Friday 20 May

1 Samuel 5:1-7:17

This is not just religious activity.  This is not just about our actions.  This is Ebenezer.  This is about the God of Israel acting as a real live personality within this world.  God is not some distant spirit or a vague idea.  He is impressing himself upon this world robustly and repeatedly.  He smashes down the statue of Dagan, he afflicts Ashdod, Gath and Ekron with Tumors, he causes the cows to carry the ark straight to Israel’s land.  All of these things happen without a single follower of God being involved.  God is well able to defend himself.  God is well able to achieve his purposes in the world without the faintest hint of our help.  This has long been a Vineyard value.  “Let go and let God”, “God grows the Christian”, “Come Holy Spirit”.  They are all founded upon this remarkable idea that God has power on this earth to pursue purposes for his people.  It is a really liberating thing to accept that we are joining in God’s activity.  It means we can feel free to watch to see what he is doing before getting all rattled about the 1001 things we feel we need to do for Him.  I can’t help thinking about the Kevin Prosch song “His Banner Over me” which has the line in it - “You do all things well, just look at our lives”.  I’ve been places previously where they added an “and” into the middle to change the meaning such that it draws a comparison between God doing things well and us doing things rubbish; “you do all things well and just look at our lives”. Now I’m sure he could have written the line like that and it would have been theologically OK but to change the line from what Prosch wrote to this is surely a problem.  Surely that change is a denial of Ebenezer.  Surely it denies that God has had traction on our lives, that he has actually set our feet upon the rock and bestowed upon us all the riches of the heavenly realms.   Surely it denies the fact that God is smashing Dagons around us and is bringing the Ark of his presence into our midst.  Surely it is a denial of God being mighty and powerful and rampantly active in this world.   Let us long hold onto the truth of Ebenezer.  Without that, we are just performing religious activities.

John 11:45-12:11

Way back at the start of this gospel we compared John to a film director montaging together defining moments of his hero’s life.  Now it seems that this film is a tragedy.  It looked so much like it would be a thriller with Jesus coming out narrowly victorious in his fractious clash with the Pharisees.  But no.  John decides now is the time to drop in the spoilers about Caiaphas’ prophecy and Judas’ betrayal and Jesus’ anointing for burial.  Clearly most readers of the gospel will already have known the story went this way but it is fascinating that John chose only to bring it into the narrative at this point.  He obviously felt that he wanted to display the full extent of Jesus’ grandeur before bringing in the difficult fact of his death.  I guess this may validate our general approach to telling other people about Jesus - of first exposing them to his unrivalled greatness and majestic love and then leading them to the cross for repentance.  The truth is that Jesus is so great and the thing he did was so significant that people couldn’t help themselves but be caught up into it.  Some got caught up in support, wittingly or not, affirming that he would die for all the people and putting their faith in him.  Others got caught up in defiance, seeking to kill him or Lazarus, or finding themselves rebelling against his claims to be more important even than money.  This story of John’s remains the biggest show in town.  It continues to be one that captures people in defiance or support.  And, while it may seem like a tragedy, we know it has got the most almighty twist at the end.

Proverbs 12:18-27

A kind word cheers people up.