Back from the Dead

The death of Sir Terry Pratchett, author of many best-selling fantasy novels, was one of the most-reported stories of recent weeks. Whether or not you had read any of his books – I must admit I hadn’t – you are probably familiar with his face and seen him on television. That was because as well as being a novelist, he had, in his last years, become a well-known campaigner about the Alzheimer’s Disease which eventually took his life. After being diagnosed with the early onset of the disease, he also filmed a television programme about his experiences of suffering with it, and gave and raised a lot of money towards research relating to it.
 I was interested to read how different people responded to the event. Quoting from one of his books, after Pratchett's death, his assistant wrote from the official Terry Pratchett Twitter account: “At last, Sir Terry, we must walk together. Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under endless night. The End.” 
Perhaps you read too, about the fact that several of his fans began a petition which urged death to ‘bring back Terry Pratchett’. According to some press reports, over 5000 of his fans signed the online petition. The petition needless to say has been unsuccessful.
Death doesn’t ‘give people back’. That is why we rightly respect it and do so much to fight against it. There was a time, of course, when it had to give people back. When the Lord Jesus walked on earth we read of three cases where dead people did come back to life. A widow’s son in Nain (Luke 7), Jairus’s daughter in Capernaum (Matthew 9) and a man called Lazarus from a village called Bethany (John 11) all came back from the dead. This was not because death willingly gave them up, but because Someone more powerful than death overpowered it! He went on to prove that in His own life.
It’s Easter time again, and on Easter Day we will be remembering the Lord Jesus Christ, Victor over death and the grave. We will examine the overwhelming evidence for the truth of the resurrection and find it convincing! We will also rejoice in the great significance and meaning that the resurrection of the Saviour carries with it. The sacrifice for sin that He had made on the cross has been accepted by a holy God. We can know forgiveness, peace with God, and, what is more, eternal life as a result, because the resurrection of Christ means that the locked door of death has been opened from the inside. Heaven, shut to us because of our sin, can be ours through Him.
Look again at those final words on Sir Terry Pratchett’s twitter account. “Black desert … endless night … the End”. He never wrote anything more powerful or profound. But when the Risen Lord Jesus is real to us, dwelling in our hearts by faith, they could not be further from the truth. If we know Christ, death to us will be gain! We won’t go to endless night, but to eternal day! Death won’t be the end, but a new beginning that will never end! Do you have the hope of Easter Day?

Worthy of Our Wages

What would you do with all the money if you were on a salary of £300,000?  No not £300,000 a year, but that much every week!  That equals almost £30 a minute, every minute, whether you are working or not, indeed even when you are asleep.  That was a question posed by some of the newspapers a week or so ago.

Gareth Bale, a footballer originally from South Wales, had been transferred to a team in Spain for £85 million, and as well as getting a cut of that fee, those are reported to be his wages.  Reaction ranged from anger - that someone could be paid such wages for doing something so ultimately unimportant - to a more relaxed ‘good for him’ response. Either way, it’s difficult to work out how you could ever spend that much money every week.  

Is a footballer worth so much money?  Is anybody?  How can you judge the value of someone’s contribution to society?  Asking those questions gets us into difficult territory.  Though the Bible, our final authority on all questions of life, because it is God’s Word, doesn’t answer a question like that, it does have much to say on the subject of wages.  It was the first book ever to establish the right of a worker to a fair wage.  Way back in the Old Testament the truth that a worker is worthy of his hire was established and legislation in Old Testament Israel was framed to ensure the worker was never exploited, and always received his wage at the end of the day.  The Bible also has much to say about money, and especially riches.  Though money itself is not sinful, or being rich, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and riches are a snare which ultimately can cost us eternity if we are not careful.

Though the word ‘wages’ is used rarely in the New Testament, it is used in one of its most famous verses.  The Apostle Paul once wrote “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  Gareth Bale will no doubt say that he receives those wages because he deserves them.  They are not a gift but what he has earned.  The Bible tells us that because we sin – say, think and do things that are contrary to God and His holiness – we are due the consequences.  That is why ultimately we all must die.  But the good news of the Gospel is that we can escape what we do deserve and instead have what we don’t.  Instead of wages, what is rightfully ours, we can receive a gift from God.  That is eternal life, a life which has a unique fullness here on earth, and continues for ever in God’s presence in Heaven.  None of us can earn that because of our sin.  But through Jesus Christ, and only through Him, we can receive this wonderful present. 

One day Gareth Bale’s footballing days will be over, and with it his ability to earn such sums.  However much we earn on earth, or however much we can build up in our bank accounts, one day we must leave it all behind too.  But if we are trusting in Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross, our treasure will not be what we leave behind at death, but what we go to!   

Trying Our Best?

The death of Margaret Thatcher last month brought to an end the life of one of the defining figures of the last few decades.  Love her or loathe her, and there were few who didn’t have an opinion at one end of the spectrum or the other, her place in British history is undoubted.

In the newspapers in the days immediately following her death there were many personal stories about people’s dealings with her.  One of them particularly captured my attention, and not just mine.  The Bishop of London referred to the same story in his funeral address.

It concerned a letter from the nine-year-old son of a vicar which the Prime Minister had received.  It said; “Last night, when we were saying prayers, my Daddy said everyone has done wrong things except Jesus.  I said I don’t think you have done bad things because you are the Prime Minister.  Am I right or is my Daddy?”

Much to the family’s delight, Mrs. Thatcher sent a handwritten reply.  In it she wrote; “However good we try to be, we can never be as kind, gentle and wise as Jesus.  There will be times when we say or do something we wish we hadn’t done and we shall be sorry and try not to do it again.  We do our best, but our best is not as good as his daily life … As Prime Minister, I try very hard to do things right and because Jesus gave us a perfect example I try even harder. But your father is right in saying that we can never be as perfect as He was.”

I wonder what you make of that reply.  It has much that we would agree with.  It is hard to think of our current batch of leading politicians being quite so ‘politically incorrect’ as to praise Christ and acknowledge the perfection of his life.  All that the late Baroness said about Him is true; although I am sure we would want to say much more, because the Bible does.  He was not only perfect man, but God incarnate, the only Saviour and mediator between man and God.  There is no other way to God, eternal life and heaven, no other way to avoid eternal separation from God in hell itself, than through Jesus.

It is, perhaps, in our response to the perfection of Jesus that we must differ from Mrs. Thatcher.  Her response was to use Him as an example and “try even harder”.  Although 1 Peter 2, amongst other passages reminds us that He is an example, the whole of the New Testament, indeed of the Bible, proclaims that however hard we try, we can never achieve a standard that is acceptable to God, and that could earn us His favour.  He demands perfection of life in word, though and action, because He is perfectly holy.

That is why the Lord Jesus came.  He didn’t come just to be an example that if we follow would enable us to be saved.  He came into this world precisely because we can never save ourselves.  He came to bring salvation through his death in our place on the cross.  By trusting in Him we can have salvation and eternal life as a gift from this holy God.  Are you still trying hard … or are you trusting Christ?  

The Best Samaritan

 The name of Clare Squires probably meant nothing to you until last month.  She was one of the tens of thousands who took part in the London Marathon the other Sunday morning, but sadly she did not reach the finish.  Just a mile from the end of the twenty six miles and 385 yards she tragically collapsed and died, the eleventh person to do so in the history of the event.

          What has happened since has been nothing short of amazing.  Clare was running in aid of The Samaritans, a worthwhile charity who had helped her family in the past.  By the time of the race she had already raised about £500, but in response to the tragedy that sum has, at the time I write this, already topped the million pound mark.  Television brings the reality of these distant events into our living rooms, and new technology like the internet and mobile phones enables people to give instantly.  When a young person is suddenly taken like this, particularly when they were busy doing something judged by people to be so commendable, people will respond generously.

          Though given the choice Clare’s family and friends would prefer to still have her with them, they are no doubt comforted by the great good that her death has done.  This would not have happened if she had crossed the finishing line like everyone else.  There are many more who will benefit from her passing than would have done otherwise, as the Samaritans put that finance to good use.

          The Samaritans of course, take their name from one of the parables of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It was Him that I thought of as I have followed the story.  The Good news of the Gospel is that we can benefit from the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, but even more so from His death.  We are saved because He came to earth as man and lived amongst us.  He went about doing good to people, not raising money to help others heal people and help them with their problems, but actually doing that miraculously himself.  He healed the sick, gave eyesight to the blind, made disabled people fit and well and even raised the dead.  He taught about God and His kingdom showing us the only way to Heaven was through Him.  And most importantly, He lived a life of entire obedience to His Father in Heaven, whose will He lived to complete.

          But we could not be saved by His life alone, as perfect as it was.  As strange as it sounds, we benefit even more from His death.  Such is the holiness of God, and the deadly nature of our sinfulness and failure that a perfect sacrifice was needed.  Someone had to die in our place.  Only Jesus, the perfect man who is God, could do that.  The Bible tells us that if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ our sins are put to his account and paid for on the cross of Calvary.  In return we are credited with His righteousness, so that as God looks at us He does not see our sin but the perfection of Christ’s life.

          Our hearts go out to the family of Clare Squires, and trust that all that has been given in her memory will do much good.  But we need to be ready for the day when we are called from this world too.  Are you?                 

From the Pastor... (12-02-28)

“What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”  Of all the searching questions that Jesus asked whilst he was on earth, that must be one of the most challenging.  I thought about it again last month, as the world marked the death of the singer Whitney Houston, aged 48.

          For some, many of her fans included, it was a terrible shock.  They had grown up with her singing as the ‘soundtrack of their lives’ as one commentator put it.  That she should die at such a young age was such a terrible waste.  But for those of us who were a little older, perhaps, it didn’t really come as a shock at all.  Some of us remember the death of Elvis Presley, six years younger than Whitney, or Karen Carpenter who died aged only 32.  And it is only a matter of months since Amy Winehouse was found dead at the age of 27.  All of these famous names were otherwise ordinary people blessed with a most extraordinary gift, a gift that made them millions.  But true happiness evaded them.  Instead, as another commentator, suveying this repeated pattern, said; “Amazing talent brings fame and fortune which then swallows up these artists in a whirlpool of sin, addiction, and death.”

          Though most people recognise that, we are so slow to truly learn the lesson.  The queues of hopefuls at every ‘X-Factor’ audition show us that.  We are a society which values and rewards ‘gifts’ as never before, but who care nothing for the Giver.  Satan has turned our hearts so that even what God gives us is twisted to drive us away from Him, rather than in thankfulness to Him.

          And yet, throughout this sad episode, God was still, it seems drawing men and women to Himself.  The BBC news channel gave over several hours of its Saturday evening schedule to show the funeral, where, amidst much theological confusion, the Word of God was read, quoted and explained.  And time and again that week, we were reminded of eternity, as we heard Houston’s most famous song, with its haunting refrain ‘and I … will always love you’.  How sad it was, that like many singers of this world, she sang about an endless love without ever finding one, or experiencing one.

           The message of the Bible, one that even came over in an imperfect way at her funeral service, is there is such a thing as an eternal love, and that it is possible for someone to hear those words of promise that Houston sang, said by Someone who means it and who has the capacity to truly do it.  God says to His people “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.” (Jeremiah 31:3).  The One who gives gifts to people, as part of the bounty of His creation, has given us His Son, the greatest gift of all, because He has an eternal love for His people.  Though we all get caught up in our own ‘whirlpool of sin’, the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross to rescue us, not just from sin, but death and hell too.  And He will always love us, because that is His very nature!  Have you come to love Him?