s Ladder at Bethel.

Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

It is a wonderful image. How do you visualise that image? I see Jesus as the ladder. He is the colossus who is the connection between God and us – inn the picture language of this wonderful image he is one with God and yet he has his feet firmly on the ground – he is with God and yet also with us. And the angels ascend and descend on him.

Jesus at times speaks of God as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob – the God of the living one. He values the stories that tell of these great figures of the past – and draws on imagery that is prompted by those stories. We found ourselves beside Jacob’s well this morning in the company of the Woman of Samaria – she makes the connection and senses that there is something in Jesus that is greater even than Jacob – and Jesus does not disagree.

Genesis 12 to 36 tells the stories of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekkah and of Jacob and Rachel. They are well told in the book of Genesis. They seem to roll forward with three cycles of story.

They are the very stuff of ancient story telling – but the stories have a truth to them that speaks to every generation. These are real people who struggle with relationships, with family, they struggle with God.

What is fascinating is that none of them is without blemish – all the figures involved have things really wrong with them. I have heard people reject the stories as abhorrent so appalling are some of the character traits of these people. I react differently. I feel something of the wonder of the Gospel that God can work with and use people who are far from perfect who have all sorts of blemishes in their character.

When Isaac and Rebekkah have twins that are much sought after all is not well even in the birth – when it seemed to Rebekkah as if the two were struggling within her womb. Esau is the older and Jacob the younger. The way they emerge it is as if they had been fighting. And more fighting was to come. When the boys grew up Esau was a skilful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, living in tents. Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekkah loved Jacob.

Favouritisms do not make for families at ease.

And it is not long before jealousies wreak havoc with the relationship these two have. Jacob gets Esau to promise him the birthright due to the elder brother, and then by subterfuge and the involvement of his mother Jacob cheats Esau out of the blessing that Jacob has for his older son. The story of the soft-skinned Jacob getting the virtually blind Isaac to feel the rough skin of an animal and conclude it is Esau is one of those great stories told still to children.

The upshot of it all is bitter enmity between Esau and Jacob and the need for Jacob to flee.

The seeds of ongoing conflict that can escalate into conflict between nations are all there.

And then it is that he has a remarkable vision.

And he dreamed that there was a ladder* set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And the Lord stood beside him* and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed* in you and in your offspring. 15

This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Something changes for Jacob – one senses he becomes a changed man. The blessing is through Jacob and for the good of all the families of the earth. There is a hint here that God love reaches out to encompass all.

Then there comes that wonderfully sinister, yet beautiful story of Jacob and Laban’s daughter Rachel. How he has to marry Leah first and then he marries Rachel and the struggles there are between Jacob and Laban and how agreement between them is reached.

I love the way the stories explore the dark side of family and of family relationships. There is a realism in these stories that disturbs, unsettles and yet is as the world is.

Then by chapter 32 Jacob fears that he and his extended family is going to be challenged by a hateful Esau with his family too. Jacob decides he must make overtures of friendliness towards Esau.

But before he can do that he has a struggle on his hands. And a the end of Genesis 32 we find Jacob wrestling with an unknown figure. It’s a wonderful story – by morning Jacob realises that he has been wrestling with God.

He calls the place Penuel which means ‘The face of God’ because I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.

That image of wrestling with God is something that rings true for me. It is tough sometimes believing in God. It is a struggle. It is a fight. It feels as you are wrestling with God. It’s not far from the experience Jesus has in the Garden of Gethsemane where he longs for the cup to be taken from him.

We shouldn’t be fearful of the struggle we have with God. Jacob emerges from the struggle strengthened.

And in chapter 33 he looks up and sees Esau coming and four hundred men with him. Jacob is immediately fearful, divides up his children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids who have also given birth to his children. The way he arranges the children shows his favouritisms – first the maids with their children, then Leah with her children, and then Rachel with Joseph safe in the rear.

Jacob walks out ahead of them all.

Then comes one of those most wonderful moments in all the Bible.

But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. 5

There then follows a lovely conversation as Jacob introduces his family and insists on giving gifts to Esau, at first Esau refuses to accept any gifts –they are not necessary. And then Jacob says something absolutely wonderful …

10Jacob said, ‘No, please; if I find favour with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God


And in the end Esau accepts Jacob’s gifts.

The brutality of the world then creeps into the story with the account of the rape of Leah’s daughter Dinah.

Out of the darkness comes a return to Bethel, and more prayers. As the story nears its climax God says to Jacob, Your name is Jacob, no longer shall you be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.

And then the twelve sons of Jacob are named … and of course they become the twelve tribes of Israel …

Now the sons of Jacob were twelve. 23The sons of Leah: Reuben (Jacob’s firstborn), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. 24The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin. 25The sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s maid: Dan and Naphtali. 26The sons of Zilpah, Leah’s maid: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram.


Jesus invites us to think of the stories of Jacob … but he then invites us to join him in going beyond them. We look to Jesus and twelve named disciples and realise that we belong to a new Israel – the blessing to Jacob was to reach out and benefit all the families of the earth. It is not without significance that it is at Jacob’s well that Jesus is recognised as Saviour of the world. A world dimension opens out.

At Jacob’s well Jesus confronts the divisions between the Samaritan world and the Jewish world and the enmity between them by bringing them together in a spirit of oneness and reconciliation.

In telling the story of the Prodigal Son and the Elder brother there are all sorts of echoes of the story of Jacob and Esau. As that story comes to its climax and we are not sure whether the elder brother will join in the celebrations at the return of the younger brother maybe we should bring to mind the wonderful moment of reconciliation there is between Jacob and Esau.

It is in the moment of reconciliation, of sharing, of loving another, that we as it were see the face of God.

Isn’t that the very thought Jesus takes up in that wonderful story he tells …

I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you gave me clothing.
I was sick and you took care of me.
I was in prison and you visited me.

When was it that we saw you
Hungry and gave you food, or
Thirsty and gave you something to drink?
A stranger and welcomed you, or
Naked and gave you clothing
Sick or
In prison and visited you.

Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

To love another person is to see the face of God.

If only,
For one moment,
We could see.

Not hazard a guess,
Not take a leap of faith …

But see
The face of God
In all its glory

If only …

Yet we can hear the voice of God
Echoing down through the centuries.

Love the Lord your God
With all your heart, with all your soul,
With all your mind, with all your strength.

Love your neighbour as you love yourself.

Love your enemies.

We can act on what we hear:
Give food to those who are hungry,
Something to drink to those who are thirsty
We can welcome the stranger,
Clothe the naked,
Visit those who are in prison.

Open our ears that we may hear,
Open our hearts that we may act on what we hear
Open our eyes that we may discover that
To love another person is to see the face of God.

Abraham through the eyes of Jesus

We are so used to seeing the world as a whole that we think nothing of a documentary maker who begins her film for out in space with our galaxy one among many, then we zoom in through the myriad of starts that make up that galaxy, those stars we glimpse in the Milky Way, and then the shot zooms by the outer planets of the Solar System, the gas giants until we see planet earth suspended as it were in space in all its beauty. And we home in through the thin blue line of the atmosphere down and down to a helicopter shot perhaps of Brian Cox perched on the unlikeliest of mountain tops somewhere in Scandinavia about to tells us of the wonders of the Universe. I am already on the edge of my seat!

The Bible begins in that kind of way, courtesy of ancient story tellers. We begin on a cosmic scale with the creation of the world and in Genesis 1-11 encounter larger than life stories that tell of the beginnings of things but speak to the world of today in every generation.

The scene is set in that world of God’s creation with all its many nations and languages for the story to home in on one individual, not on a mountain top in remotest Scandinavia, but in the heart of what has come to be known as the fertile crescent in Ur of the Chaldees. A remarkable ancient city in Mesopotamia, Iraq scarred and savage in the war of the last decade.

A story begins with Abram and Sara that is going now to be followed through as a family grows into the people of God and their story becomes the story of nothing less than God’s salvation.

There is a gear shift at Genesis 12 verse 1. That moment is marked throughout the rest of the Bible as this Abram and Sara become the father and mother of Isaac, as Isaac and Rebecca become the father and mother of Jacob who comes to be known as Israel, as Jacob and Rachel become the father and mother of the 12 sons whose families then become the 12 tribes who come to make up the nation of Israel, the people of God.

Now in Genesis 12-50 we are in the realm of true to life stories.

This ancient time perhaps three and half thousand years ago was a time of wandering peoples. It is possible to get a sense of the kind of wandering life those peoples had around that fertile crescent. This is the home of writing, of civilisation, and in these stories we can see the kind of life those peoples led.

Again we are in the world of story telling. For generations these stories were passed on as stories around the camp fires of a wandering people. Stories told vividly, bringing to life the roots of their people, capturing customs, practices lifestyles that can be explored in places like the British Museum. It is a world recognised by archaeologists.

The wandering of Abram and Sara is a wandering shared by many at that time. Settling to farm the land, to tend the sheep is all recognisable. When Jacob dreams and catches a glimpse of God and that ladder with angels ascending and descending he calls the place Beth El House of God and he erects a standing stone. Just as countless cultures are doing the world over three and a half thousand years ago.

The stories again are beautifully crafted. I grew up thinking of these as the stories of the Patriarchs overlooking the fact that the Matriarchs play an equally important role!

A couple of years ago we did a sequence of Bible studies on the stories of Genesis 1-50. What was fascinating was to see how those stories are beautifully crafted, often weaving together different strands. They seem to roll on, cycling through similar experiences each time taking us further forward in an unfolding story.

The stories of Abram and Sara, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob and Rachel roll forward and unfold as they tell of people whose lives are far from faultless. In different ways they make a mess of things and God is there always helping them to put things together again.

Corruption and the refusal to be welcoming in a world of wandering people gives rise to consequences that can be destructive and devastating as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah found out. Childlessness in a family is a major problem grappled with in all sorts of ways with multiple marriages, surrogate mothers. What’s fascinating is that those multiple marriages recur later in the Bible story and are not forbidden by specific law codes. Instead stories are told by people grappling with these circumstances … and it is in the telling of those stories and the observation of the intractable difficulties that come from multiple marriage, or from surrogacy in motherhood, that principles of faithfulness in marriage and of monogamy emerge through the Bible story.

What emerges from the outset is the way the God of the universe we have been introduced to in Genesis 1-11 is the God who relates to people individually in shaping a people who will live together in community. In the telling of their story, guidelines emerge that throw light on the way people are to live together in families and in relationship between families, in tribes and the relationship between tribes, and ultimately as a nation.

To make sense of all those things, and at the root of all these stories is an over-riding relationship between God and the people whose story is told. Abram and then Sara respond to the call God gives in faith. Then God enters into a relationship, a partnership, an agreement, a covenant with Abram and with Sara.

It is a relationship rooted in God and filled with promise. There’s a wonderful moment when Abram is brought outside by God and is invited to look up into the heavens, “Look towards heaven and count the stars if you are able to count them.” Then the voice of God says to Abram, “So shall your descendants be.”

Then comes that wonderful moment when Abram has faith, believes in God, puts his trust in him and that is ‘reckoned to him as righteousness’. It is as if he is set right with God.

So important is that sense of partnership, relationship, covenant between the God of grace and Abram and Sara in their faith that the story of that covenant is told all over again in chapter 17.

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty;* walk before me, and be blameless. 2And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.’ 3Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, 4‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5No longer shall your name be Abram,* but your name shall be Abraham;* for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring* after you. 8And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.’

These stories in Genesis 12-50 are true to life stories that help us to understand who we are and how we relate to each other. This is a wonderful glimpse of what it is to be in that closest of relationships with God.

Notice different strands in this relationship. God is a god of grace – he takes the initiative. God expects great things of Abram. Abram’s response is the response of faith.

The covenant is particular but through Abraham and his descendants it is a promise that opens out to a whole multitude of nations – you shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. And then comes the promise of land that the wandering people will settle in and will become their own.

God’s relationship is so close that something of God now is added to Abram’s very name, the very personal thing that gives him identify. No longer will he be Abram or Sara be Sara without an ‘h’. Now one letter of the four-letter word for God, the letter ‘h’ from YHWH is added to Abram’s name and he becomes the person we know him as, and to the name of Sara who becomes the person we know her as, Abraham and Sarah with a letter’h’.

Abraham is seen as the father figure of the people of God.

Down through the centuries the people think of themselves as the people of Abraham, they look to the God of Abraham.

Down through the centuries they have to grapple with their identity. Who are they? What marks them out as the people of God? That has become a burning question with the brutality of the Roman occupation of their land. In an occupied land they cannot call their own, who are the children of Abraham?

That question is the one that is addressed at the very beginning of the New Testament in the opening words of Matthew’s Gospel. An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messsiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac the father of Jacob and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.

The New Testament opens with a reprise in the shaped of a genealogy that summarises the Old Testament story beginning with Abraham and culminating in Jesus. Jesus is one of the children of Abraham.

But already as Jesus comes on the scene it is a question that people are grappling with. There is one who has taken upon himself the mantle of the great prophets of old that hold the powers that be to account. His name is John the Baptist and before Matthew tells Jesus’s story he has to tell John’s story. Just being descended from Abraham is not enough for John the Baptist. Clearly some there are who want to emphasise descent from Abraham and ownership of the land. But John sees things differently. It is not the actual descent that counts but something deeper. In Matthew 3.9 John speaks out … Do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our ancestor; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

There’s mystery here. It is as if John the Baptist is latching on to that promise that Abraham would be the ancestor not just of a single nation located in one land, but of a multitude of nations.

At the end of John 3 Jesus lines himself up with John the Baptist in his baptism, is driven into the wilderness and then in 4.12 he begins his ministry. What Matthew records is very telling. Just as John has taken up the mantle of the prophets, so too Jesus claims to stand in the line of the prophets.

It’s worth paying attention to the words.

Now when Jesus* heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. 13He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15 ‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles— 16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’ 17From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’*
Notice that Galilee is identified as Galilee of the Gentiles – the people who sit in darkness have seen a great light.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven, God’s rule, has come near.

Then comes the sermon on the mount – on the mountain top Jesus declares a new law. Then in Matthew 8 Jesus breaks barriers down and stretches out beyond … as if he is being all inclusive. First a leper is cleansed, then in Capernaum he heals a Centurion’s servant.

It is the faith of the Centurion that prompts Jesus to marvel. But then he calls to mind the Abraham story. It is as if once again he is focusing on the covenant with Abraham that reaches out to that multitude of nations. Those who are children of Abrham are not just those of physical desent.

When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one* in Israel have I found such faith. 11I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 13

Many will come from east and west and eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.

For Jesus the all-important thing is not the physical descent from Abraham but walking in the way God calls Abraham to walk. And that is open not just to be people descended from Abraham but to all.

Turning from Matthew 8 to John 8 it is in the temple that Jesus is sharing his teaching. It is during a festival when light plays a great part. At that very moment when lanterns are lit from the great lamps in the temple courtyard, and then from lantern to lantern the light spreads through the Temple courtyards down the steps and out into Jerusalem and beyond, Jesus gets up and declares, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Light of ‘the world. ‘Whoever’ follows me.

“Whoever is from God hears the words of God.” And the all important thing in hearing the words of God is to put them into practice, to live by them, to act on them.

It is as if all who hear Christ’s words become the descendants of Abraham as they hear those words and put them into action. Jesus is laying claim to that dimension of the covenant God makes with Abraham that sees Abraham as the father figure of a whole multitude of nations.

Those who hear Jesus say this find it offensive, how can this be. They want to latch on to another dimension of the covenant with Abraham that focuses on the land and limits the descendants of Abraham to those in direct descent. They feel as if Jesus is laying claim to precedence over Abraham. That’s not the point Jesus is making, however. Rather he bears the stamp of the very God whose identify is there in Abraham’s name.

Very truly, I tell you, says Jesus, before Abraham was, I am.

Jesus sees himself as fulfilling the very essence of the covenant with Abraham because he bears the very identify of God deep within himself.

Jesus reads Genesis and the story of Abraham and homes in on the way the covenant opens up to be all-inclusive of the whole multitude of nations. He is the one who is light of the world and has come for all.

Reading Genesis through the eyes of Jesus prompts us to see Jesus as the fulfilment of all the whole relationship God has with Abraham. In Jesus the covenant opens up to be inclusive of all. Jesus is offering a very Jewish interpretation of the Abraham story that is true to that story, but finds its focus in a different place from those contemporaries who were Pharisees and many others. For them physical descent and the actual land was all important. For him a relationship with God that hears God’s word and puts them into practice was all important.

To read Genesis and the stories of Abraham through the eyes of Jesus has massive practical and political implications today. It is what draws me to reject the view of those who maintain that the covenant with Abraham means that the whole land of Israel and Palestine must be for Jewish people alone. No, No, No. In Jesus that covenant finds its fulfilment and opens up to include all who hear God’s words and act on them – and it reaches out into the whole multitude of nations. That’s why it is important for us to take seriously the cries of the Christians of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Israel, Palestine in their appeal to us as Christians to work for a political solution that enables Jews and Palestinians to live together in that land and recognise each other as the children of Abraham.

Wonder and Tragedy in the Larger than Life Stoires of Genesis 1-11

I loved the TV series and the book was just as good. I am looking forward to the sequel … and I have my eye on the book too. Brian Cox is that telegenic quantum physicist who was voted by People Magazine the sexiest Astronomer. I think he is superb … a budding David Attenborough! Wonders of the Solar System is to be followed by what promises to be an equally breath-taking Wonders of the Universe. Showing what happened at the big bang13.7 billion years ago, how the elements that make up the whole universe came into being. It is, he says, in a trailer, nothing less than the story of each one of us.

On 22nd March 2009 Brian Cox found himself in the Norwegian city of Tromso, ‘known as the gateway to the Arctic. He had already written the script he was going to recite to camera to explain one of the most remarkable phenomena to be seen anywhere on the globe. The Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.

Brian Cox describes the way he had been assured that there was a good chance of at least glimpsing the Northern Lights.

“our guide told me of a Sami legend about the aurora. (The Sami are the people of the North, whose domain stretches from Tromso in the west, across northern Sweden and Finland and into Russia.) The legend has it that the aurorae are the spirits of women who died before they had children. Trapped between the froszen land and heaven, they are condemned to dance forever in the dark Arctic skies.

“As dusk fell, we rode snowmobiles out into the dense forests by the Fjord to get away from the city lights and settled down in the Ami camp with hot reindeer stew to wait.

“Just after midnight, the aurora came. I walked out into the frigid night air, enjoying the crunch of footsteps in fresh snow, and looked up. They came gently, a vague hint of green, but built quickly: sheets of colour driftetd slowly then suddenly broke off and danced impossibly fast, a three dimensional rain of light rising and falling between land and sky. They were mostly green, with hints of orange and red close to the horizon, They were like nothing I have ever seen, and as I turned to camera I realised that I didn’t care about the phyics of what I was seeing. My reaction, composed whilst sitting at my desk in Manchester, was worthless in the face of Nature at its most magnificent.

“The Sami had it right – an aurora isn’t the light shaken out of atoms of nitorogen and oxygen as they are bombarded by high-energy particles from Earth’s ionosphere accelerated down magnetic field lines towards the poles, it is made of majestic, mournful, dancing spirits, trapped in the Arctic night.”

That to my mind is one of the best commentaries on the opening chapters of Genesis.

It is only since the eighteenth century that the age of scientific discovery has given us wonderful explanations of the Wonders of the Solar System and the Universe. Prior to that time peoples the world over were filled with the wonder of the world they lived in. They described those wonders with wonderful stories. They were not telling lies, falsehoods, untruths about the world. They were telling stories to give an account of the world they knew so well.

Among those stories were ones told by the ancient Hebrews, passed on from one generation to the n ext. And then drawn into those books that the people regarded as the books that through story and law codes set out God’s way for his world.

The first 11 chapters of Genesis have woven together some of those stories. I am convinced they are larger than life stories that tell of the beginnings of things but speak to the world of today in every generation.

You do these pages of the Bible the greatest injustice if you regard them as on a par with the science of the last two hundred years. They are not doing the same thing at all. They are filled with insight into the wonder and the tragedy of the world as it is. They draw on astute observation of that world. And they speak to every generation.

Pay attention to the detail and there are all sorts of indications that these are larger than life stories. Adam and Eve have Cain and Abel, yet Cain is exiled to the Land of Nod where he marries. The ages reach to many hundreds of years. The sons of God, angelic figures come down and marry the daughters of men. There are giants of people. There are different stories told. Look carefully and some of them use one word for God, LORD, while others use another word for God – simply ‘God’ in our translations. The very word ‘adam’ is the word for humanity. The poetry of much of the story is so powerful.

Brian Cox will describe the fusion of hydrogen and helium in the big bang and the emergence of the elements and I am looking forward to the insights he will share – but for me Genesis 1 captures the wonder of it all!

Genesis 1 tells us this the world of God’s creation … and it is good and to be looked after.

Genesis 2 tells us that each one of us, each man, each woman is placed by God in his world … and we each have built into us a sense of right and wrong. Genesis 3 shows us that for all the goodness of God’s creation there is something that creeps in and is destructive – and everyman and every woman succumbs to it. We each find ourselves living not in an idyllic garden, but in a place overrun by weeds.

That inclination towards evil damages then in Genesis 4 the basic human unit of the family as Cain denies that he is his brother’s keeper and Abel is murdered by his brother.

As we reach the story of Noah and Genesis 5-8 we find the world is filled with violence. The consequence of that violence is devastating destruction.

And then the sequence of stories reaches its climax as people long to become like God and use their ingenuity to build a tower to reach God, only to find their efforts fruitless, the tower destroyed and they can no longer understand each other.

The stories come together to give a picture of a wonderful world of God’s creation, yet within it such destructive forces. There is a strand running through the stories that gives hope. As individuals, a family, the world, and then all the nations of the world turn to evil and face its destructive consequences God is still there. By his grace each time he gives a chance for a fresh start.

Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden but able to wander in the wider world.

Cain is not executed but exiled and spared.

Noah and his family are saved from the flood and receive the wonderful promise as the very weapon of violence, the battle bow, is placed into the sky painted all the colours of the world, as a sign of God’s everlasting promise.

And the people of the nations are scattered to shape their nations, one of which is to become the nation of Israel, God’s people and to live out God’s dealings with the world and his saving love for the world.

These stories have remarkable insights into the world of God’s creation, its tragedy, and the reality of the human condition. They get to the truth of the world and humanity’s place in it in more powerful ways than the cosmologists, the biologists, the physicists, and the like can … they get to the truth of the human condition more vividly than the historian or the social scientist can.

They stand as a magisterial introduction to the whole Bible.

And they come alive as we see them through the eyes of Jesus.

Let’s take one of those stories – the story of Cain and Abel, and see how we can see that story through Jesus’s eyes.

I want to make three observations. First, Jesus is a man of his own time, and we should not attribute to him the capacity to think in the way modern scientists think.

The whole point of our theology of incarnation is that Jesus is a man of his time. He ‘empties himself’ to become as one of us. (Philippians 2) Fully a man. He is born into the world of the Roman Empire as Israel is under a very oppressive regime of King Herod. He grows up as that oppression intensifies and the Jewish people struggle to respond. He sees the world through the eyes of his contemporaries.



And these are the stories of beginnings he has grown up with. He sees them as a man of his own time. He does not see them as a scientist in the 21st Century. They are the stories that give an account of God’s world and our place in it. To illustrate the closeness of a man and a woman in marriage he draws on the story of Adam and Eve. When he speaks in Matthew 23:35 of being the innocent victim of those who kill the innocent he uses Abel as the one who is the classic innocent victim.

For Jesus these stories have value not as scientific explanation of how things began – but as stories that show how the world of his day is.

That’s how we should treat these stories too. For the insight they give into the world around us and our place in the world.

Secondly, Jesus delights in these stories. As he tells his own stories they often have echoes of the stories from the Hebrew Bible he grew up with.

The story of Cain and Abel is a wonderful story, beautifully crafted.

It is a story of two brothers and of jealousy. One accepted, one not … and the destructive jealousy that ensues. It is a story of sin lurking at the door, a sin that is out to master an individual, a sin that must be mastered … but ultimately gets the better. It is a story of anger. It is a story of no going back. It is a story then of a hint of grace, but with the mark of Cain of exile, wandering, lostness. For this story-teller out of the jealousy, the anger, the giving in to sin, the lostness of Cain comes the beauty of craftsmanship, the wonder of bronze and iron tools, and the civilisation of the city. Much that is good can be brought out of even unimaginable evil. All sorts of insights here.

It is the story of two brothers. Look carefully and the elder brother, Cain is never referred to as Abel’s brother. Abel is referred to as Cain’s brother no fewer than seven times! And yet the tragedy of the story comes in the Lord’s question to Cain and in Cain’s response: “Then the Lord said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? He said, I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?”

Through it all God has a curious role. He seems to favour Abel over Cain, yet actually that is the way of things, he maintains he regards both equally, he recognises the evil inclination in Cain and gives him the opportunity to master it. Cain leaves the presence of God and is left a fugitive to wander the earth, but does settle in the land of Nod.

When Jesus tells the story of the two brothers there are all sorts of echoes of the Cain and Abel story.

The father bestows the inheritance on the younger son. He returns from the far country to discover his father waiting for him – the lost one is found, the one that was dead is alive again.

Meanwhile the elder brother is filled with discontent and malice. We don’t know what happens to him in the end. But there is every opportunity for him to stay within the Father’s family – after all, all that the Father has is the son’s!

One thing is very apparent and that is the picture of God that emerges from Jesus. He has taken many of the elements of the Cain and Abel story and then he has developed them further. It is as if takes them to their ultimate conclusion. The focus of the story Jesus tells is on the waiting Father and his all embracing grace of forgiveness.

The grace and the forgiveness that is hinted at in the Cain and Abel story is there in all its fullness in the story Jesus tells.

Let the story Jesus told be at the forefront of the mind – the picture it fills out of the Grace of the loving, forgiving Father is the picture we must have of God.

And the third point to take from Jesus’ perspective on this story is that it will affect how our whole attitude on life..

One of Cain’s descendants is Lamech who again is guilty of killing a man. His lament also is the tragedy of the Genesis story, and the tragedy of the human condition … Genesis 4:24

If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.

The great thing about the stories of Genesis 1-11 is that they do capture the human condition and tell it as it is. Stay with the story of Cain and Abel and you are in the world of vengeance. And it is a world we know only too well.

Jesus does not want us to stay in the world of Cain and Abel. He invites us to re-fashion that world in a different way in the light of God’s love. We must not stay with the story of Cain and Abel. We must . live the Jesus story and then we so belong to the kingdom of forgiveness.

It is this saying that Jesus takes up with Peter. Peter is also steeped in the stories of the Hebrew Scriptures. The story of Cain and Abel he knows well. There has to be a limit to the number of times you can forgive surely!

Then Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, Not seven times, but I tell you, seventyseven times.”

As we read through the eyes of Jesus, let’s wonder at the insights into the world of God’s creation and the ugly world of human failure that we see in Genesis 1-11.

Let’s then follow Jesus and re-shape that world looking to the God and Father of us all who is the God of Love.

Let’s turn our back on the vengeance of Cain and Lamech and embrace a forgiveness that is willing to forgive not sevenfold but seventy-seven fold!

Jesus' Guide to Reading 'the Law'

As I was sitting down to prepare this evening’s sermon an email popped into my inbox.

Tackling bullying in schools – a governor’s guide. January 2011.

It ran to 20 pages. And made interesting reading. It would be easy to dismiss the production of such materials as wasteful bureaucracy. But actually it contains excellent guidance, good commonsense, and checklists that demonstrate Pittville School where I am a Governor is doing well in that area.

Much of what is included in the guide is covered in ‘the law’.

There’s legislation for most things in life.

And that’s nothing new.

From time immemorial as people have sought to live togehtrer they have recognised the need for legislation.

There’s plenty of it in the Bible.

The first five books of the Bible are known as the Books of ‘the Law’.

They contain law codes like the ten commandments. Laws about personal living, about living together in society. There are laws about the ritual and worship, about sacrifice, and the observation of religious festivals.

But the books of the Law don’t only include lists of laws. There are no such lists in the book of Genesis. There are stories of the beginnings of things, the beginnings of the world, the beginnings of the people of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There’s the story of Joseph. Exodus introduces us to the story of Moses … and as the title suggests the story of the Exodus from bondage in Egypt to freedom.


In some ways it is unfortunate that those five books have been given the name ‘the Law’ in English.

For they contain much more than a series of ‘laws’.

The Hebrew word for them is the word Torah.

That is a much richer word. Don’t think of it so much as a set of laws and regulations. Think of it as a set of books that through stories, law codes and much more open up for us an understanding of God’s way for God’s world.

The stories come from an ancient world, and we need to enter into that world if we are going to begin to understand what it is they are saying. The law codes come from an ancient world that is very different from our own. We need to enter into that world to begin to sense how God is speaking to us through those stories and all those laws.

You won’t get far before you find things that are not just alien from an ancient world, but things that we simply cannot follow in today’s world. All those instructions on what kind of food to eat. All the instructions on when and how to sacrifice animals. All those instructions on what kind of clothes to wear and what not to wear.

Read through the first five books of the law and you recognise that you have to deal with these books with care.

And as soon as you do that, someone will cry out, ‘You can’t do that.’ If it says it in the Bible, it must mean it for all time. You cannot change one word of the Bible. Change one thing and then you will have to change everything. As soon as you call something in question you have to abandon everything.

That’s where it is interesting to ask how Jesus read the law.

First, he valued it. He didn’t want to change what was in those five books at all. Not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, not one jot or tittle of the law is to be removed … until all is accomplished. He honoured those books. And it is because of that that we keep those five books in their entirety in our Christian bible.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets, I have come not to abolish but to fulfil.

Jesus speaks of fulfilling the law. Of it being ‘accomplished’.

And he sees himself as ‘the fulfilment’ of the law and the prophets. On the cross he gets to the point at which he is able to say, ‘It is accomplished’

Jesus stands by the law, but he handles it with a remarkable wisdom. He does not take up a stone against a woman caught in adultery, but instead gives her the opportunity to start her life all over again. He does not condemn and reject Zacchaeus the thief, but goes to eat with him before he has changed. And it is that loving acceptance that prompts him to change.

He does not hold fast to the Sabbath laws on the grounds that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. His sacrifice is the sacrifice to end all animal sacrifice, now we look to him as the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, and the detail of the sacrificial laws is no longer applicable. He eats with sinners, and does not hold fast the laws regarding eating. And he is welcoming of gentiles and his followers realise that the food laws no longer apply as well.

These five books of Torah do give an insight into the way of God in the world, but Jesus invites us to read them through his eyes. Value them for the insights they give, honour them in our Bible, but read them carefully.

Nowhere is that approach more evident than in a passage that has to be one of the most familiar in all the gospels.

25 Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.

Let’s stop there. A ‘lawyer’ in Jesus’ day was not the first century equivalent of a solicitor. He was an expert in ‘the Law’ in the ‘Torah’. We so easily read the Gospels in terms of Goodies and Baddies. And typecast the Lawyer as a baddy. Especially as he set out to ‘test’ Jesus. Let’s give him credit for a moment. Maybe as a teacher of the Law he was intrigued with the approach Jesus had to the law. Maybe he was offended by it. Maybe he thought Jesus was too selective, and so too risky, and so in danger of destroying the law. He wanted to test Jesus out.

* ‘Teacher,’ he said, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’

Notice again, the question. We so often imagine the question to be ‘what must I do to get into heaven when I die?’ And then we see the following conversation as the entry qualifications for access to heaven.

But he doesn’t mention heaven at all. He asks, what must I do to inherit eternal life.

You inherit something from someone who has died. The life he speaks of is not just life after death. It is life in all its fullness, life that is not bounded by death, life that starts here and now, is not bounded by death, and links us to all the fullness of life in God.

He is asking, what must I do to inherit from all those have gone before, from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, from Joseph, from Moses, from David and Solomon, from all those prophets … that life that is lived in all its fullness is not bounded by God and is the life God wants for me and for everyone?

What a question!

26He said to him, ‘What is written in the law?

Let’s stop there again. What is written in the Law? What is written in the Torah. The answer to that is everything from the very start of Genesis to the very end of Deuteronomy.

But Jesus is not only concerned with all those words that are written in the law. He asks a second question.

What do you read there?’

Now that to my mind is a very interesting question. Never mind all those words, let’s get to the nub of the matter. What do you read there? How do you put into a few words the whole of the Torah?

27He answered, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.’

That is a classic Jewish answer.

The point is that the whole of the law is capable of being summarised in two clauses. This is the nub of the matter.

Jesus sees it in exactly that way.

28And he said to him, ‘You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.’

Notice, Jesus does not say. Do this and you will get to heaven. Do this, he says and you will live, you will have life in all its fullness. Life not bounded by death, Life that is one with God.

What’s going on here is I think fascinating. It is something very Jewish. Jesus grew up steeped in the Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible from his mother’s knee. Remember when he was 12 how he got lost and was found in the temple. When he was found he was with the teachers – these very people who were themselves steeped in the law. And he was listening to them and asking them questions. From 12 to 30 he went week by week to the synagogue. That was where you didn’t just hear the Torah read, you heard teachers, rabbis, explaining it. You had the opportunity to listen and to ask questions – to talk through its meaning.

Jesus was more than this man’s equal in his deep and profound understanding of the Torah and more importantly of what is going on there.

What the nub of the matter is.

But this lawyer wants more.

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbour?’

Jesus responds with the best known of all stories. What is not so often appreciated is that this is again a classic way of teaching. To get across the meaning of scripture you don’t just spell out the literal meaning. You tell a story.

The story Jesus tells reaches its climax when he turns to this expert in the law and asks another question.

36Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ 37He said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’

Mercy is one of the watchwords of the Scriptures – it is in fact a favourite in the Prophets it crops up time and again in the writings, in the Psalms. The teacher has got the point of the story.

Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

This is not just a challenge to social care. This is not just the great principle of inclusive love that breaks all barriers down. What we have here is an insight into the way Jesus sets about the task of reading the books of the Law in what we regard as the Old Testament.

You cannot simply concentrate on what is written. You have to go to the heart of what you read there. And at the heart of the Torah is Love, Love for God, Love for Neighbour. And neighbour includes all. It is all about ‘doing’ mercy.

Tackling Bullying in Schools – A Governor’s Guide runs to 20 pages of detailed guidance on ways to deal with one of the worst kinds of behaviours that every generation will discover for itself.

I could tell you what’s written there. And you would find it interesting.

Perhaps more valuable is for me to tell you what I read there.

What I read there is simply this.

Do to others what you would have others do to you.

Come to think of it didn’t someone else suggests that that is nothing less than the law and the prophets!