PRESENT

What would it have been like to have been with Christ? 

Was there ever a man in more demand than Jesus of Nazareth? Thousands upon thousands of people waited eagerly day after day to see, hear, and meet Jesus the long-awaited Christ. Royalty wanted to meet with Him. Religious leaders wanted to meet with Him. The sick and infirmed queued to touch Him. All the while Jesus was on a mission of paramount importance and not only had all these enormous physical demands laid upon His shoulders, He also had unimaginably evil forces attempting to oppress, distract and thwart Him. Yet, with all this happening, the Gospels are punctuated with individual encounters with the Christ.

He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
¶ The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”
John 1:41-43

A night with Jesus by Nicodemus

I’m trying to learn from Christ. This involves paying prayerful attention to what He taught, but it also involves how He taught. For me this encompasses how He interacted with people. His interaction with Nicodemus is fascinating. 

The first thing I notice in John’s third chapter is that Jesus risked His reputation by befriending someone from a group of people He had publicly condemned for hypocrisy. Jesus didn’t just spend time with those who were already His friends.

And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that He was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to His disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Mark 2:16-17

Jesus was surprisingly accessible to individuals. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Jesus made Himself available. Perhaps He had developed a habit of being in a particular place at night. Nicodemus knew where to find Him. When Nicodemus met with Jesus He attempted to give Christ His due, and while many preachers would welcome the stroking of their egos, Jesus immediately overlooked this and looked directly into Nicodemus’s heart, and answered the Pharisee’s unasked question. This exchange exposed Nicodemus’s religion as mere cold formalism – and not the heart-connected, soul-satisfying, intellectually enriching, entrance into GOD’s intimately love-drenched presence. Christ was not intimidated by speaking to ‘The Teacher of Israel’ and was prepared to give the first properly done rebuke in human history.

Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.
John 3:10-11

The rebuke that Christ had offered in public to the Pharisees, He now gave personally in private. Unlike our rebukes, Christ’s must have been tender and soothing. Nicodemus welcomed what followed. What followed was Jesus giving the light that Nicodemus lacked.  

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
John 3:19-21

Jesus was a friend to Nicodemus.

In John chapter 4, Jesus befriends a Samaritan woman and heals her soul.

In John chapter 5, Jesus befriended an invalid and healed his lame legs.

In John chapter 6, Jesus has a conversation with Philip, then a small boy, and then Simon Peter, and then feeds them.

In John chapter 8, Jesus spoke with a woman dragged out into the dirt to be stoned and saved her life.

And so on.

In each of the nine days that John selects to paint a picture He depicts Christ as being present with individuals. Now that Christ has been resurrected and glorified, and dwells in eternity, how much more does He now have time to be with individuals? 

What did people feel who had been with Christ? 

It’s possible to be physically and geographically with someone but not present. What I am learning from Christ’s interactions with this sample of people whom He was present with, is that being present is a demonstration of God’s love. With each person that Christ engaged with, whether it was a religious Pharisee, a woman with a reputation, an elderly invalid, a young boy about to eat his lunch, an adulterous woman, a blind man, a grieving sister, a Roman Procurator, a thief on an adjacent cross, a beleaguered disciple, Christ was present.

We busy people are generally lousy at being present. We can be with someone and be a million miles away at the same time. While someone is chatting with us we are continually checking our phone screens. This is rude and a denial of our presence. Presence involves seeing and hearing. It involves connecting to some level with someone’s heart. This all takes practice. In the Gospels I see Jesus being present. What must people have felt when Jesus was present with them? We can do more than surmise the answer, we can experience it now.    

teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am (present) with you always, to the end of the age.”
Matthew 28:20

Pastor Andrew.

Here We Go Again

When The Past Keeps Presenting Itself

The Past has power. It defines. It reminds. It hurts. It invades the present. Like a trendy ageing rock-star’s weirdly tinted glasses, the Past colours how we see our present and discolours our future. As a result, we often treat others based on our past experiences with them. We also treat our present problems based on how we’ve dealt with similar past problems. But the Past, just a little more than the present, and quite unlike the future, has the unavoidably bad habit of becoming out-of-date and even obsolete. Have you allowed the Past rent-free occupancy in your life?

In the Past when a patient was suffering from high blood pressure, physicians would use leeches to “blood-let” their patient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting). This practice started with the ancient Greeks and continued up until the 1800s. Someone had the courage to examine the Past and realised that patients got worse and not better as a result bloodletting. Have you ever considered that what you’ve been doing in the past hasn’t worked? Like the person who grew up watching their parents fight whenever they had a disagreement and then faces a problem in their own marriage and is almost instinctively guided by the Past, resorts to this futile strategy to solve their own crisis. Just as the end of ancient medical bloodletting came when courage was used to realise that this strategy didn’t ever work for their parents and it has never actually worked for them either! 

The Past has a cousin called Nostalgia. Nostalgia loves talking about his cousin but does so in a very distorted fashion. Nostalgia magnifies the good times and attempts to convince us that these good times were far better than they actually were, and at the same  time tries to tell us that the bad times weren’t that bad! It’s hard to spot Nostalgia - after all, it always creeps up behind us and begins with a whisper in our ear with a pleasant memory. But there is a kind of Nostalgia that is closer to sorcery than Remembering because it takes a damaging past event and reinvents it as the present solution to a similar difficulty. For example, I know of a person who was introduced to drinking. Initially they felt somewhat guilty for accepting the introduction but as time went on that drinking session became a Nostalgic memory which helped them relax. They then experienced some unwelcome stress and Nostalgia whispered in their ear that a drink would help them to relax. They struck up quite a friendship with Nostalgia and accepted Nostalgia’s suggestion that they now “needed a drink” in order to feel happy, gather their thoughts, and cope. Meanwhile Nostalgia is sniggering behind their backs as another victim is now fully duped.

When the Eternal Jesus came to redeem mankind His atoning death had the effect of reaching into the Past, changing the Present, and redirecting the Future. This was illustrated on the night He was betrayed when He took bread and said, “Do this” (Present) “in remembrance of Me” (the Past) “until I come” (Future). Christ’s Cross transcends time! He deals with our Past, aids our Present, and gifts our Future.

Because of the Gospel (the supernatural life-giving message of Christ’s work and offer) we can break free from our negative Pasts, live an overcoming Present and have a brighter better Future. The Gospel shows us that people change. You may think that you have no hope. But the Gospel gives us hope. It teaches us that the angry can become easy-going, the downcast can become joyous, and the despairing can become optimistic. The next time you find yourself saying, “Here we go again” remember the Gospel you have accepted - and remember that the Gospel has delivered you from your Past, given you guidance for your Present, and invested you with hope for a better future.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Second Corinthians 5:17

“Remember not the former things,

nor consider the things of old. 

Behold, I am doing a new thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert.

Isaiah 43:18-19

Andrew Corbett