Sermon: Creation in Christ Sunday
21st August 2005
But now, this is what the Lord, He who
created you O Jacob, He who formed you O Israel, says – Fear not for I have
redeemed you, I have summoned you by name you are mine, when you pass through
the waters I will be with you…………..
It was a nice afternoon
yesterday, so we took a walk to see what was going on in the High Street………….
the place was packed with crowds, there were market stalls outside St. Giles,
one of those human statues outside the High Court, Fire eaters and jugglers
outside the City Chambers and a man with a giant one wheeled bicycle, and jammed onto a tiny stage, outside the old
High Street Police Station, an Italian Theatre group dancing and singing……… , a
real sense of creativity, vitality and life there among the crowds,
Over the last two weeks, you
might remember, we
have been remembering from Matthew’s gospel how, there among the crowd of well
over five thousand, by the sea of
Galilee, Jesus took bread that had been given to Him, gave thanks and blessed
it,
and it was enough to feed those thousands gathered there.
There must have been a sense of vitality, and life and creativity there, but of
a quite different kind, Because at that moment, in Jesus, the creative power of
the living God, was at work, creating bread for the hungry, so that, we read,
they could eat bread
in such abundance that there were twelve baskets full of bread left over. We
see there, in Jesus, the creativity of the living God, feeding, and nourishing
the crowd, filling their emptiness.
Yet, the New Testament
declares yet greater things. That through Jesus Christ, human life itself has
been reshaped, and remade.
I remember at the age of 11 or
12,
After dinner, my father's friend said to me
come out onto the balcony - lets look outside…..he opened
wooden doors onto balcony of the wooden house, and suddenly, there above was
the night sky,
with thousands upon thousands of bright stars……….. from horizon to horizon,
There are great heights like
that in the New Testament, where the New Testament speaks of who Jesus is.
For you know, at the heart of
the Christian belief is the faith that much greater things have happened in
Jesus than simply the feeding of that crowd by the seashore, great though that
is. We find it in the New Testament, most clearly in the gospel of John, the
letter of Paul to the Colossians, the letter to the Philippians, and the letter
to the Hebrews, great heights and depths, great summits indeed.
We read there that He who took
the bread and fed the five thousand at the sea shore,
has taken human life itself and remade it
John’s gospel declares in its
opening verses
that the Word became a human being and lived among us.
Or in words perhaps a little
easier to understand
Paul says this in Philippians.
Christ Jesus being in very nature God, made himself nothing, taking the very
nature of a servant, being made in human
likeness. And being found in appearance
as a man, he humbled
himself and became obedient to death- even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest
place and gave him
the name that is above every name
The very early fathers of the
church used to speak of this as a journey,
that Jesus Christ has come
from God’s presence, came among us as a human being, Jesus of Nazareth, lived
human life in perfect loving communion with God all the way, even to death
itself……….. and now God has honoured and exalted him
to the highest place
These are
very deep matters, and if only we could grasp and understand more deeply
something of what is being spoken
of here
He who took the bread and fed
the five thousand at the sea shore,
has taken human life itself and remade it
reshaped and recreated human life. That is the message of the
New Testament.
He has done this in many ways, we will consider two this morning:
he has remade human life from the inside out
he has made human life, permanent and stable
He has remade human life from the inside
out,
If you had looked round the
High Street yesterday afternoon, you would have seen, as you can guess, the most
extraordinary collection of folks:
actors in make up, students sitting on the pavement, stall
holders at the market place,
tourists, old people trying to
get through the crowds, young families with children in the buggies, people
sitting outside cafes and bars, eating and drinking,
a real collection of weird and wonderful folks, as good
a collection of human beings as you would find anywhere….
Every single man woman and
child there unique, in the way they look, with their own unique habits and
quirks. Just like ourselves here this morning.
Yet there is a mystery in all
this, that though each of us is unique, nobody else like us, we all share one
thing. We all share in the mystery of human life. The mystery
of being alive, of being human. Well, it is the mystery of human life. The mystery of being alive, of being human that Jesus Christ has
remade.
By becoming
present among us. He has taken the
old human life, proclaims Paul in the book of Romans, he has taken the old human life, with
its brokenness, separated from.
God, Jesus Christ, has taken
that old human life with Him to the cross, and left it there.
And offers us in Himself human life made new, created anew on a new
foundation.
He shares that new life, that
newly created human life with us,
through His Holy Spirit.
So now you can understand why
the book of Romans calls Jesus Christ – the new Adam
You can read about the old
Adam in Genesis: the ancestor of the old, troubled, sinful, broken human race
but Jesus Christ is, declares Romans, no less than the new
foundation of a new human life
Jesus Christ has taken human
life on Himself, and has re-created it.
He has made human life, permanent and
stable
And in doing so, he offers to
us – permanent human life
One of the older funeral services
in the Church of Scotland Book of Common Order
used to include the words of Job,
they were spoken in a moment of deep depression where Job
tells his friend Zophar –
the funeral service used to include these words………
man is born of woman, is of few days and full of trouble.
He springs up like a flower and withers away like a fleeting shadow he does not
endure.
not a lot of comfort there, really,
and I doubt very much if it was read in St. Giles on
Friday at the big funeral there.
its really not a very cheering thought at all, how quickly
life passes………….
Yet, if you will bear with it
for a moment,
You find similar words right
throughout the Bible:
Psalm 39: You have made my
days a mere handbreadth; life is but a breath, a mere phantom………….
from the prophet Isaiah:
Surely the people are grass.
The grass withers and the flowers fall.
the language may be a bit too blunt for us
but the Bible is right, the grass withers, the flowers
fall, how quickly life passes……….
but there is this mighty declaration in the New
Testament……..
That Jesus Christ
has made human life, permanent and stable.
We have heard that has taken
human life upon Himself, and recreated it,
well the declaration of particularlty John’s gospel is that
by taking our human life up into God’s presence, he has created for this human
life, frail, passing, like the grass of the field, a permanent foundation.
Jesus speaks of this many
times in John’s gospel, as eternal life.A permanent foundation for this
frail and passing human life.
Chapter 4 to the Samaritan
woman; the water I will give will become a spring of water welling up to
eternal life,
crowd in
the crowd on the shore of the
This is dramatic proclamation
of the New Testament.
that in
Jesus Christ human life has been remade, recreated
and so we find in Him a secure, permanent foundation
above, beneath and beyond the passing days of this life
AMEN