Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on 20 October 2024, by Revd Steve Gaultney The scripture readings that day were Hosea 14:5-8; Romans 12:9-13

“A Way of Being in the World”

It is a joy being here with you this morning.  As Maggie mentioned I work at the University of Hong Kong now, but before that Marian and I served at Community Church in Sheung Wan for 11 years.  That’s where I first met Phyllis and Maggie and Judith and many of you.  And I’m honored to follow you in the pulpit Judith and to follow you in my theological studies with Tobias.  Our New Testament passage finishes with ‘practice hospitality’ and I thought of your book! 

And Kowloon Union, I have always been so impressed with the good work you were and are doing in serving the community and in social justice.  I have admired you from afar, so let me encourage you in person as a church to keep it up; keep leading us in this area.  Social justice can be tough work.  There is a book called “Slow Kingdom Coming” about social justice work, and it can be discouraging, but keep up the good work!

At the University of Hong Kong where I work, I help lead the university’s character leadership program for undergraduates.  We have over 500 students in the program and 100 mentors, and here’s a few photos of our Lead for Life family.  These photos were taken two weekends ago at the launch of our Year 1 cohort which has about 180 students.  Here they are all dressed up for their High Table Dinner.  And here’s a photo of my family.  Slightly less people but also dressed up.  This was at my son’s wedding in June, and mainly I wanted to show you this so that I could brag on my new daughter-in-law!  

Actually…I wanted to show you these photos because the gospel is about daily lives:  our work, our serving, our families, weddings, funerals, births and baptisms – about life.  How we spend our days.  Christianity is a way of our being in the world, a way of being in our homes, our schools, our workplaces wherever we spend our time each week.  So, the question is what do these two passages, one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament, have to say about our lives when we leave this place?  What is the Sunday-Monday connection?  How will what we talk about today at 11am make a difference tomorrow wherever we will be at 11am?   

The Old Testament answer to that question is only five words, and it’s found in the beautiful, prophetic and poetic passage of flourishing from Hosea which is encouraging to us as individuals: “He will blossom like a lily.  Like a cedar of Lebanon, he will send down his roots: his young shoots will grow.  His splendor will be like an olive tree…” And encouraging words to the church, to the community, as well, “they will flourish like the grain”.  But the five words come towards the end of the passage.  Five words that I pray the Lord will plant in our hearts as we live in one of the fastest paced cities in the world that is constantly calling out, ‘work harder’.  A world that tells us how to be in it and this is:be busy.  And in this context these five words are also for our communities: for Kowloon Union, for Faith and Global Engagement.  

Five words not from me, but from God himself as he speaks to his prophet, and says, “your fruitfulness come from me”.  So maybe just hear the Lord speaking over you, saying, “your fruitfulness come from me”.  And rest in those words when you feel you have to do it all yourself” – when you feel “if it’s going to be; it’s up to me”.  We all want to be fruitful in our lives and in our work, and that is natural and good.  The prophecy of Hosea is one of flourishing; and Jesus came saying I came so that you might have life and life to the full: flourishing.  But our fruitfulness comes from the Lord.  Some months ago, I came across this passage at the end of a long day, in the midst of a busy season, and I felt it was God himself speaking those five words into my tired soul: your fruitfulness comes from me.  Definitely a word in season for me; that’s why I brought it to you, and maybe it’s a word for all of us in the sleepless city of hard work and good hearts.  Hear again the five words from God: ‘your fruitfulness comes from me’.

So, if our fruitfulness comes from the Lord, then what do we do?  And that brings us to our second sentence.  Romans is such an amazing book, and Paul soars to these amazing theological and spiritual heights especially in the Chapters 8 and 12.  The whole of chapter 12 is amazing, but 12:12 is one of my favorite verses.  It is a “go to” verse in my life and in my ministry when I’m unsure of what to do or even what to be, and then I hear Romans 12:12, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer”.  How shall we be as Christians in this world.  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer – maybe that’s a word for someone here today wondering what they can do in tough times; and during the times when we don’t feel like we’re ‘blossoming like a lily’.

Be joyful in hope.  If you have young kids or are just young at heart you might have seen the movie Inside Out, about how our emotions are always at play, and to know that you and I need joy to get through the day!  And not to necessarily be joyful in the situation, we can’t always do that, but to be joyful in the hope of what is coming.  St Aquinas in the 13 Century described hope as future, difficult, good and possible.  Hope is in the future as we don’t hope for what we already have; it is difficult in that we mainly hope when times are difficult; hope is good – you don’t hope for something bad and hope is possible – it’s not wishful thinking, and in Jesus Christ all things are possible.  At that High Table Dinner I showed you the photo of, the speaker was from Oxford and spoke about hope and how it’s different from optimism which always looks at the bright side of life while hope looks straight at the difficulties and still moves forward.  Our Lead for Life Character Leadership team has just developed a Four-H model for helping our students develop character in our head (cognition), our heart (emotions), our hands (actions) and in hope – that our character leadership – yours and mine as well - might be a transforming means of giving people and communities hope.  Be joyful in hope.

Be patient in affliction.  Times of joy; times of patience.  Our Provost also spoke at that dinner, and he spoke about how when he started his academic career, it was all about IQ, and then it became about EQ, and now it’s all about AQ – Adversity Quotient – our ability to face adversity.  We don’t always think of it, but patience is a form of courage.   Patience is not Aristotle’s militaristic courage of battle, but the deeper and longer courage of endurance.  As Mary Anne Radmacher shares, “Courage doesn’t always roar.  Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” Be patient in affliction.

Be faithful in prayer.  There’s an academic at Yale who has managed to write four books on effectively one word.  And these are not small books like books of poetry or Henri Nouwen books, but more like door-stopper books.  Her name is Teresa Morgan, and the word is the word we just read, ‘pistis’ or ‘faith’ or faithful in prayer.  She became interested in the word because she wondered what the word really meant in the time of the Romans and the early church of the New Testament.  I work for an organization at HKU named Faith and Global Engagement, and when we think of faith in that context we think of a set of beliefs and maybe the institution of the church and clergy or about global religions…but what Morgan found was in the street Greek of the New Testament, it meant simply ‘trust’…to have faith in Jesus is to simply trust him, like a friend.  To be faithful is to be trustworthy in prayer – we can count on you to pray, and when you do, your trust in Jesus grows.  I have found that all the greats in faith – in trust – at some point wrote a book about prayer because they knew prayer is where the fruit comes from. Be faithful in prayer. If you think about it, it was actually in a prayer that God said to Hosea, “your fruitfulness comes from me”.

So that takes us back to where we began. “Your fruitfulness comes from me”; “be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer”, but there is something missing.  We have fruitfulness – we have the lasting fruit of hope and the lasting fruit of faith or trust, but we’re missing the ‘greatest of these’ – love.  But not really because the whole of Romans 9-20 is an expression of love including love for our enemies.  Verse 9 actually starts with love, ‘love must be sincere’.

Paul would say in Galatians 5:6, “one thing matters and that is faith expressing itself in love”, and Jesus’ teaching has been summed up with ‘wake up and love’.  And Jesus summed up everything in love of God, others and yourself.  Love is really the only metric – the only measurement of what we do as followers of Christ.  If we get up from prayer or come from worship, are we more loving? In my sermon notebook here, I have a quote from a mentor, “truly great preaching is always a form of love”.  Of course, you know this, so I don’t need to go on.

Christianity is a way of being in the world.  How shall we be in our world this week? Let’s be mindful that our fruitfulness comes from God.  Let’s be joyful in hope; be patient in affliction; be faithful in prayer.  One day when Jesus was teaching, a woman was overcome with what she heard, and she cried out suddenly, ‘blessed is the one who gave you birth and nursed you!” (That has never happened when I have been teaching :) But Jesus said, ‘no, rather blessed is the one who hears the word and does it.’  Be joyful in hope; patient in affliction; faithful in prayer.  May we be blessed in the doing of the word this week, and may our fruitfulness come from him.  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on 13 October 2024, by Rev. Judy Chan. The scripture readings that day were SS: Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Hebrews 4:12-16

Sermon: “By the Grace of God”

Kowloon Union Church - 13 Oct 2024

SS: Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Hebrews 4:12-16

Good morning. 

Most of us I think welcome good news. When someone says, “I’ve got good news,” we’re all ears. Bring it on! But what if someone says, “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”

For me, I’d rather hear the bad news first. 

There’s a story about a church pastor who decided to do just that. One Sunday morning he told his congregation: “I’ve got both good news and bad news for you.” The people brace themselves. “The bad news is last night’s storm blew a hole in the church roof. There’s a lot of water damage in the upstairs classrooms.” The people sigh.

“But there’s good news,” he goes on. “The good news is that we have all the money we need to repair the damage.” The congregation smiles. 

“However,” the pastor adds, “the bad news is that the money is in your pockets.”

We laugh, but isn’t this how life usually goes? Sometimes good news, sometimes bad, some we have control over, some we don’t. 

I think that’s what we have in today’s Epistle lesson from Hebrews. Good news and bad news – encouragement and warning, some things we have control over, some things we don’t. So, let’s dig in, OK?

In Hebrews 4:12 we read: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword.…” Oh dear. The word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword. What does that mean? I always thought the ‘word of God’ here referred to the Bible. But scholars say actually it’s more than that…it’s not just Scripture though that’s one way we hear God speaking. And it’s not exactly like John 1:1 where Jesus is the eternal Word.

The word of God here in essence means God’s voice, God’s presence, really God’s very self. It’s depicted as sharper than a double-bladed knife because it cuts through more than our physical body. It pierces our very soul. The word of God cuts us open and exposes everything inside. It lays bare the naked truth about who we really are. Hebrews tells us nothing is hidden from God – nothing. Think about that. Nothing is hidden from God.

Does that make you tremble? More precisely does it make you tremble with fear? Or tremble with relief? Because we all have our secrets, don’t we?  We all have parts of our lives that we keep hidden, especially in church, where we’re on our ‘best’ behavior. Some of these secrets are too painful to share, others too embarrassing to admit. And we’re afraid, aren’t we? I know I am. I’m afraid of being judged and condemned.

But, declares Hebrews, if we care so much what others will say, how much more should we care what almighty God says! Because whatever judgment or condemnation society renders, fair or unfair, God’s verdict is far more important.  So, whether we choose to listen now or never to the word of God, one day we’ll have to give an account – a full account of our lives to the One who knows all and sees all, the One who knows us better than we know ourselves. Who can possibly stand up to such scrutiny? 

Well, frankly, we can’t on our own. But we can pray – pray we get the best public defender out there, pray we get the most sympathetic judge in town, pray we get one person – just one person on the jury who understands what we’ve gone through. 

Well, guess what? God has answered our prayers! Here’s how the Message Bible puts it:

^14-16 Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

Take the mercy, accept the help.

Now that sounds like an offer we can’t refuse, doesn’t it? But surprisingly, or maybe not so much, some people hesitate. Why? Maybe they really don’t like asking for help. Maybe they think it’s no use. Maybe they’re scared the answer will be no. We can’t come boldly to the throne of grace unless we’re confident the answer is yes. 

Friends, be bold! For this is sure: In Jesus Christ, God says Yes over and over again. “My grace is sufficient for you,” 2 Corinthians 12:9. Or as we sang “Your grace is enough, your grace is enough, your grace is enough for me.” That’s God’s promise – now and forever. You can depend on it!

That said, however, these truths that must be learned again and again. Because, as we know, life is a continuous cycle of good news and bad news. What do we do then when the bad news overwhelms the good news? When the bad news seems relentless? In those moments, we may wonder, “Is God’s grace enough for me? Or did God just pass me by?” Oh, you may think, I’ll never reach that point!

Let me tell you about someone who did reach that point. Her name is Madison Pierce. She said growing up as a Christian, she never doubted the sufficiency of God’s grace. Then as an adult, she was hit with debilitating pain and illness that would not stop. At its worst, it felt like someone had duct taped weights to her limbs. Every step was excruciating. Some days she wept when she had to climb stairs in her house and go to bed.  

She vividly remembers a service in church where everyone was standing, arms lifted up, singing, yes, “Your grace is enough.” But she just couldn’t. She sat stone silent, alternating between rage and despair. 

Sure, Jesus suffered, she reasoned, but the worst was only for one week. Hers had lasted for 10 years…with no end in sight. Ironically, at the time, she was trying to finish her PhD in New Testament at Durham University – and her thesis topic: Divine speech in Hebrews! If she somehow managed to finish, she cried out, was it all in vain? How could she possibly reach her dream to be a seminary professor one day?

Pierce says in the end, it was her study of Hebrews and another friend with chronic illness that saved her. Yes, Jesus is our great high priest sitting in glory at the right hand of the Father. But he is also our Brother who must have experienced pain throughout his whole life. 

What do the Gospels tell us? He knew hunger, exhaustion, harassment, family conflict, grief, betrayal, abandonment, you name it. As the Son of God and the Son of Man, what pain did he not comprehend? 

Once she realized this, Pierce says it completely changed her outlook. Dragging herself up the stairs, forcing her legs forward inch by inch, she fixed her eyes on Jesus as Hebrews 12:2 urges us to do. But when she looked, Jesus wasn’t sitting comfortably at the top, waiting. Jesus was dragging himself up the stairs too. He was weary and in pain. And he was with her. 

She wrote: “This picture of solidarity transformed me. God was not asking me to endure anything that he had not endured himself. As I fixed my eyes on him, I realized that I could now see him more clearly, but he had never lost sight of me.” 

Madeline Pierce says she’s not sure if she has found the ‘right’ answer to the question of what God’s grace is sufficient for. But when those words hurt, she can say, “Your grace is sufficient for me because you are with me.”[1]

Friends, God has not passed us by. Take the mercy. Accept the help. Then pass it on!

Great is Your faithfulness, O God
You wrestle with the sinner's restless heart
You lead us by still waters and to mercy
And nothing can keep us apart

So remember Your people
Remember Your children
Remember Your promise, O God

Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough
Your grace is enough 

For me, for you, for everyone.

Amen

 

 

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on 6 October 2024, by Rev. Phyllis Wong. The scripture readings that day were Psalm 8; Mark 10:2-16    

Sermon - Humans – Blessed Are You!