We are here to listen, to discern the truth, to find a truth to live by. We stand up to be counted, we listen for the voice of God in the whisper, the thunder and love.
In Adam I believe humanity is fallen. Adam is all humanity made in the image of God. Each of us succumbs to sin- we fall, we get up, we learn, we grow. Sin is turning our back on God and walking away from him. In life we are born into the innocence of Adam and grow up into Christ, each without exception. Christ is all humanity restored and redeemed, a new Adam who walked in innocence.
We miss the mark our hearts long for each day; the Light of God’s presence shines in the hearts of every person. This is the revelation of scripture and God restores, forgives and redeems humanity each day, a mystery revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. There is guilt: there is shame. When we allow space for despair , it is filled by darkness as we continue the walk away from God, but he stands in our way and calls us back. He reaches out to rescue us. The darkness cannot overcome the light. Every sin is an invitation to the evil one. Sin sits at the door of our hearts as it did for Cain who went on to murder his brother Abel because he was jealous. As a church, we pray, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Why? Because in missing the target we are blinded by our selfish lack, our sense of entitlement obscures the light. The longing God put in our hearts for the good, the beautiful and truth is exploited by the evil one into a sense of lack and we grasp at what is not ours to have. This is the lesson of the garden of Eden where our ancient parents succumbed. Though we choose death God waits patiently to restore us to life.
Not that a sense of lack is necessarily evil. In many ways it drives us to improve our situations, developing technologies and caring societies. It is when lack becomes driven by disappointment rather than hope that there is a problem, when desires rule.
In Christ is our life and breath; our whole being, our ever-flowing way back to God. In him our being finds its Alpha and its Omega, its beginning and its end: the heart of God to love. In Christ death is no more, there is no longer guilt, no longer shame as we stumble, and surely, we stumble. Jesus seeks us out. Jesus holds us. Jesus is Lord.
Jesus conquers death as a man, by taking his full deity into the death of all humanity and in his deity conquering death for all humanity by rising to new life. Death could not hold him as he shouldered our sins on the cross, perfectly revealing God. Death is defeated for all.
Stir in me, stir in me, Holy Spirit arise in me, new my soul rise-up in thee, clean and pure and Holy, I was taught to sing.
The breath of God creates and forms, restores and heals. From dust we were formed and in common with all, to dust we will return. This is sure. In Christ we know intimately the inheritance of all humanity, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and ever-flowing life. Birth into the glory of God is the way we are drawn along.
Christ is our daily bread, given to all, broken for all, a life poured out for all. Without the drawing of God, we are lost, we are dead in our humanity. The Spirit needs-must invade our reasoning, invade our imagination; we dream and have visions; a vision of one body; one body birthed on a cross; one body begotten in the beginning, revealed as we listen and hear of Christ’s death resurrection and ascension into heaven. All are called into this body, Christ now seated at the right hand of God.
In reading this far, all that has happened is that you have gathered with others to hear; to listen, to sense together with others a longing, a thirst. A thirst quenched in Christ. Jesus is alive, here now ascended to the Father in-the-midst of his people. You can’t follow him on your own, but he meets you as a friend in this shared understanding and experience of good news. There is a hunger to gather; to be together, to know one another. Maybe we have nothing more in common, but we want to hear.
This truth is a powerful truth revealed as we listen. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. To proclaim Jesus is Lord brings ruin in the ways of the world; you become a target. To stand with Christ, to align with him is to make his truth our measure. How can we doubt those who declare Jesus to be Lord; numbered, marked out by their declaration; standing together in an absurd truth; an absurd utterance. Yet you are listening, longing to understand.
Space is created so that mighty deeds of God are proclaimed and enacted, acted upon. from the heart of God as we gather. We prophecy. We know his voice and we no longer call any man our teacher as we know him for ourselves. The Holy Spirit discerns for us and teaches us. We prophecy against injustice and lies. There are all manner of manifestations of God’s goodness and mercy in our midst, and we know his voice. Declaring Jesus to be Lord brings peace and love and not violence; a narrow road to restoration, healing and life. God’s Spirit is given for the common good as we step out into worldly obscurity and trash our reputations. There is one body. There is one Spirit. A body breathed into life by the Spirit that we are invited to become a part of.
The Spirit rests; rests on each one of us: tongues of fire inspire us. Our hearts are strangely warmed as one saint commented. Nothing is ever the same again.
The portion of Christ exceeds that of Moses; not to seventy is it given, but seventy times seventy and more, numbered in Christ, forgiven, restored and poured out, an ever-flowing fount of water for all the world’s cleansing and sustaining.
From his people, from the Church, many thirsts are quenched. The church gathers in many camps, but you can’t be a church alone; no gathering is alone but is complete in Christ; there is only one Church, and we are in it together. The Church is recognised when hearts are gathered, in a death to self, a blessed poverty; a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a heart for peace: two or three who love, who love their enemies. The church brings life.
Humbly we come and draw water from the wells of salvation, we sang, a little flock. But in Christ we are many- a host and one heart, one mind are we, revealed and scorned but empowered.
Maybe in this and in our reading of scripture our hearts burned as they did for the disciples on the road to Emmaus who encountered the risen Jesus in words on the journey but recognised him in the action of breaking of bread at a meal. Maybe as you listen to friends, and engage ideas and experiences something stirs. There are reasons and reasonings, explanations. We can analyse and form rules. But when we encounter God in bread and wine, water, quiet and breath, then we know intimately an infilling of truth. Then we are transformed; 200 years of modern Christianity dissolve and we become church
A young man once asked me to come and speak with him. He wanted to save me from God; he wanted to confound me with his truth, show how I was deceived. I read him a poem I had written for him. It began, The god you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either. Master Eckhart a German mystic of the 13th Century prayed, God rid me of God. This is a stage in the journey all of us must go through, maybe several times as we peel away our certainty, let go the god of our own understanding and creation. God finds a way, through tongues of fire, through babbling tongues. Pentecost heralds dreams and visions, sighs deeper than words that birth love, that flows out for all. As we journey from Adam to Christ all becomes poetry, we appear drunk, in the breaking of bread, in the drinking of wine.
As the poet George Herbert says in his poem Agonie, Love in that liquor sweet and most divine which my God feels as blood but I as wine. Truth is revealed to our hearts and the words become flesh in you and in me.
Grace and peace.
M Emlyn Humphries 