2018-06-03 Christ in you, the hope of glory

The big idea of this service is that however difficult you find it to love, respect or accept yourself, you can love, respect and accept Jesus who is Christ in you.

Col 1: 26-27 “The mystery which has been hidden from generations of people down the ages has now been revealed to God’s people. Through them, God wanted to make known to the people of this world the riches of the glory of this mystery: Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

We’re going to come at this from several angles. I don’t expect everything to grab everyone, but I do hope that something will grab each of you. You may not be deeply moved, but I hope you may find a direction in which to move.

I’d like you to imagine that you’re selling your house due to straitened circumstances. I know you don’t all own the places in which you live, but please stretch your imagination as much as you can. The estate agent has been around and taken some superb photos which make it look bigger, cleaner, tidier and more colourful than it really is. Sure enough they spark someone’s interest. The doorbell rings and you show the prospective buyer into the living room, which you have tidied immaculately. You can see that the buyer is immediately impressed by the clean paintwork, the spotless carpet and the gleaming windows. He nods, ‘Very nice’. Would you expect him to make an offer there and then? No! He wants to see more. You head for the kitchen and he makes a move to open the oven, which you subtly block; he

glances at the cupboard doors and you move quickly to stand in front of the sink, knowing what’s under it. He meets your gaze and you know he sees right through you; he just smiles and moves into the utility room to pull open the washing machine, wrinkling his nose. He steps out into the garden and takes in the tired felt on the shed roof, peering through the cobwebbed window at the mess inside. He asks you to open the garage and produces a torch as he contents himself with standing in the doorway. You feel shame building in you. Upstairs is next. You realise too late that your teenager didn’t make her bed as instructed and left the top off the toothpaste. Your toddler announces his successful use of a potty just as the buyer locates the loft hatch and gets out that torch again. All your hope of an offer drains away when he notices sunlight streaming in around the old chimney and begins to examine the stain on the ceiling beneath, which is bulging slightly. Yet he is not to be put off. As you return to the living room he says he’s prepared to meet your asking price with an unusual proviso: that he occupy the spare bedroom so that your family and their possessions may remain in your home rent free. He sees your puzzlement and assures you there’s no rush. ‘Think it over’, he smiles, producing a business card: Yeshua ben Yosef, of Natzaret, Breathing new life into old homes, since the year dot.

Covenant by Margaret Halaska.

The Father knocks at my door, seeking a home for his son.

“Rent is cheap,” I say.

“I don’t want to rent. I want to buy,” says God. “I’m not sure I want to sell, but you might come in to look around.” “I think I will,” says God.

“I might let you have a room or two.” “I like it,” says God. “I’ll take the two.You might decide to give me more some day.I can wait,” says God.

“I’d like to give you more, but it’s a bit difficult. I need some space for me.”

“I know,” says God, “but I’ll wait. I like what I see.”

“Hmm, maybe I can let you have another room. I really don’t need that much.” “Thanks,” says God, “I’ll take it. I like what I see.”

“I’d like to give you the whole house but I’m not sure…” “Think on it,” says God. “I wouldn’t put you out. Your house would be mine and my son would live in it. You’d have more space than you’d ever had before.”

“I don’t understand at all.”“I know,” says God, “but I can’t tell you about that. You’ll have to discover it for yourself. That can only happen if you let him have the whole house.”

“A bit risky,” I say. “Yes,” says God, “but try me.”

“I’m not sure – I’ll let you know.”“I can wait,” says God. “I like what I see.”

As some of you have begun to discover, your ‘house’ is much more like the one on Jesus’ business card than the one in which you live! How many times have you sincerely opened the whole of you to Jesus? Yet he has this knack of finding hidden doors to parts of your personality you’d long since forgotten or preferred to pretend didn’t exist. He is Christ in you, the hope of glory. As he enters each room, he brings the hope of glory to that room and all its contents.

Do you remember on Pentecost, I likened the flame of the Spirit to adding oxygen in the chemical process of burning? Here’s something that will burn: we used to call it North Sea Gas, it’s what runs your gas boiler or gas cooker. And up in the air is lots of oxygen, which is the stuff we breathe to stay alive. Now when we set light to the gas, the C for Carbon joins up with some oxygen to make carbon dioxide, which plants need for growth. And the H for Hydrogen grabs some oxygen to make H20, which most of you know as water, essential for all life. So the parallel is with us which I’ve called S for Self and N for Needs. (We could have used other terms!) Like oxygen in the air, everywhere around us is the Spirit of Jesus, which I’ve labelled J. So when the Spirit comes and sets light to us, our self and our needs get bonded to Jesus. It’s not an ideal picture. We usually think of the action going the other way, though the Bible speaks both of us in Christ and Christ in us. This is sometimes gentle, but often explosive: Christ in us the hope of… GLORY!

Reading: Colossians 1: 15-29

As we’ve opened up to each other, we’ve discovered that many of us have trouble loving ourselves. Some of us have gone so far as to say, ‘I hate myself.’ I appreciate that this is not all of us. If that’s not you, please don’t switch off entirely, since there are people around you for whom that is true, people with whom you’re united as Christ’s body the church. In my report for the Annual Meeting, I identified this difficulty of accepting ourselves with love and respect as one of my biggest conundrums. One of my big tasks is to help you move up the scale of respecting and accepting yourself and your needs, Let’s put that scale up the side of a graph…’Respect for me and my needs’. Along the bottom, we’ll put ‘Respect for you and your needs’. I can see we might get scrambled on pronouns here. ‘My’ is the person looking at the diagram; ‘you’ is someone else.

(These ideas and diagram are based on the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) designed in 1974 by Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann.)Up here in the orange corner, we’re at the high end of both scales. We’ll call this collaboration. I respect you as much as I

respect myself. This is firmly in the territory of ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. Round here, we’ve often used ‘You grow, we grow’, which I’ve mirrored as ‘You grow, I grow.’ This is the kingdom of heaven on earth! This is the body of Christ in being. This is where we want to get to. It’s a place we sometimes visit, but frequently dip out of. That is not an accusation of you; it’s an observation on human nature. Either our respect for ourselves dips, or our respect for others dips.

Let’s start with losing respect for myself: the blue corner, Accommodation. Down here I respect you more than I respect myself. I put your needs above my own; in fact, I spend a lot of energy finding out what your needs are, or guessing them, making it my job to satisfy your needs. You grow at my expense; my self and my needs get neglected and wither. Somehow, we’ve built a Christian culture where this is considered OK. More than that, it’s considered virtuous. ‘God first, others second, self last.’ We use the words of Jesus and the Apostle Paul to justify something that would appal them! A lot of people in churches of our ilk, strongly believe that they should accommodate The Minister out of respect for his or her position. And let’s face it, some ministers agree with them, or at least give up swimming against the tide – even though it’s directly contrary to the teaching of Jesus. There are frequently times in this church when other people know better than me, or simply have information that I don’t have. When they accommodate me and I find out, I get mad. This is not usually helpful to them! I have discovered that when someone is not giving themselves due respect, telling them,

disrespectfully, that they should respect themselves makes it worse.

That probably brings us to the yellow corner, Competition. Because my reaction to accommodation tells people that I respect them less than I respect myself. This is not what they’re expecting or wanting! Quite the opposite. It’s not what I’m wanting either! I so want to collaborate with people. What tends to happen is that respect for me takes a hit, both in myself and in them. So they slide left and I slide down, putting us in the green corner: Avoidance. This is a horrible place, with which some of you are all too familiar. Once we’re in this territory, giving up becomes a very attractive option: people give up responsibilities; they leave the church; they break relationships; they harm themselves in various ways; they lash out; and they actively consider the ultimate exit from life.

A lot more could be said. All these things are a simplification of the complexities of life. It’s often tempting to look for the middle ground, for a ‘quiet life’: Compromise where no-one grows very much, but neither do they wither.

Why do I inflict this on you today? Here’s why. I sincerely believe that we Sandhurst Baptists are together a temple of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor 6:19-20, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God. You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body (I’d like to say your whole body!) and in your spirit.” In order to work that out in practice, Christ in you, the hope of glory must meet Christ in me, the hope of

glory. I’m beginning to realise how difficult it is for many of us to respect our own self and our own needs. Contrary to much you have been taught and much that you have experienced, respecting yourself and your needs is a basic requirement for belonging and for relating. What I’m wondering is this: can you respect Christ in you? I believe that Jesus is bonded to you as oxygen is bonded to carbon and hydrogen, confirming you as someone valuable and loveable. I’m no longer asking you to respect your self separate from Jesus; I’m asking you to respect this new combination of you and Jesus totally bound together into a single unit. I’m no longer asking you to respect your needs separate from Jesus, I’m asking you to respect this new sanctified combination of needs linked to Jesus. Or you may think of rooms. You may have avoided some rooms for a very long time, seeing them only as dirty, negative, painful, shameful. I’m not just asking you to change your mind about those rooms. I’m asking you to love Jesus in those rooms as he fills them up with his hope of glory.

This is the mystery that God has shown to us and which he wants to show our communities through us: that deep human connection is possible. Each of us longs for it; yet each of us shies away from it. It is possible as Christ in you connects to Christ in me. It is possible as each of us loves Christ in us, who loves us.