The Father’s call and the Spirit’s empowering

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Andrew’s Wickford:

Jesus’ baptism marks the point at which he was commissioned for his public ministry (Matthew 3. 13-18). Through his baptism, he is publicly affirmed by John the Baptist, who says that Jesus is the one for whom he has been waiting, and by God himself, as the dove of the Spirit descended on him and the Father said, This is my own dear Son, with whom I am pleased.” Following his baptism, he goes into the desert, where he is tested by the Devil, before returning to begin his ministry by quoting Isaiah as his public manifesto in the synagogue at Nazareth.

In the contemporary paraphrase of the Bible called ‘The Message’ we read of Jesus saying to John the Baptist, who questioned the need for Jesus’ baptism, “Do it. God’s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.” In his baptism, Jesus was equipped by the Spirit to carry out the work of putting all things right and he was affirmed in the rightness of this work when the Father said, “This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.” Following his baptism, Jesus knew he was in a partnership with God working to put the world to rights.

Let’s explore those two aspects of Jesus’ baptism – the Father’s call and the Spirit’s empowering – in a little more detail this morning.

The Father’s call is about the question, ‘Who am I?’ The answer to that question was given to Jesus as soon as he came up out of the waters of baptism. As he did so, he saw heaven opening, the Spirit coming down on him like a dove, and he heard a voice from heaven saying, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.” As he was baptised, he was immediately affirmed as God’s Son.

It is easy for us to think that that only applies to Jesus. That it was a special word spoken by God the Father especially to him and, on one level, no doubt it was. But the Bible makes it quite clear that Jesus laid down his life to make us one with God so that, as Christians, we are Jesus’ brothers and sisters, members of the same family – God’s family – and co-heirs with Jesus of everything that he has. Listen to what St Paul says about this in Romans 8:

“Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children. For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, Father! my Father! God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children. Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him …”

Take a moment, to let those words sink into your hearts and minds. You are a child of God, you are a brother or sister of Jesus, you are loved, you are valued, you are blessed. This is the Father’s call to us, as it was to Jesus. It is transformative to know that we are loved and accepted by our Father God.

The Spirit’s empowering is to do with the question, ‘Why am I here?’ and that question too is answered in this reading. After he is baptised, Jesus has a time of preparation in the desert and then begins to preach the Good News from God. He had a God-given task to complete, a reason for his existence and a meaning for his life. The same is true for us. Listen to St Paul again, this time from 1 Corinthians 12:

“There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit gives them. There are different ways of serving, but the same Lord is served. There are different abilities to perform service, but the same God gives ability to all for their particular service. The Spirit's presence is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.”

For each one of us, the Spirit’s presence is shown in us in some way for the good of all. Take a moment, to let those words sink into your hearts and minds. You have been given the abilities you need for your particular service. The Spirit's presence is shown in some way in you for the good of all. Your life has meaning and purpose because God has work that only you can do.

These two aspects of his baptism were vital for Jesus because he then experienced significant testing in the wilderness when he was tempted by the Devil. He was able to go through that experience and emerge victorious because he had been affirmed and equipped by God through his baptism. Re-emerging from the desert to begin God’s work, he could then explain what he was about to do in words taken from the prophecies of Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour."

These words describe what God’s work involves, the work of putting the world to rights.

As those who follow Jesus, we are the body of Christ – the hands, eyes, mouth, ears, feet and hands of Jesus in our world. Therefore, we have the task to undertake. We are called to the same job of work and need the same resource. Whatever our role in life, we are called to work together with God in our shared task of putting the world to rights. Each of us can consider how our day-to-day lives could contribute to this task – for example, through care for family and friends, through visiting those who are unwell or elderly, through consistent prayer for people and places in need, through generosity in our giving to those in need, and so on.

To do this we need to know that we are loved and accepted by our Heavenly Father and also to be equipped and led by the Holy Spirit. Led by the Spirit, our work can involve creativity, care and collaboration; biblical signs that work is undertaken in partnership with God. Jesus says to us what he said to John, “Do it. God’s work, putting things right all these centuries, is coming together right now in this baptism.” May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Duvall - Gimme Some Light.

Jubilee - The work of releasing others from sin and debt

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine’s Wickford:

When we have a General or Local Election, I wonder whether you read the manifestos of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often, they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them.

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List:

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.” (http://labourlist.org/2013/02/why-manifestos-still-matter-even-if-nobody-reads-them/)

The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth the morning we have just heard about (Luke 4: 16 - 24) was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here, he actually did in the course of his ministry. He did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes.

Jesus’ manifesto is taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression. What Jesus is proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–2.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he had created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways, we do not do away with gods altogether instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. A contemporary example of this happening in practice is Debt Justice, formerly the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is part of a global movement demanding freedom from the slavery of unjust debts and a new financial system that puts people first. Originally inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, Debt Justice works for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4, he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he will not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he will be like. We can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards campaigns like Debt Justice? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt? Amen.

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Bruce Cockburn - Call It Democracy.

Manifestos do matter

Here's the sermon I preached yesterday at St Catherine’s Wickford:

When we have a General or Local Election I wonder whether you read the manifestos of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them. 

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List: 

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.” 

However, manifestos do matter, as has been proved this week when Suella Braverman’s resignation letter stating: “I have concerns about the direction of this government. Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this Government's commitment to honouring manifesto commitments” was one of several factors leading to the resignation of Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

The passage from Isaiah that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth, as we heard in our Gospel reading (Luke 4: 16 - 24), was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here, he actually did in the course of his ministry. In contrast to many, or perhaps most, politicians, he did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes.

Jesus’ manifesto was taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, the inability to see clearly, and oppression. What Jesus was proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another. In other words, the whole of society had a restart and those who had lost out in the previous 49 were enable to begin again with a clean slate and their lost resources.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee in practice and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways, we do not do away with God or gods altogether, instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. One example of this happening in practice was the Jubilee 2000 campaign which was a movement that took the issue of debt to the forefront of mainstream politics in the years leading up to the millennium and after. Inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, Jubilee 2000 worked for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity. The global Jubilee 2000 campaign won $130 billion of debt cancellation for lower income countries which led to significant improvements to public services such as healthcare and education. Though this was an important victory, the structural causes that keep debt crises happening again and again, remained in place and so Debt Justice continue to campaign for systemic change today.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4, he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he would not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he would be like. This Bible Sunday we can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible, both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people, they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards campaigns like that for Debt Justice? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt?

Last Wednesday the Church remembered Henry Martyn, Translator of the Scriptures. Born in Truro in 1781, Henry Martyn went up to Cambridge at the age of sixteen. He became an avowed evangelical and his friendship with Charles Simeon led to his interest in missionary work. In 1805, he left for Calcutta as a chaplain to the East India Company. The expectation was that he would minister to the British expatriate community, not to the indigenous peoples; in fact, there was a constant fear of insurrection and even the recitation of Magnificat at Evensong was forbidden, lest 'putting down the mighty from their seats' should incite the indigenous peoples. Henry set about learning the local languages and then supervised the translation of the New Testament first into Hindi and then into Persian and Arabic, as well as preaching and teaching in mission schools. He understood that Jesus’ manifesto, like the Magnificat, meant freedom and release for all people everywhere. May we realise and live out that same truth too. Amen.  

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Iain Archer - Everything I've Got.

A Nazareth Manifesto

'At the interface of critical academic reflection and faithful church theology, we have no better voice than that of Sam Wells. He invites us to rethink, from the ground up, our abiding temptation to condescending “help and service” to others. He compellingly renders a more excellent way toward the transformative “with.”' Walter Brueggemann

Last Friday I was at the launch of Sam's latest book, A Nazareth Manifesto, which is an eloquent and impassioned ecumenical proposal for re-envisioning Christianity’s approach to social engagement away from working “for” the people to being “with” them. The book questions the effectiveness of the current trend of intervention as a means of fixing the problems of people in distressed and disadvantaged circumstances. Sam argues that Jesus spent 90% of his life simply being among the people of Nazareth, sharing their hopes and struggles, therefore Christians should place a similar emphasis on being alongside people in need rather than hastening to impose solutions.

This is a particularly significant book because Sam maintains 'that the word with is the most important word in theology.' The book 'is an enquiry into whether with is the pervading theme that runs through Trinity, creation, incarnation, atonement, the sending of the Spirit, ecclesiology, and eschatology.' Additionally, Sam argues that the human project in the West has been to secure life against limitation in general and mortality in particular, but that such efforts have only deepened the true predicament, which is isolation.' 

A Nazareth Manifesto comes out of Sam's experience of trying to lead influential institutions in ways that bring about empowering and dignifying relationships with people experiencing social disadvantage.

Jean Vanier said in his Templeton Prize acceptance remarks: 'A Nazareth Manifesto reveals that Jesus came to teach us, not just to do things for people who are homeless, but to be with them. Yes, that is the real secret of the church, and the secret of our communities, and hopefully one day it will be the secret of all humanity, to be with.


To be with is to live side by side, it is enter into mutual relationships of friendship and concern. It is to laugh and to cry together, it is to mutually transform each other. Each person becomes a gift for the other, revealing to each other that we are all part of a huge and wonderful family, the family of God.'

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Sydney Carter - I Come Like A Beggar.

The Year of Jubilee

When we have a General or Local Election I wonder whether you read the manifesto’s of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them.

The political parties know this, as is demonstrated by this quote from a post entitled Why manifestos still matter (even if nobody reads them) from Labour List:

“Given the amount of time and effort that goes into producing election manifestos, the number of people who actually read them is frighteningly small. Every campaign, parties make determined efforts to get them onto shelves but their sales hardly threaten JK Rowling or even the authors of well-known political diaries (still available in all good book shops) ….

But for the millions of voters who decide the election outcome … well for the overwhelming majority, life’s too short.”

The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4. 16 - 24) was the manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God. We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here he actually did in the course of his ministry. He did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes. 

Jesus’ manifesto was taken from Isaiah 61 and is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression. What Jesus is proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

The word ‘jubilee’ stems from the Hebrew word ‘Yobel’, which refers to the ram or ram’s horn with which jubilee years were proclaimed. In Leviticus it states that such a horn or trumpet is to be blown on the tenth day of the seventh month after the lapse of ‘seven Sabbaths of years’ (49 years) as a proclamation of liberty throughout the land of the tribes of Israel. The year of jubilee was a consecrated year of ‘Sabbath-rest’ and liberty. During this year all debts were cancelled, lands were restored to their original owners and family members were restored to one another.

The people listening to Jesus knew about Jubilee but had never heard anything like his statement before. What Jesus was saying and how he was saying it was astonishing. They had heard teachers talk of the law before but this was something so amazing that they were in awe. Jesus was in another league because he claimed to be the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 61:1–2.

Jesus stated that he had come to ‘proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4:18–19). That is the year of jubilee and so Jesus proclaimed his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he had created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways we do not do away with gods altogether instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

This isn’t something that is just for us as individuals however. It is also something which can impact all of society. After all, the Old Testament Jubilee was intended for the nation of Israel, not simply individuals within it. A contemporary example of this happening in practice is the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is part of a global movement demanding freedom from the slavery of unjust debts and a new financial system that puts people first. Inspired by the ancient concept of ‘jubilee’, the Jubilee Debt Campaign works for a world where debt is no longer used as a form of power by which the rich exploit the poor. Freedom from debt slavery is a necessary step towards a world in which our common resources are used to realise equality, justice and human dignity. It is particularly important that we think about such things at the end of One World Week where people from diverse backgrounds have been coming together to learn about global justice, to spread that learning and to use it to take action for justice locally and globally.

We can see from all this that, in order to understand what our release means, we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4 he defended himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he used the Bible to tell the Devil what he will not be like and here, in the synagogue, he used the Bible to tell everyone what he will be like. We can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.     

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Will it be the cynicism or distrust that some feel towards events like One World Week? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us and involvement in his work of releasing others from sin and from debt?

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U2 - Beautiful Day. 

Manifesto for release

When we have a General or Local Election I wonder whether you read the manifesto’s of the candidates that you are able to vote for. I guess that most of us don’t. Often they are quite wordy and many people don’t believe a word that is written in them.

The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth was his manifesto for his ministry and for the kingdom of God (Luke 4. 14 - 21). We would do well not to ignore this manifesto because what Jesus spoke about here he actually did in the course of his ministry. He did exactly what it says on the tin, as the advert goes.

Jesus’ manifesto is all about release. Release from poverty, imprisonment, blindness and oppression. What Jesus is proclaiming would have been recognised by his hearers as the announcement of the Year of Jubilee – “the time when the Lord shall come to save his people.”

In the Old Testament Law the year of Jubilee came every 50 years and in this year property reverted to its original owners, debts were remitted, and Hebrews who had been enslaved for debt were released. Jesus is proclaiming his coming and the coming of God’s kingdom as the time of Jubilee – a time of release for all people from those things that enslave us and trap us.

Each one of us is a slave to sin and blind to the truth about God because we have chosen to live selfish lives turning our backs on God and the way of life that he had created for human beings to live. In turning away from God’s ways we do not do away with gods altogether instead our desires run riot and we become slaves to them worshipping other gods; whether they come in the form of money, sex, celebrity or whatever.

Jesus comes to free us from all of these enslavements and to open our eyes to the way in which God created human beings to live; loving God with all our being and loving our neighbours as ourselves.

In order to understand what our release means we need to be people who know and understand the Bible. Chapter 4 of Luke’s gospel shows us clearly that Jesus was immersed in the Hebrew scriptures and saw them as speaking about himself. When he was tempted by the Devil at the beginning of Chapter 4 he defends himself by quoting from the Bible. In that passage he is using the Bible to tell the Devil what he will not be like and here, in the synagogue, he uses the Bible to tell everyone what he will be like. We can do the same if we read and understand what God is saying to us in the Bible both about those things from which our lives need to be freed and those things to which we need to dedicate our lives, talents and time.     

The people who heard Jesus were, initially, impressed by what he said but as they realised that Jesus intended this Jubilee to be for all people they rejected him and tried to kill him. What will our response to Jesus’ manifesto be? Will it be the rejection that he experienced from the people of Nazareth? Will it be the apathy and disbelief that we accord to most political manifestos? Or will it be acceptance of the release from slavery to sin that Jesus offers to us?

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T. Bone Burnett - The Murder Weapon.