Lessons about intercessory prayer, from the book of Job.

A little while ago, I attended an “Art for the Soul” retreat at St Clements, at Galong (in NSW, Australia).  It’s run by one of the Nuns up there.  It was a very refreshing experience.  I found that I was the only little Protestant amongst a whole pond full of Catholics.  That didn’t bother me.  During the course of one of the sessions, this lovely Nun said to me “Catholics always concentrate on suffering;  we often look at our faith through a perspective of suffering;  we have the cross with Jesus on it whereas Protestants have the empty cross, with it's connotations of hope for the resurrection”.   As she was speaking, I thought that we Protestants have been the other way round; we tend to look at our faith from a resurrection perspective. And that’s a good thing, but sometimes I think we don’t allow room for lamentation in our worship.  We have both Job and Bartimaeus in our readings this morning, and they were both well acquainted with lamentation.

So it might be that we will find the whole book of Job a bit confronting.  Our reading today comes from the very last chapter;  the “good” one where Job is recompensed for all his suffering.  We are tempted to think that’s all there is to it, but I’m convinced there is such a wealth of wisdom in the book of Job, and I have to thank a sermon from that long-ago preacher Charles Spurgeon for drawing my attention to verse 8;  the one in which God says “My servant Job will pray for you and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly.

So, it’s actually intercessory prayer I want us to think about this morning. What brought Job to the point of praying for his friends, when he himself was so desperate and despairing?  I want to observe some points about intercession for others and then some ideas of who we should pray for.

The book of Job is played out against the fact that the devil makes a wager with God.  The devil says “I bet if you take away all his good fortune and he’ll curse you”.  And God sys “You’re on”.  God consenting to such a wager is, in itself, hard to fathom. The book goes on to speak of Job’s terrible plight, his discourse with God and with his friends.  But in this final chapter, he says to God “I spoke of things I didn’t know or understand;  my ears have heard you now and my eyes have seen you. Speak and I will listen”.  We might interpret that as Job saying “I’ve been an ignorant prat on these matters and tried to tell you, Almighty God, what to do and how to rule the world.  I’m sorry for my arrogant presumption”  Job has been on a very difficult spiritual journey. So really, in our readings today, we have blind Bartimaeus in the gospel receiving physical sight, and we have Job, receiving spiritual sight.

But look at verse 10 “after Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before”.  Now it would be very dangerous to assume from this that “oh well, I’m in trouble, I’ll pray for my friends and God will intervene”.  I don’t think that’s how it is at all.  It doesn’t mean that if we pray for others, God will make fortune smile on us. In the context of Job, it seemed more like a sign that God had called off the wager. The King James Version of Verse 10 says “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends”.

God brought good from bad, even though Job was ruined without reason.  God was in control and always had a plan in mind.   God always knew the end from the beginning and everything in between. I believe a lot of the wisdom and sense in this story hinges on Job’s journey to spiritual humility, and of gaining a different vision of who God is, despite our ideas of what’s fair and what’s unfair. It’s also about making sure we are not like Job’s friends; about whom God says “they have not spoken of me what is right, like my servant Job has”;  a flaky lot of hypocrites and religious posturers, they were.  Know everything;  know nothing;  that’s them.

It’s Job’s prayer which stops God from dealing with them according to their folly.  That’s a very powerful outcome of all Job’s distress.  And it’s the trouble and resultant refining of Job’s already upright character which ensures that this power will be put to good use.  That’s a long way to answering why God allowed the sorrows in the 1^st place  So, if we follow Job’s example, we will pray for those who sleight and misunderstand us.

To be an intercessor, we need to realize a few things:

1.                  Intercessional prayers, in the light of the book of Job, seem to work better if we have been though trials.  We are fitted for God’s purpose through trials.   It’s no mistake that Job could pray for his friends even after his own life had been decimated.  Job knew what suffering felt like;  knew in the end that he had been a touch arrogant.  Through our own grief, we develop the ability to walk in the shoes of others who are grieving.  It gives us compassion and empathy and it’s from this storehouse we can then pray for others and really petition God’s heart.

2.                  Intercession for others is a spiritual journey not a means to an end. Job’s suffering took him on a journey of self-discovery and an awareness of God in a very personal way.  When we travel thus, close to a suffering so great, we can’t do it without depending on God, we get to know our place in God’s world;  we discover there are things we cannot control;  we realize how much more there is to life than just what we plan and want for ourselves.  We are so vulnerable, so helpless, so wretched we no longer have control over these forces of pain and we lean on the very heart of God to give us strength. We are, if we allow it, brought close to God’s character;  the very divinity of God;  we transcend our suffering and begin to see others the way God sees them.  We put off ourselves and rely on God.  When self takes a back seat in this way, we surpass our suffering and God’s spirit himself mingles himself with our spirit and we are transformed to be more like him.  Jesus himself intercedes for others - and we too, from our nobler, ego-reduced viewpoint, want to pray for them too. 

3.                  Notice God doesn’t punish Job even though he has questioned and despaired.  His is an honest response to anguish and God is not displeased by that.  His dialogue of despair with God, is part of the journey.  We must conclude from this that when we cry out to God with honest questions, this is not a bad thing – it’s when God is there with us, even though, at the time He might seem silent.  After all, we are still speaking to God – we are still in relationship with God.  Something happens in that calm candle flame of our own spirit, when, in the midst of grief or bewilderment, God’s spirit begins to burn with our own.  It’s a very sacred, mystical transference of the divine nature. 

4.                  Intercession requires grace;  the experience of God’s grace to us, which we use to intercede for others.  We see them as flawed like us, and loved by God, like us.  Mercy and compassion are the big sisters of intercession.

5.                  It’s a sign of spiritual health and healing, and victory in spite of trouble.  If we are finally at peace enough with what God has allowed for us, we can embrace praying for others.  We have travelled a long way in our efforts to grapple with awful circumstances and are still trusting God. Strength and power are ours when we pray from this vantage point. This leads me to my next point:

6.                  There is power in our prayers.  Prayers of righteous people can change things.  These verses in Hebrews 12 spring to mind: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it”.  There is something amazing which happens when a righteous saint of God, who has stood firm through trial, then prays for others.  . The prayer of the righteous doesn’t mean we have to be perfectly good.  It means we need to walk in the light of Christ’s spirit which will tell us where we err and prompt us to confess it to Him.  It’s our confession and reliance on Him by faith which makes us righteous, not our outward behaviour

7.                  There is Christ’s example, and even from the cross he prayed “Father forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing”. We have to ask in the name of the High Priest Jesus, who once for all sacrificed for us, as in Hebrews reading.  We have to have a relationship with Him, the great Redeemer. And because he suffered, he is our greatest example of the power of intercessory prayer.

Who then should we pray for? Praying for people who get on our nerves is hard;  praying for those who have sleighted us but without intent or malice is harder;  praying for people who have gone out of their way to mistreat or hurt is just because they can, is very difficult indeed.  We can pray for:

1                                For those lost to the gospel. They are all around us.  We can use the nightly news to pray for those who are so in need of the redemptive power of God, not just for their personal salvation, but for the enrichment of our society too.

2                                We can pray Our friends who are proud of their religiousness;  those who are insensitive, haughty.  Those who have wronged us. How do we pray for people like this?  How did Job do it?  I’ll tell you how I do it. I say to God “I don’t feel like praying for this person, but because you require it, I will”. To be sure, it’s a very wooden, uninvolved prayer at first. But when we pray in this way over time, gradually we ourselves are changed and we find we can actually pray for those who have wronged us, with forgiveness and goodwill in our hearts.

3                                Our friends who are ill,  or sorely tried, dispirited, or who are battling temptation.  Apparently, Internet porn is the fastest growing industry on the worldwide web.  If we know people, even Christians, who are trapped in this, our prayers of intercession could be the means of setting them free.

4                                The wider community.  We are out in the world every day;  we can intercede for people in our own circle of friends and workmates;  we can intercede for people in the most dire and degraded situations.  We can pray as we see them from our cars or in the street, or on the news. We can petition God’s heart on their behalf and He can set in place, the means to answer those prayers.

5                                We can pray for very evil people;  people who have gone beyond just selfishness – people who use others for their own gratuitous power.  Organised crime, violent dictators, and malevolent military forces. Our prayers can break forces of evil and summon the angel host to rescue others.

6                                And finally, we can pray that what we give in financial ways to help others will be multiplied millions of times, so that all can be fed.

So, if you feel yourself in the dark vale of trouble or affliction this morning, take heart, because God always has a plan, and will always bring us through, with the tree of our soul laden with much fruit.  Some of that bounty will be the ability to intercede on behalf of others and know that God hears and answers our prayers. Amen.

A loaf of bread, the walrus said....

John 6:51-58 New International Version (NIV)

⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

I’m going to start my blog with a stanza from a poem. You may even be familiar with it:

A loaf of bread,' the Walrus said,

Is what we chiefly need:

Pepper and vinegar besides

Are very good indeed —

Now if you're ready, Oysters dear,

We can begin to feed.'

This is a poem about a Walrus and the Carpenter who lure the young oysters out onto the beach and then feed on them.  Oysters and pepper and vinegar…. And feeding on bread.  It’s by Lewis Carroll, from his book “Through the Looking-Glass”.   

Our reading today is about Jesus telling his disciples that he is the living Bread from heaven and that anyone who feeds on this bread will live forever. There are some edgy verses in there, especially vs 53  “⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you

The Jews find the idea of eating the flesh of Jesus a bit hard to understand. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat” they ask.

This passage has been debated down the centuries and it would take a better scholar than me to explain the deep theological reasons for this. And I’m not going to try

What we’re going to think about this morning is what it might mean to us when we see Jesus as the bread of life, in a symbolic sense.

I think it could be fair to say, that we are now a feasting nation;  I would go so far as to say we are the party nation.  We love to eat, drink and party. Everything about our life seems to revolve around food.  Flick through any of the TV channels and there are literally dozens of programmes about food – preparing it, eating it, travelling to other places to find and cook it;  reality TV shows about cooking it in competition with others;  there are restaurant guides; diet guides, scientific facts about what the next super food is.  There are magazines devoted to food;  books, blogs, social media pages and of course advertising.  I’ve even seen instructions on how to crochet food – cute little crocheted patty cakes and the like! Even unrelated things like lipsticks are created in food-like colours… cheeky chocolate;  paint colours are called things like pale avocado.  And there are more varieties of bread than you can throw a scone at!

As a society, we are absolutely crazy about food.

It’s no accident that Jesus uses so much imagery about Himself and His Kingdom and relates it to living, growing plants and processes in the world (I am the true vine;  the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed etc).  He did that because it was something people could relate to, because they were directly connected to growing food to eat, to keep them alive.

But I don’t think the people of Jesus day could ever comprehend or understand our absolute addiction to and worship of food.  For a start, they would never be able to imagine the reality of so MUCH food.  I heard on sbs the other day that there are now more people dying from too much food, than from not having enough.  And I wonder what God thinks about that?

It’s harder for us western Christians to understand the significance of Jesus being the living bread for our souls (and therefore essential for our spiritual health), because we are far less dependent of bread for our physical sustenance, than were the people of Jesus’ day.

How then, are we to appreciate these verses about Jesus being the very stuff of life, in every way, when we can take food so much for granted?  How can we cleanse our minds a little and get back to the basic idea of bread? How do we do that?

To try and re-engage with bread as a Godly life-force purely in our own strength is to put the cart before the horse. No!  We need some spiritual power to get us back into the right attitude to bread.

Let’s try to remember three things:

Firstly, we have the verses in John which tell us that Jesus is this bread and he has laid down his life for us.  .  The bread we eat during Communion are symbols of Christ’s body and blood given in exchange for every awful thing we’ve ever said; every unclean thought we’ve ever had;  every lie we’ve ever told;  every prejudice;  every wrong attitude.  In fact everything about us which is unholy and imperfect is covered by Christ’s death on the cross.  Bread, and His body are connected forever as the sacrifice and the symbols of that sacrifice.

Secondly, the spiritual bread is from heaven.  We’re told that in verse 51. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. We have all the divine nature of heaven available to us, spiritual strength; holiness, renewal, purity;  to be nourished and fed by the indwelling Spirit-bread of Jesus is to have access to all the heavenly virtues.  He can overcome any temptation (even the temptation to eat too much).  And more, he is the ongoing, ever-renewing source of spiritual energy and strength whenever I turn my life over to His control. He dwells and abides with us, as bread for our souls.  He’s food for now (on earth) and food to go (to heaven).

We have a portal into the dwelling place of the eternal spirit which was present at the creation of all things. I believe, like all the theologically uneducated people before me, that on a simple spiritual level, Jesus is the Bread of Life in all senses;  He encompasses every type of Life there is;  earthly and heavenly.  The bread is Creator Life; is physical life; is spiritual awakening.  All of these are aspects of Jesus, who was there when God called the world into being.

We need not do it in our own strength. He can constantly renew and nourish our hearts and spirits.  He can change us here and now, from glory to glory, until at last, when we see Him face to face, it will be the ever so gently passing from our world to His, in the twinkling of an eye.  That leads us to the third point… the forever bit.

We have the promise that whoever eats this bread will live forever. We have His promise that when we physically die, we go to be where He is. Vs 58 says “This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”

But how do we really feed on the Bread of Life, and claim this eternal inheritance?  Do we just come and take communion once a month?  Is that what these verses mean?  I don’t think that would quite cut it.

We have to invite the living, dynamic Christ into our hearts and lives on a daily basis, to be able to eat the real bread of His life and His divinity and His Spirit.  We have to really understand and believe and acknowledge the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  And we have to remain and abide in Christ. That’s the whole crux of the matter.  The bread of Life gave himself for us and if we don’t live and believe on that daily, we may as well paste a picture of a slice of bread on our heads.

We do need to come regularly and take communion together.  But the eating of the bread and wine are symbols.  They are just the outward appearance of what should be going on inside our hearts.  We have the outward symbols and we have the inner bread which is baked in heaven.  If we physically eat the symbols, without searching for and abiding in the living risen Christ, we die to God, even while we are alive physically.   

We have to take a few minutes every day to read the Bible, privately, at home.  Some of us have perhaps gotten out of this habit.

We should talk to God.  Some of us set aside a time every day and read the Bible and talk to God. I’m sure you’ve discovered long ago, what works for you.  I can’t read the Bible at night because I end up falling asleep;  I can’t pray at a set time every day;  it’s too regimented and contrived.  I just pray through the day, as I think of things.

I lived for years near the coast, at a little place called Tinonee, near Taree on the Mid North Coast.

Another resident of this village was a Christian man of Scottish descent.  He was the epitome of the Scottish personality (or the way we think of Scottish people being). He was rather a dour man but with a very dry, and sometimes cutting sense of humour.  He did not suffer fools gladly. He was also extremely careful, not just with his money, but with his worldly goods as well.  He was recycling long before it was the norm. Pause….And he was a bit eccentric.

I would often encounter him on my way to and from work on the road from Tinonee to Taree.  He rode a very economical 250cc motorbike. It rains a lot more on the coast than it does here and when it rained, this man was nothing if not inventive;  I would see him riding his motorbike carefully along the road, with his raincoat on…. And to stop his gloves getting wet, he would wear bread bags on his hands. I’m not joking nor jesting, he wore bread bags on his hands (demonstrate) to keep his hands dry. He would insert his gloved hands into the bags and secure them at the wrist and off he’d go.  He didn’t care that it looked a bit silly. He was a very practical gent and I’m sure it was perfectly natural to re-use the bread bags as little raincoats for his gloves.

But what if he just took the bread out of the bag and threw it away?  What if he didn’t actually eat the bread before using the bread bags as glove covers?

So my point is that unless we take the Lord Jesus into our hearts and lives, we will be like my Scottish friend;  we will be just wearing the bread bags without eating the bread.

Ephesians 3:14-21. Stepping stones to the wide, deep love of God

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family^[a] in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

This passage in Ephesians reminds me of a stepping stone journey into God’s love.  Like this picture (show graphic). We are going to venture, metaphorically, across that stream.

The first step is kneeling before God the Father. “For this reason, I kneel before the Father”  To kneel means we acknowledge God’s sovereignty over us.  We submit to God’s authority and are obedient to His precepts and values. This is the crux of the passage.....

It’s about surrender. Surrender also engenders confession;  we tell God the things we’ve done or thought, which are not pleasing to him, and in that surrender and confession, there begins in us a direct connection to God (rather like when our mobile phones show full bars of signal strength. This surrender opens our souls to God and we are now stepping onto the next step:

When we are surrendered to God, He is able to share His strength and power with us. This is an inner strength;  almost a paradox isn’t it? That something which seems weak (the eyes of the world see surrender as being weak), great strength comes. 

It’s about what goes on on the inside of us – anyone can feel close to God when everything’s going well. In fact, we might be beguiled into thinking that this is God’s favour to us and we don’t need to be surrendered to Him.  Sometimes too much sun makes a desert.  But when things are not going well, surrendering all to God is still a wise course because God’s power can overcome anything; the love of God can flow, like healing balm on our bowed heads when we kneel before God, acknowledge his sovereignty, and give thanks in all things.  If we can do this, the power of God to us, is refined and enlivened.

We’re ready to step to our next stone now;  the power of Christ to dwell in us. We can have the very personality of God living in us through the Spirit who will always point us to God. We are really becoming immovable now because with the indwelling Christ, comes the power for our souls to be rooted and established in love (this is a lovely big wide stone we have stepped on to). We are established (grounded, secure).  There are lovely verses in Psalms and Proverbs which talk about our feet being put on higher ground – on a wide and secure place.  I love that term embedded and grounded;  Being grounded means that we are solid, immovable, unable to be washed from the rock of our faith, by any wave of circumstance.  Does anyone remember Pam Ayres.  She writes humourous poems;  one of her most well-known was perhaps “I wish I’d looked after me teeth”.  They are all delivered with the lovely burr of her native Berkshire accent. But when I read these verses in Ephesians, I thought of another of her poems….I am Clamp the Mighty Limpet.  Let me read it to you… just the first few lines:

I am Clamp, the mighty limpet;  I am solid, I am stuck

I am welded to the rock-face with my superhuman suck

I live along the water line and in the dreary caves

I am Clamp the Mighty Limpet;  I am Ruler of the Waves! 

What care I for (stupid) shingle;   for the dragging of the tide,

with my unrelenting sucker and my granite underside?

This is what being rooted and grounded is like.  We become like Clamp the Mighty Limpet because we are stuck by love to the rock of God, no matter what waves of adversity wash over us.

Notice the surrendering comes before the faith and the indwelling Christ.  I think that’s where the Atheists get it so wrong.  They try and prove the existence of God;  they don’t get it that God dwells in us;  it’s about experiencing God, not proving Him first. True faith is an experience.  Yes, we have to know the Bible and the gospel but if we want to know the love of God for ourselves we have to know Jesus, as a living Spirit in our hearts.  We can know the Bible from cover to cover – that’s knowledge, but these verses tell us that God’s love surpasses knowledge. 

From that big stone of Christ indwelling us, we are finally able to step onto the next one and can grasp with others how wide and deep is the love of Christ.

Deep enough to forgive whatever we may have done;

Vast enough to enable us to forgive those who have wronged us

High enough for us to be able to love the unlovely and to be accepting of those who are very different to us, or whose views differ vastly from ours;

Long enough to overcome any temptation;

Wide enough to have victory, joy and inspiration under the most trying of circumstances.  And we are filled with the full measure of God’s riches. 

What are the riches of God?  We could spend a month of Sundays thinking about this, and I’ll leave that for another day. Suffice to say that God’s riches have nothing to do with worldly possessions, so we can’t expect to ask God to win Lotto. They are spiritual assets; the full measure of divine attributes, passed on to us, changing us from glory to glory, from a God who delights in making us holy. 

And finally, we have these lovely concluding verses:

 Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever”

You see, it’s all about God power – his power in us can do much more than we think or imagine.  It’s all about power…..

And it’s all about surrender….

It starts with the first step onto that stone of submission to our heavenly Father God, who then waits for us to invite the Christ to dwell in us, which is really the beginning of the journey to us knowing the wide, deep, grace and mercy of the love of God

Let me close in prayer:

Lord of all, at whose behest the quiet stars and steadfast moon hang in their appointed spaces and who has bequeathed to us the beauty and bounty of the earth;  God of the unfathomed universe and King of the Angel host, we acknowledge that you are Lord of all things;  Sovereign Being. 

But you are also the God who loves us with the full measure of your Being.  We turn to you and ask you to come afresh to our hearts and there begin the fire of healing love to burn;  there begin to be Lord of our hearts, Shepherd of our lives, Guardian of our souls and keeper of our heavenly treasure..  Amen.

What is God's grace like?

I went to the farm today - in Henty, NSW, Australia.  The countryside is quite beautiful at the moment.  The seeds Timmy planted have been beguiled by the recent rain, into sending their tender green shoots up above ground. It turns the whole countryside into parkland.

My grandson and I went out for a walk;  he in his paddock-basher pram and me with my trusty gumboots.  I looked out prospective picnic spots under the grand old pepper trees, within sight of the house.  There are lots of low-slung limbs for climbing too.  There are spots to build a fire and burn a snag;  all the better to eat it, with bread and sausage sauce. And then there are the potential cubby-house spots!  Oh!  The whole place is full of them!

We went down by the creek, where there are also copious picnic spots;  we perused the dam and I gave my 18mth-old grandson a gentle reminder never to go there unless a big person was with him.  Dams are dangerous places for kids, but also hold lots of possibilities, later, when he’s bigger, to go yabbying and chuck rocks in the water, and go tadpole gathering.

We meandered on, and the little bloke's chubby  finger pointed out “tactor”, and “shee”…We finally turned down towards the gate and his little head had dropped and he was asleep.  That’s when  I began to pray.  I asked God to be gracious to a lovely man who is waging a terrible battle with a tumour, at the moment. Even as I prayed, I had to leave room for the thought that he may not win the battle in the way we often think, when we pray such a prayer. 

I realized afresh, that God’s grace is not always about our health or comfort or prosperity.  If we think about God in those terms; only believing in Him when we are healthy and comfortable and prosperous, then if calamity strikes, our relationship with God also breaks down and we disconnect ourselves from the very grace and power which can allow us to overcome that which we battle.  If that happens, we are bereft indeed.

God’s grace is always about our spiritual health.  In this day and age, we rarely think about our spiritual health;  we aren’t concerned any more (like medieval people were) about what will happen to us after we die.  But it’s much more than that too;  God’s grace is always about giving us strength and integrity, so we can live our lives here and now, with richness and compassion and dignity.  It even allows us to pass on that grace to others, though we are in the midst of our own fiercest battles. 

A story of a man who was a long way from home, during the Depression in Australia

This is one of my Dad's stories.  He spent most of his life at Eugowra in the Central West of NSW in Australia.   He left school when he was 13 to save the farm from foreclosure during the Depression, so his Education was a bit scant, but he had a flair for stories....

"This epic concerns and American Negro; who appeared in Eugowra out of the blue, as it’s said. He was a big man;  His name was Harry Esperance, and he'd come from the Deep South in America. If you want proof of his name, have a look in the Presbyterian Church in Eugowra. His name is on one of the chairs near the altar.

He was a decided asset to our little village because he set up his living quarters in what had been the picture theatre;  what was the Imperial theatre.  Built in 1927, it was no sooner completed than it was burnt to the ground. Then rebuilt. A supermarket now occupies what was the Imperial theatre. The old open air picture show building ultimately became the shire depot - after black Harry was laid to rest in the local cemetery.

Black Harry got busy to set up a market garden on the block I once owned. On North St. The house on that block was destroyed by a flood on 18^th May 1950. That date I vividly remember. More of that later; it’s a tale all to itself. Harry got going on the open ground between that house and the old open air pictures premises. He had two green thumbs; the vegetables fairly streamed of that land. People went to him to buy. What Harry got up to was to haul his produce around the district in a covered wagonette. Which, same, today are exhibits in rural museums. It is a four wheel conveyance, usually hauled by a half draught horse. In a pair of shanks. Like on a sulky. Sometimes two horses did the haulage. In which case the wagonette was equipped with a pole; with a horse each side if it. The upper part of it was covered by a canopy, made from heavy canvas, held in shape by a frame of wood. The front part had a bench seat on it, that would seat two. The canvas canopy projected out over that seat. I can vividly remember that wagonette coming into Prospect, apparently with no driver in it. Until it got fairly near. Then a bit of white would be visible. Harry’s teeth showing in a grin like a split in a chaff bag. He, at a distance, was totally invisible against the dark interior of that covered-in conveyance. And, to borrow a line from that old southern, when he arrived he was welcomed hearty. He didn’t get chicken and wine; he got tea and cakes. And sold a lot of what he had for sale. Vegetables.

The annual visit of the circus duly came around. We missed Harry; until the populace started to take their seats. We soon found Black Harry. At that time, the travelling circus shows had their own brass band. No such thing as “canned” music then. Circus hands were expected to be able to ‘double in brass’,  as well as set up the Big Top. A lot of them could. Harry was going for his life on a big brass band instrument, half his size. Playing the paying guests to their seats. Even now, every time I hear the Destiny waltz, I can see Black Harry putting his very soul into that beautiful old waltz. Likewise, The Missouri waltz brings back memories of that man. He never told us about his ability to play those instruments. What we did find out about that man was that he’d been a seaman in the American merchant marine. Also had been a circus hand who could double in brass. Hence his appearance in that circus band. The reason he settled in our little village was his age. He was too old to be a seaman. And the rough life of a circus hand was then beyond him. Because, then, in the depression, there was no such thing as social service. So Harry got himself 224 miles away from the water front. To become a very useful member of our little bush community. We eventually forgot his coal black skin. He was very much respected. And in due course was buried in our cemetery."

John 16:13-15; thoughts on the Holy Spirit.

There is so much to say about the Holy Spirit, let me just think about 2:   firstly, the Spirit will always point us to the Father and the Son. Also, the Spirit will lead us to the truth about God.

These are the words of Jesus:

16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

16:14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

16:15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

The Spirit declares the very heart of the Father to us. As the verses in John say, “all that the father has is mine and I will declare it to you.

The Spirit actually shares God’s very divinity with us.  I’m wondering who is your favourite actor?  I’m a bit of a generation behind my baby boomer peers I think, because I’m a big fan of Jimmy Stewart and Glenn Ford…. Meryl Streep is also a favourite.  Imagine if your favourite actor called you up every week just for a chat;  just to get to know you and vise versa; be a bit hard for Jimmy and Glenn because they are now in that great movie set in the sky…… But the idea of God with us, is us getting to know God;  God sharing his very self with us.  In a nutshell, the Holy Spirit is God’s personality.  He is the means by which we become like God in character.  He’s the essence of holiness. This is sanctification – becoming holy.  We become more and more like God’s character, through the resident, gentle personality of the spirit’. The HS imparts God’s divine persona to us through the fruit of the Spirit – love joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control.

The fruit are all personality and character traits.  When the HS lives in us, all these lovely things become part of our personalities too.  I find this astonishing! These attributes transcend our circumstances and remain with us no matter what happens throughout our lives.

I have a pen pal in England.  She lives in Market Deeping in Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of the UK. She told me once of a visit she made to Ely Cathedral.  This is a huge worship space in Cambridgeshire some 163m long and 21 m wide.  It’s called the “ship of the fens” because it stands so tall in the surrounding flat countryside. 

My friend’s visit occurred on a day when a huge storm hit.  The wind was wild, driving the rain sideways.  She battled her way from the car to the Cathedral as the elements crashed and raged.

But, she said that once she was inside the Cathedral, up in the main part, all was still.  There was a single candle, up on the altar and it burned without a flicker. I want you to imagine now that you are walking into this huge building.  (picture). You are not part of a tourist or worshiping group;  you are alone, and you’ve had a blazing row with someone in your family.

As you approach the Cathedral, it stands like a great monolith; grey and lofty amongst it’s surroundings.

You walk inside, your body has been buffeted by the elements;  the distress of the argument is still fresh and the drive through the terrible weather has left you stressed and frazzled.  But as you walk up the nave, the great sense of space and stillness enclose about you and you feel your anxiety subside a little.   It seems like time itself knows a different, less frantic pace inside this vaulted cavern.  You look up into the roof space and let your eyes adjust to the different light there.  You look up at each stained glass window in turn;  the light is transformed through this aged glass, to a muted, gentle candescence, not so much less significant, as changed and more impressive somehow. Outside, you know the storm is still throwing itself at this ancient place but the candle on the altar burns serene and untroubled by it.

You walk to a seat on the outside aisle.  You sit there, your heart still pounding, but your agitation powerless and feeble now, defeated by the atmosphere of the place; absorbed and muffled.  You can feel it held at bay, like a raised fist held back by some unseen hand. You sit there, suspended serenely now in the repose of this place.  The candles burn without a flicker;  there is just the silence and the now-calm rhythm of your own breathing.

This is what living with the supremacy of the Holy Spirit is like.

Sometimes our journey takes us through sunny countryside with gentle meanderings and peaceful stopovers;  sometimes we encounter terrible storms where thunder and lightning shatter our senses and driving wind and rain knock us off course.   The HS is like this Cathedral space; it encloses us and it keeps us centred on God;  stilled and grounded in the fiercest of our life’s storms, so that the inner candle of our soul still burns clear and unflinching.  God is the constant in all our changes – an absolutely unbroken, immovable, unquenchable Being.  So, it doesn’t matter what storms we encounter, we can be kept secure in love, joy, peace patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

So, if we think of these attributes being with us in our darkest moments, we will still have love even when people treat us badly, and we can respond with love, the way the Bible teaches;  when we face some kind of temptation, we have access, through the Spirit to self-control so we can stay away from those evils which might tempt our appetites. When we suffer terrible loss, we can still have joy, even in the face of tragedy because the divinity of God’s personality can transcend our earthly experiences. We can have peace in the face of worry;  patience in times of illness, etc. Astonishing. We worship an astonishing God, who shares the truth about himself with us.

Windmills and other stuff

I did Pastoral Care at my local hospital recently. There is a team of us, almost exclusively Christian people, from most of the mainstream churches,  who visit people in hospital, from a list compiled by the Hospital Chaplain.  The patients must first have consented to a visit, when they filled out the admission paperwork. I always come away feeling glad to have mingled with all sorts of people.

Some are very ill, like the little girl receiving Chemo;  some are ill from lifestyle choices;  some are in for “repairs”, and some are just sick from various ailments, like the man who said he had gout.  He told me he was going home that day and suggested that I might like to take care of him at home.  Hmmm… the thought of doing what he had in mind, with a 200 kg sleaze was strangely unappealing. And I wanted to say, as Julia Roberts did, sarcastically, to the book thief who tries to chat her up in the movie Notting Hill.  “thanks… but ….. No”.  Instead,  I remained doggedly polite and told him that unfortunately I could only offer pastoral care.

One couple sat by their child’s bedside with a sort of closed detachment and it wasn't because their child was very ill – he was about to be discharged. I got the feeling this was their usual state. They were neither hostile nor pleased. They were absolutely unsmiling and the woman gave one-syllable answers to my polite attempts at conversation. When I said I was part of the Pastoral Care team, I don’t think they knew what that was.  They were, what would be described in the middle class world as “rough”, from a low income area, and the woman in particular, seemed to have a sort of brutish nonchalance about her.

I am still very much learning how to  enter only as far into someone’s personal arena, as they are comfortable with. I never want to intrude or push them to a place they don’t want to go.  I am learning how to gently stand on the barrier of their world and wait to be trusted enough to be allowed a step further.  So I stayed outside their wariness and moved on. I got the impression that this brief encounter with someone whose outlook on life held a large cavern of spiritual awareness, was as close a spiritual encounter as they had ever had. Perhaps for a brief moment the breath of God wafted near;  for them I think it was a completely unknown arena – they lived their lives completely on the physical plane – and it doesn’t do to make them step into that other place, unless invited.

Another old gent told me he had, among other things, mended windmills for a living.  He was, in fact, what’s known as “a jack of all trades” and I always have a sneaking respect for people like this.  I loved the thought of such a practical and wind-powered (yay!) mechanism being expertly repaired, out in the stubbled paddocks with the still, hot breath of the bush all around;  the caw of the crows and the bleat of the sheep, the only sounds.  Sometimes the paddocks would flaunt the exquisite green of newly emerged grain crops , and sometimes the clack and rattle of the giant harvester would be tracking it’s way through wheat and canola. I know I’m romanticising it – it would actually have been very hard work, climbing up and down the windmill and working with metal which would be so cold in winter and so hot in summer.  But I’m sure there were times he would stop and just absorb the stillness;  I know I would.

And at the end of my visiting, I got a coffee at a nearby coffee place;  it's well frequented by all the surrounding medical community, and I was bemused by the variety of people jostling for space in the tiny café – the young nurse in navy pants and top getting coffees for a few others on the ward;  the huddle of Very Important Young Doctors, their stethoscope badges of recognition slung casually around their necks.

And the group of about 6 young tradies from the new hospital work-site, all getting their smoko food.  As I walked out they had adjourned to a table outside where they joked and jostled like school kids – well… they were, after all, not much more than that.  It would never have happened even a few years ago – this mixing of so very different work groups – tradies and doctors sharing the same eatery.  Love that.

As I took my coffee away, I ran into a lady from my church, and her husband, who were seated outside.  She is a very regular attender but he never comes and I hadn't met him before.  After a few minutes my friend mentioned that she wouldn't be at church on Sunday because she had was having a health issue.  He quipped “I’m sure God won’t mind”. I’m also sure He won’t mind. Her husband added that some people who go to church are not very nice people.  I had to agree with him there too. (And I couldn't help noticing how quickly the conversation took a spiritual turn, even though I’d not initiated it;  so different from the other couple who had looked at me with such a blank and disengaged stare).

Some of the nastiest, most cowardly people I've ever met have been regular churchgoers. It could be the reason that most people don’t go anymore – because some time in the past they have been bruised by just such a person. Shame, that.

I try and focus on the nice ones – and they are by far and away still in the majority – the ones who have allowed the indwelling Christ to sweeten their souls and give them a love which shows itself in how they treat others.

I leave the other kind to God, hoping one day the penny will drop and they will realize Christianity is never so lifeless as when it’s just a set of rules and “bible-based head knowledge”. People who live like that can never have their characters refined and sweetened because they have never connected their souls to the living Christ. It’s about releasing all we are to the mercy and grace of God, through Christ and the Holy Spirit, so we grow more and more like him;  rich with the same love and grace.