Sunday 14 August

Ecclesiastes 9:13-12:14

It’s a mega twist.  Like the best that Hollywood has offered in the last few years.  A closing image that sucks you into a vortex and suddenly changes your perspective of all that has come before.  We had landed.  The matter was settled.  Life is meaningless. We’d explored it every which way but the conclusion was unavoidable - the all pervading nature of death makes every effort, every talent and every achievement in life ultimately meaningless.  In the long run nothing really matters; life under the sun is meaningless.  But then, as the camera pans out, as the earth fades into the background and we pan out beyond the sun we see the image that rocks every kind of conclusion that Ecclesiastes has reached.  There is life beyond the sun.  When the sun fades and this world is no more, God will still remain.  Life under the sun is not the end of it.  Our analysis should not end at death.  Beyond death, beyond the fading of the sun God will bring every deed into judgement.  And judgement will look like this - God will somehow take all these frayed ends and seemingly meaningless events and will weave them into a beautiful tapestry of justice.  Life is now defined not by how well we do before death but by what we are storing up for ourselves in God’s judgement.  Every unrecognised smile, every well-intended piece of advice, every unacknowledged prayer, every attempt to speak of our hope in Jesus - all these things are treasure-builders for us for that day.  An awareness of a coming ‘day of the Lord’ wrapped up Israel like a thick winter coat.  Does it do the same for the church, is it so impressed on our minds in SWLV?  Do we think about eternity enough?  Without an understanding of a coming ‘Day’, life can seem meaningless.  But with it, every act suddenly has new meaning.  With it, each act can define eternity, for us and for those we love.

1 Corinthians 9:1-18

Paul was not a vicar - he had a proper job.  Doesn’t that blow our expectations of what is possible?  Paul held down a job and yet he was possibly the most effective church-planter and evangelist who ever lived.  How did he do it?  I think there was one primary way that Paul worked this out; he saw God as his boss.  I’m sure Paul felt compulsions to fulfill contracts and satisfy clients and respect and support his colleagues but he always let one compulsion trump all of those - the compulsion from God for him to preach the gospel.  All the work compulsions had to be submitted to the God-compulsion.  I’m not saying that is easy but I do think it is critical.  And I’m sure Paul experienced a lot of woes.  Woe over leaving a thriving market to up sticks and move on to a new city.  Woe over fellow tentmakers shunning him or speaking badly of him.  Woe over never really prospering like he could because of his extensive commitments outside of work.  And yet Paul never let these woes influence his decisions as much as the woe he would feel from God if he did not preach the gospel.  In the church today we are great at saying that Jesus is king.  But we are used to a constitutional monarchy.  A claim to kingship is not necessarily a claim to control of the day-to-day.  Maybe we should start saying that Jesus is our boss.  Maybe we should say that Jesus is our line-manager.  That would really cut to the root of it.  That would really challenge our daily decisions.  If we did that, it would truly free us up to discharge the trust committed to us.  If we lived that, then every single man and woman in SWLV would have their expectations blown out the water for how much God would use them.  

Psalm 96:1-13

“Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy” - what Jesus is bringing to the world is so magnificent, so richly endowed with goodness and life that even the bushes and the shrubs will do the hokey cokey.