The Son – the Eternal One - Hebrews 1

                             

The letter to the Hebrews is a deep rich letter that was already known and quoted in the church already in the early 100s. We’re not exactly sure who the author is, but was likely a respected priest with connections to the temple in Jerusalem. The writer seems to be writing to Jewish converts to the church and very familiar with the temple rituals. There seems to be some suffering happening, and perhaps rumours of persecution on the horizon, but no full-scale persecution such as under Nero was happening yet. There’s also no mention of the destruction of the temple, so likely this letter was written before 70 A.D. when Rome destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and full-scale persecution began against the church.

This letter to the Hebrews is completely Jesus focused; on who Jesus is, what Jesus accomplished, and our response to Jesus. There’s a sense of urgency in the letter, calling the people to hang on tightly to this confession of who Jesus is as the Son of God and source of our salvation and all that this means for our lives as Jesus’ followers, both as the church together and as individuals. This letter begins by describing who the Son of God is, the name Jesus isn’t even used until the middle of the second chapter. The emphasis is first on who Jesus is as God, because there were a lot of strange teachings and beliefs out there about Jesus and the spiritual world. It’s no different today.

God wasn’t silent in letting humanity know who he is and what he expects, “God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” God was speaking through many prophets, and even in different ways since we all experience and hear God differently due to our personalities, places in life, and even culture. The biggest problem is that people often don’t really pay all that much attention to those God speaks through. God then takes the next step, moving from talking to the people through his servants, and “in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” He sends his Son who has all his authority and power; his heir, so they’ll pay more attention to what he’s saying.

We hear echoes to the Old Testament like Psalm 2:8, “I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.” “Heir” is a legal term referring to portions and shares that get passed down and how they get passed down. Here, the Son is the primary heir, but the inheritance is much more than simply this earth, it’s all creation and especially the world to come. The Son is the one through whom the universe was made, echoing John 1:3, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” The word used for universe here is “aiones” or “ages,” referring to the whole created universe of space and time, all created through the Son, all the inheritance of the Son.

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory,” a term associated with the coming of the dawn, the brilliance of the sun appearing over the horizon, chasing the darkness away. The Son is the “exact representation,” of the “being” of God. This refers to the royal stamp or seal of the emperor, giving the holder of the seal all the weight and authority of the emperor. The word for “representation” is the word “charaktor” in Greek, referring to who God is and is combined here with the word “being” or “hypostatis” in Greek which means “giving reality to, substance, nature of, and essence,” and becomes an important concept in later church councils when talking about who Jesus is as the Son of God, and in defining how the Trinity of God holds together. The Son gives reality to who God is, he’s the very substance and essence of God. The writer here is shouting out to the church that the Son is God! This is the whole idea of chapter 1.  As the Son of God, he sustains and maintains the universe and everything in it by his word, echoing John 1 and Genesis 1.

Now the writer gets into what the Son did, he “provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Purification connects the Son to the temple and the temple sacrifices which were given to Israel to help them remember who God is, who they are as God’s people, and the rituals given to Israel to stay in relationship to a holy God. The common images for purification involve water and fire and identity. Water takes us back to the flood because of humanity’s sin, and then to Israel crossing the Red Sea on dry ground and being rescued from slavery into freedom, and then later, crossing the Jordan River as they entered the Promised Land, a place to call home. Jesus picks up the image of water as life in calling himself living water when talking to the woman at the well. These are the images that shape our sacrament of baptism, showing us God as our Father, Jesus as our Saviour, and the Holy Spirit as God’s presence and source of our salvation.

The second image is fire, burning away impurity and sin. When Isaiah encounters God in Isaiah 6, Isaiah cries out, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” The Son is the purifier from sin, the restorer of relationship with God, our Father. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes as flames of fire on each of those who believe, a symbol of the purification from our sins accomplished by Jesus on the cross and affirmed in his resurrection.

The writer ends this opening section, “So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he inherited is superior to theirs.” This is a transition to the Son’s status; he and his name is much superior to the angels. The word for name in the Greek is “onoma” and refers also to status, rank, fame, or person and is often used in the New Testament as a pious reference to God or as title for Jesus. Paul tells us in his letters to the churches in Ephesus and Philippi that Jesus’ name is above every other name. The Son has inherited a rank of power and divinity that belonged only to God before this. The angels worship the Son, as we see in Revelation 4, “Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come.” …. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

There seems to have been some kind of angel worship happening. The question is, how can anyone worship an angel over the Son of God? Yet it was a time when there was a fascination with the spiritual and mystical. Paul dealt with it, as did other apostles, so it’s not hard to see that some of this crept into the church. We see something similar today, in the postmodern culture, there’s an interest and belief in the supernatural and mystical today. A few weeks ago, I mentioned some of the issues with post modernity, but there are also issues with modernity. Modernity embraces rationality and science and tries to explain miracles and the spiritual away, explaining that people in the Bible didn’t know science or psychology like we do today. Salvation rests in believing the right things, taking away the mystery of God. Postmodernity doesn’t question the existence of the spiritual or miracles, it’s often open to the spiritual realm, making them open to conversations about Jesus and the work of God and the Holy Spirit in new ways. Salvation rests for them in a relationship. This is why Hebrews is so important because it speaks to who Jesus is within the spiritual world.

The Son is superior to the angels. There are different kinds of angels, there are the cherubim who are hybrid creatures with animal like features and represent power and strength. Cherubim were placed at the entrance to the Garden of Eden to make sure that people couldn’t get back in, the cherubim were represented in the Holy of Holies as carrying the ark of the covenant and God’s throne. The angels we think of come in human form and are messengers who serve God and act as guides and protectors of those who will inherit salvation, those created in the image of God. The Angel of the Lord is how the Lord appeared to humanity so that he could communicate directly with people without them dying; think of the visitors to Abraham. When Jesus was born, the problem of seeing God without dying was solved by Jesus becoming human like us.

The goal of the writer here is lead us to trust in Jesus as God, looking to him for salvation and hope.  Angels are merely created beings; created through the Son, compared to flames of fire, images from the Psalms that speak to their devotion and zeal to God and the Son. The Son has been anointed with joy, chosen by God, sitting at God’s right hand to rule over a kingdom founded on justice and righteousness. The Son is eternal, and when creation perishes, the eternal Son will roll it all up and transform it into a renewed and restored creation at his return. As God, Jesus is able to purify your heart and soul, forgive your sin and make you right with God, leading you into a new life of hope!

The Gift of Generosity - Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-37

      

What are some of the signs that Jesus and his Spirit are transforming your life and the life of Bethel?

One of the signs that the Holy Spirit is at work in people’s hearts and the life of the church is when the gift of generosity begins to grow in new and unexpected ways. Jesus talked a lot about money, warning us how easily money and wealth can become the source of our comfort and peace, becoming a god to us. Paul warns in his first letter to Timothy that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. When followers of Jesus practice the gift of generosity, Luke recognizes that God gets the praise for the impact of the Holy Spirit on the hearts and lives of those early followers of Jesus.

After Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit into individual believers of Jesus in a new and special way, these new believers in Jesus made their faith in Jesus the core of their lives. As Luke tells us, they devoted themselves to learning as much as they could from the apostles’ teaching, they structured their time around fellowship together, being together and growing closer together as a community, growing closer to each other through breaking bread together, which included eating with each other and celebrating the Lord’s Supper together, and they prayed and praised God constantly. This helped them to get to know each other better and in deeper more personal ways, leading to deeper caring for each other. The more you know someone, the more you start to care for them. Through Luke’s eyes, we begin to see how the church, the body of Jesus, is given as a gift for the life of the world as it brings new and deeper ways of living together.

We see in chapter 4 the impact of the Holy Spirit play out in the church as the followers of Jesus become more other-centered, more one in heart and mind. This description of the church follows right after Peter and John are dragged in front of the Sanhedrin and told to stop teaching and peaching in the name of Jesus. Luke writes, “Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” They then go back to the believers and pray, and “after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

The Holy Spirit is at work in powerful ways and we see its impact as the new community of believers grows closer together; we see heart change happening as several wealthier members are led by the Spirit to great generosity and sell parcels of land in order to provide for those who were struggling. God’s generous character is pouring into his people, shaping them more into his image. In a sermon by Bishop Barron, he writes, “From the time of Marx, Feuerbach and Freud, we’ve heard the critique that religion is a wish-fulfilling fantasy, a game of “pie in the sky when you die.” The readings for this second Sunday of Easter give the lie to this criticism, for they show how those who were convinced of Jesus’ resurrection were also deeply committed to a more just society.”

There was no dependence on governments to provide for those who were struggling in your community, the church took personal responsibility for taking care of the poor, the widows, orphans, and others. This echo’s God’s charge to Israel in Deuteronomy 15:7–11, “If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

Jesus is generous in his gifts of grace, forgiveness, and acceptance, flowing them out generously, especially to those on the fringes: the have-nots, the rejected and unwanted, the unseen and uncared about. Our generosity with the financial resources that God has given us is one of the ways we imitate Jesus’ generosity to us. Generosity sees the world in terms of “us” instead of “them and us.” The early church was so impacted by the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, that “no one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.” They embraced the truth that we don’t really own anything, we’re simply stewards of whatever God has given us, called to manage and develop its potential so that it can be used for the purposes and will of God and the kingdom of heaven.

Professor Troy Troftgruben comments on the generosity found in the early church and the idea of having communal possessions, writing, “Luke’s depiction of communal unity and sharing would certainly have appealed to prevalent virtues in antiquity — whether the principles of historic Israel: “There will be no one in need among you,” Deuteronomy 15, Greek ideals of friendship: “Among friends everything is common,” Aristotle, Eth. nic. 9.8, ideal philosophical communities: e.g., Iamblichus, in the Life of Pythagoras, 30.167, or the practices of hospitality: e.g., Pliny describes one’s possessions as belonging equally to one’s guest, Ep. 1.4.3, …. And so, given ancient virtues and Christian convictions, Luke’s audiences likely found the idealism of Acts 4:32-35 more appropriate than surprising…. the community’s generosity itself becomes a tangible “sign” that authenticates its message of Jesus.”

Several early church Fathers believed this description of the early church should be the model of the church and expanded on; including St John of Chrysostom and Augustine. Augustine wrote, “The believers, it says, had one soul and one heart (Acts 4:32). There were many souls, but their faith made them one. There were so many thousands of souls; they loved one another, and the many became one. They were on fire with the love of God, and from being a multitude they achieved a beautiful unity. If love made so many souls one soul, what love must there be in God, where there is no diversity but total equality?”

St John proposed that everyone should sell everything they had and place it in one pool of resources from which everyone would draw from it whatever they needed, creating a more just community. Several church communities over the centuries, influenced by the early church practices, by the principles of the Year of Jubilee given to Israel, and by a desire to withdraw from the regular world set up commune-like communities where no one owned anything, everything was shared equally in a spirit of generosity. For many reasons, these communities never became the norm, yet following Jesus does create a different kind of community with values and ways of living that seem odd, and even suspicious to those outside the community, while also creating a longing in their hearts for a place of deep belonging and living where they’re known, accepted, and cared for. These communities the early church Fathers described were not so much about money, but about living well in community together in a spirit of generosity and justice where people aren’t forgotten or discarded because they don’t measure up. The church is more hospital than country club, a community where we encounter the Great Physician and find healing and hope.

The Holy Spirit guides us and shapes us into the image of God, both individually and as a church family, and this speaks to the core of who people are, speaking to the community found within God himself and how it’s lived out in each of us and the church. Generosity and sacrifice walk hand in hand, Jesus’ generosity in forgiveness, as seen in his journey to the cross, death, and resurrection, was a sacrifice given so that we can receive salvation from our sin, from our past brokenness and hurts. We’re shown Jesus’ generosity again in the pouring out his Spirit into our hearts bringing new life and hope.

Is the Holy Spirit working in your heart, creating a desire to be more generous towards others as a reflection of Jesus’ generosity to you? Jesus taught us to give so that our right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Jesus uses hyperbole, or exaggeration here, to encourage generosity. Wise people keep track of their generosity to help them recognize ways to be more generous; this also helps them to recognize when the need may be more about offering a generosity of time to help teach others how to save and to be generous, or to when it’s time to be generous with your skills and talents to walk alongside someone in need, or when it’s time to be generous with grace, forgiveness, compassion, and love.

With the Spirit’s help, we learn generosity and to encourage each other in how to be more generous, helping us show the world who God, Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is, and the kind of God we love and follow.

 

The Gift of Prayer-an Act of Trust - 1 Chronicles 5:18-22

     

This morning we’re spending more time than usual praying. Our denomination recognizes the importance of prayer and calls us to hold a prayer service each spring at the start of the planting season. We also take this time to pray for many other things that are important. Prayer’s a gift from God, an invitation to come and talk to him and with him; an act of trust and faith, coming to God with open hearts, meaning that we don’t try to hide stuff in our minds or hearts from him. Prayer acknowledges who God is as the creator of the universe; our creator who created us in his own image in order to have a special relationship with us.

In our scripture passage this morning, the historian tells us of one of the countless battles that Israel found itself in with its neighbours. Three of the tribes in Israel were mostly involved in these battles as they were situated on the east side of the Jordan River. They were the first line of defense for Israel against their eastern neighbours. The tribe of Gad especially had a reputation for being fierce warriors and did not back down easily from a fight, often at the front of the battle lines. Gad was born to Leah, one of the patriarch Jacob’s wives, who at Gad’s birth prophesied about him “A troop cometh,” pointing to a warrior like future.

As warriors, the temptation is to trust in your strength and skills and your fellow warriors to defeat your enemies in battle. This easily leads to pride and boasting, yet this is not the case with these warriors. During the battle against the 4 tribes, all connected to the Ishmaelites, descendants of Abraham’s first son by the slave girl Hagar, Israel’s warriors cry out to God in the battle, trusting in his divine power over their own mortal might and power. The historian writes, “God delivered the Hagrites and all their allies into their hands…. He answered their prayers because they trusted in him.”

Prayer is an act of trust, trusting that God listens to our prayers and will respond in ways we can understand, even if he answers them differently than we expect or want, trusting that he answers them because his love for us. Prayer has always been a large part of Jewish life, scripture has an entire book, Psalms, which are prayers. Many other prayers from many of the people in the Bible are also recorded. Israel knows that God wants them to come to him, to spend time with him talking to him regularly, and prayer is how we do this.

Israel developed several prayers that they would use regularly throughout the day. The most well-known prayer is the Shema, found in Deuteronomy 6 and is recited twice each day, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” This prayer calls Israel to remember who God is and who God calls us to be, a good reminder to all of us. It also calls us to be deliberate is teaching our children who God is and what God expects from his people. Prayer is not just a conversation with God, it’s also a time to remind us of who God is, and even to remind God of the promises and commitments he’s made to us. Jewish prayers praised God for his actions and how God involved himself with his people. The deliverance of his people from Egypt and his defeat of opposing kings and armies are recurring themes in the biblical prayers. For the Israelites, God’s character leads him to act, and his good deeds on behalf of his people need to be told again and again, often in prayer.

The Israelites also developed a series of prayers called the Amidah. The Jewish Virtual Library tells us, “The Amidah is a person's opportunity to approach God in private prayer, and should therefore be said quietly. The words must be audible to oneself, but one should be careful to pray softly enough not to disturb others. If one is alone, it is permissible to raise one's voice slightly if it helps concentration. It is forbidden to interrupt the Amidah even to greet an important person. One should not even acknowledge a greeting. Only a grave emergency justifies interrupting the Amidah, since it is considered a conversation with God.” The Amidah was a collection of 18 prayers, petitions, and blessings to be offered three times a day and during synagogue services. Each benediction ends with some form of “Blessed art Thou, O Lord.” It may sound like Israel depends on formal written prayers, but they’re simply ways of helping them to have personal prayer times with God, helping them focus their minds and hearts on talking to God.

Prayer isn’t always easy for all of us. Even Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to prayer after they saw how important it was to Jesus to spend time in prayer regularly with his Father. Matthew places the Lord’s Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, a collection of Jesus’ teachings. Matthew places it specifically in a section where Jesus is teaching on “acts of righteousness,” making prayer an act of right living with God. At the heart of right living with God and each other is knowing God, not just the facts, not just theology, but having a relationship with God and that involves communication, both talking and listening to God. This is where prayer comes in.

Just as we’re all created differently from each other, with different personalities, in the same way there are different ways to pray that help us to pray in ways that shape our hearts according to our differences. For myself, I find praying in groups more challenging, yet I love talking to God while walking alone in the morning. I also find it meaningful to pray the words of the Bible, often using the psalms to help me express my thoughts and heart to the Lord and to guide me into a deeper time of prayer. I also find myself praying shorter prayers during the day, taking to heart Jesus’ warning in Matthew 6 to not babble like the pagans, trying to influence God through the number of words instead of the intent of my heart.

Over the centuries, various ways of praying have been used to speak to God, and to take time to be still and know that I am God. I mentioned praying the Bible. Praying the Bible takes passages from the Bible written by different people who brought their praise, their sorrows, their struggles and questions, many times hard questions to God, and uses these written prayers to begin their own prayers and give themselves the words to talk to God that they might not otherwise know how to say. A friend recently mentioned how he used Psalm 23 to pray after his mother died, focusing especially on the lines, “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are there,” and “surely your love and goodness will follow me.” These verses helped him to share his grief and trust in God to God.

A member of the church in Montreal finds it helpful to write out her prayers; the practice of writing helps her share with God her joys and sorrows, but especially her questions. It keeps her disciplined in her prayers. A teen in Allendale told me how music helped him pray, using the words of praise and worship songs helped him tell God how he loved God and to thank God for Jesus and his Spirit.

Our hope lies in the trust we have that God listens to our prayer. Jesus gives us several parables that show us how to approach God. In Luke 18, Jesus tells of a widow asking for justice from a judge, who refuses her until her persistence finally convinces him to give her justice. This parable is less about persistence, but more about how God is not like the judge, God “will see that they get justice, and quickly.” In Luke 11, Jesus tells the parable of the man who has an unexpected visitor show up late at night and so he goes to knock on his neighbour’s door for some bread to feed his visitor. The neighbour, with grumbling, gives him bread, but Jesus tells us to “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

As Amy Boucher Pye writes, “Prayer changes people because God changes people. He takes those of us who are scared, anxious, bitter, disappointed, and vindictive and morphs us through his Spirit into brave, loving, hopeful, generous people.” Prayer draws us closer to God, building trust while bringing us strength. There’s nothing you cannot bring to God. If you’re like most people, your deepest times of prayer will be during your hardest times. These will be the times when you find yourself at a loss for words, when tears stream down your face and your throat is choked up and hope is fading fast. When these times come, you don’t need words because God knows the words you need to say even before you know what or how to say them because his Spirit is in you. This is when all the times you spent talking to God in prayer become a gift as they’ve built your relationship with God, they’ve taught you trust in God, and they’ve given you the strength to come to God in trust and hope. Prayer, a gift of relationship and hope from God built during the normal times of life for the hard times. May the Lord bless you in your times of talking to God.

The Gift of Gifts - Romans 12:1–13

                    

Good Friday and Easter show us the commitment and love of God and Jesus to us, on the gift of grace God showers on us. But God has given us so many other gifts as well, gifts like grace and forgiveness, gifts to use in life. This morning we’re reflecting on the gift of gifts, or talents, and why they’re given to us. Those who know the Heidelberg Catechism will recognize Paul shapes his letter in the same way; he begins with a discussion on sin, then moves to the salvation we receive through Jesus, and ends his letter, beginning in chapter 12, on living out our faith out in a spirit of gratitude to God.

Paul begins this last part of his letter with a call to give ourselves over completely to God. Paul uses the language of sacrifice and offering, the language of gift; we offer ourselves to God as a gift, becoming a possession of God. This takes a depth of humility and trust in God and Jesus that is not always found today, humbly giving our lives, our dreams, and our hopes to God to be used by him and for him, trusting that Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves, trusting that wherever he leads us, whoever he is calling us to be, and that whatever he calls us to do, that he’s working all things out for our benefit.

Paul gives us a powerful picture of the church as the body of Jesus made up of many members all connected to each other. Paul even says that we belong to each other, a shocking and uncomfortable image for many people today who believe that no one has rights over them and we’re only responsible to ourselves, and only grudgingly to a few others after first looking out for ourselves. God created us to live in community with others. Paul tells the church, made up of both Jews and Gentiles that they belong to each other. A part of your body cannot decide it doesn’t need the other parts, but the individual parts are responsible for serving the entire body, not just itself. We’re not individuals with our own agendas, we belong to God and each other. When we fail each other, we all hurt. Paul goes deeper in 1 Corinthians 12, “Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body…. in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.”

As the body of Jesus here on earth, Jesus wants a healthy body with all the different parts working together to create a body filled with vitality and life. The Holy Spirit gives us different gifts and talents so that we can build a healthy church focused on Jesus as our head, helping each other discover our gifts, and then investing in each other to help us develop these gifts to their potential, giving each other the opportunities to use them and creating a healthy church filled with life and love and excitement about being Jesus’ body.

We’re all interconnected with each other, our strength and health as a church are impacted by each other as we’re connected to Jesus. This is part of the image of the Lord’s Supper; just as many heads of grain come together in the bread and many grapes come together for the wine, so we come together as the body of Jesus. We’re many very different people, but we come together and become more than we can be on our own, something more beautiful and wonderful. The church is not about serving us, we’re each given different gifts to be used to build up the body of Jesus, to build a healthy church community centred on Jesus and focused on helping each other discover and grow our gifts and bless each other to become a gift from God, given for the life of the world.

Paul lists a bunch of gifts here to help build up the church, prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, and showing mercy; but this is only the beginning of the gifts found in the church and each church will show different gifts according to the place and role Jesus calls us to be. But there are so many other gifts in the church, there are those who pray, there are those who live out of a sense of joy no matter their situation and revealing the power of the presence of the Holy Spirit in them. At its heart, the church is made up of people filled with the Spirit of God, Bonhoeffer writes, “everything in the church depends upon it being clear that the church is not an ideal to be achieved, but rather a spirit filled reality in which by the grace of God we participate.”

I’ve seen in Bethel gifts that touch others such as the gift of creating cards filled with scripture filled words of encouragement and little prayers; gifts are exercised quietly in the background in phone calls to friends who are experiencing difficult times, or meals delivered. In Montreal there was a man who struggled with mental disabilities and who messed himself during the worship service and a young father quietly walked him out of the sanctuary and into the bathroom and cleaned him up, offering the gift of dignity and compassion and showing all of us what being a servant looks like. These are things that touch our souls, shape our souls, giving us glimpses into who Jesus is, who we can be, should be, how to build someone up in respect and honour.

My greatest passion is to reach people who haven’t accepted Jesus as their Lord and to encourage everyone in the church to be part of this, but Paul reminds me that we first need to be a healthy body of followers of Jesus in order to be good witnesses to the difference Jesus makes in our lives. This means investing in each other, using our gifts to build each other up, to encourage each other, to be devoted to each other in love, honouring each other above ourselves in humility. I love Paul’s call here to “never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.” This flows out of being a healthy body of Jesus. At its heart and foundation, the church is a spiritual relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit that is lived out with each other for the purpose of blessing the world.

When we serve each other, helping each other to grow in our gifts to serve each other, we’re ultimately serving Jesus and revealing Jesus to the world. In using our gifts to serve each other, we’re imitating Jesus who came to serve rather than be served, and connecting to Jesus spiritually in deeper ways. Jesus served us by going to the cross in order to wash away our sins. He bought us with his blood to set us free to serve, to imitate him. We all have different talents and abilities, just like a body has different parts that do unique and important jobs. If we’re willing to use our gifts and talents for God, he blesses them and this helps the church to work together for Jesus.

There are times when churches there may be some gifts in short supply during a certain season of the church needed to help it grow more into who Jesus is calling us to be. This is the time to turn to God and ask for those gifts to be given to us. Gifts that we can ask for are the gifts to listen to those who have hard questions about faith and church without being judges, but loving them and allowing them to open their hearts as part of figuring out who Jesus is. Then there are the gifts of exploring culture and the place of the church and in wisdom in engaging culture with wisdom and grace. Jesus told us in John 14, “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Our gifts are not static, we can learn and develop new gifts when needed, Jesus will give them to us, we’re called to be faithful in using them. This is part of being in the image of God, being creative and able to grow in new areas of our lives.

One of the gifts I really appreciate are the gifts of creativity because these members give me a glimpse into the creative aspect of God, glimpses into the glory and wonder of God, but so often these gifts are not as appreciated as other gifts like leadership, teaching, etc. yet when the tabernacle and temple were built, God especially raised up these gifts of creativity and wonder to help us experience the presence of God in deeper and unexpected ways. I am offering my study this summer as a canvas for those of who you who have these gifts of creativity in the arts to express what faith, the world, and what beauty and wonder look like to you. Our vacation time will be in the August, so it gives you some time to think and pray and create!

Bret Lamsma writes in Reformed Worship, “As we use the gifts that he has given us to praise him, we can’t help but grow as well. We grow in understanding about who God is and who he created us to be. Our faith in who God is grows. And our connection to God’s people and the larger story of salvation grows as well.” May we continue to grow together as Jesus’ body growing our gifts in love for God and each other.