St. Andrew's Brussels Sermons

Why is the story of the Road to Emmaus so popular? Well, it's a miracle story. But it is also s homecoming story. The Disciples had just witnessed a catastrophe, and the story ends by giving them new hope and new energy.

The story is about a married couple, Mr and Mrs Cleopas. Their whole world had collapsed. The messiah they had believed Jesus to be had just been cruelly executed by the authorities. They were distraught and despondent. Then Jesus joins them on their walk. But despite the fact that Jesus was on their minds and in their conversation, they do not recognise Him!

Why? Well, something kept them from seeing Him as Jesus. Of course, or modem, scientific minds don't get this, and try to explain this with science and logic. The option that this was a divine act doesn't enter our minds. Practical people do not consider the possibility of miracles, do they

The difference with today is that in those times, people *did* believe in miracles. In the original text, the phrase actually says that their eyes “were kept from recognising” Him. Grammatically, this is called the “passive voice”, and it was used exclusively in the New Testament to describe situations where God is acting.

In other words, it was God who kept them from recognising Jesus. But why would He do this? It was a ten kilometre walk. This provided plenty of time for them to be *tutored*, by Christ Himself! They were kept from recognising Him, so that they could be instructed!

This had got to have been the greatest Bible Study in all time, because it was led by the Greatest Bible Teacher of all time! In that light, a ten kilometre walk could not possibly have been a long enough walk to cover all the areas of the Scriptures that point to Jesus. After all, the Bible is all about God's plan of salvation for Mankind through His risen Son, Jesus. To Him be all glory and praise!

The Gospel of John makes it clear that the place where Jesus was buried was a garden. The tomb was a new tomb in that garden. This location, and its implied imagery of luxuriant plant life and greenery, echoes the poetry of the Song of Solomon, where the lovers meet in a garden. So, John is setting the scene for what is going to be a remarkable event.

Mary Magdalene doesn't grasp the significance of Jesus being buried in a garden. Kings were buried in a garden! Note that the word for such gardens of delight came from the Persian: “paradise”. So, Mary had stumbled into paradise, into Eden, even, the source of fruitful life, but she doesn't understand all that. Mary is in the presence of the Garden of God, without even realising it.

How guilty are we, dear Reader, of not realising that we too are in God's Garden? Have we abdicated our responsibilities as custodians of the planet? In a way, Mary Magdalene was not wrong when “she supposed him to be the gardner”: Jesus *is* the Gardener. So, how much more shameful is it, then, when we neglect His Garden?

“We are Christians, therefore we pray!” The Apostle Paul encouraged, nay required, Christians to pray continually and at all times. However, individual prayer is difficult. Self-discipline is a challenge. It is hard for us to devote the time necessary for prayer. Indeed, prayer has been squeezed into the margins of life in our modern society. In TV, for example, we rarely see people take to prayer, even in the most difficult circumstances.

That is why we need communal prayer! We need to get together with other Christians, sharing in greater prayers about the Church as a whole. The supreme act of communal worship is at the Communion Table. In today's first Reading, Paul attempts to describe the significance of Communion as a communal act. Sharing this special Supper together helps the individual Christian realise that they are part of a far greater whole. The Communion helps make us feel truly part of the wider Church.

“It's a ladder by which we climb up to Heaven”, says Calvin, who goes on to conclude that it is also a continual encouragement to us in our weakness. It is a means to receive a strength that we never knew we had - strength for the work of the Kingdom.

Having received the Sacraments, we are invigorated all the more to pray for the world around us. When we leave the Lord's Table, we leave into the world with the taste of Christ on our lips. This is a wondrous thing! May the Lord give us the courage to act accordingly.

Sunday 28 April: “Doubting Thomas?”

Preacher: Rev Eric Foggitt

Readings: John 20:19-31 & Psalm 150

The story of “Doubting Thomas” is one of the best-known in the Bible, for understandable reasons. After all, the Disciples had just seen their Leader crucified, and no doubt they feared that the Romans would come after them now too. The Disciples' reports of Jesus risen would have hit Thomas's ears like a bombshell!

But it is a bit misleading to call Thomas ‘doubting’. One could actually argue that he was only being a realist. He was trying to figure out what to do next. After all, he had just given up three years of his life to follow a man who had just been beaten up and crucified publicly by the Roman occupiers. Thomas may have simply been taking stock of his situation in the wake of the horrific episode on Good Friday. Maybe that is why he wasn't with the rest of the Disciples when they were cowering in fear in the presence of Jesus - the very man he had seen crucified with his own eyes.

So, when he was told that Jesus had risen, he reacted in disbelief. “Yeah, right!” is the kind of reaction he gave the other Disciples. He just couldn't believe it.

However, when Jesus Himself confronts him, Thomas's reality was completely changed. He was made to realise that his own understanding of things was too restricted, too wee. He needed to be reminded of the grander vision - a grander vision than what he had so far.

The appearance of Jesus to Thomas challenged his view of the world. It opened his eyes to a far bigger, very different vision of life than that which he had entertained so far. As the staggering reality struck, Thomas was suddenly moved to cry out to Jesus, “My Lord and my God!”

Similarly, our own preconceived ideas also act to constrain our understanding of God and His plans for us. If you respond as Thomas did, then things can start happening that you may have considered to be impossible before! You can break free from the shackles of your earlier, limited perceptions, and instead start living in an alternative reality of love and harmony and peace.

Faith works! Amen.

Easter Day 2019: Christ has risen!

Preacher: Rev Eric Foggitt

Readings: Isaiah 65: 17-25 & Luke 24: 1-12

The miracle of Easter Day took place in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark, and nobody was there to see it. The disciples and the women find the tomb empty. John’s gospel describes how Mary Magdalene goes to the disciples and tells them, ‘I have seen the Lord’.

In our endless attempts to make the Bible relevant we forget that the Bible creates its own relevance. In those simple words, Mary describes the miracle that occurred on the first Easter Day.

Have we met Jesus? People need to feel able to approach Jesus and to let him into their lives so that they, too, can say ‘I have seen the Lord’. Resurrection is not just life after death but the assurance of God’s continued love for us. The promise of the resurrection is when we can say, ‘I have seen the Lord’: words that roll back the stone that keeps us from living a Christian life of love.

Thanks be to God for the opportunity to celebrate this miraculous day and our prayers for courage and peace to all those affected by the terrible events in Sri Lanka on this most blessed day.

Sunday 7 April: ‘All I once held dear I have counted loss’

Preacher: Rev Eric Foggitt

Rev Foggitt is a member of our sister church in Amsterdam and will be preaching at St Andrew’s during April.

Readings: John 12:1-8, Philippians 3:1-14 (NIV)

In today's reading, Paul explains that his call to service in the Lord had nothing to do with his background. Sometimes, things come crashing into our lives that completely change the way we look at our lives. Deaths, divorces, breakups, unemployment, or things for which we have been working for for a long time, suddenly cast aside in a moment.

Today, we see that Paul is angry with people who were proclaiming that salvation came through circumcision. They claimed that you could only come to Christ after becoming a Jew first. Paul dismissed this heresy by calling it ’mutilation’, not only of the body, but also of our *faith*. Because circumcision was not needed for our salvation; only faith in Christ, given to us by the Grace of God.

Paul was saying that circumcision was being proclaimed as a way to *replace* grace - completely contrary to God's plan for us through Christ Jesus, His Son. This is why Paul was so livid when people claimed that our salvation was only possible through circumcision. This would be a mutilation of our faith! And ultimately worthless.

Paul speaks from personal experience when he says this. He was right up there among the most zealous persecutors of Christians. He was so passionate as a Pharisee that he had many Christians killed. But now, in the light of God's Grace and our salvation through His own Son, his world was turned upside down, and he concluded that everything that he had done before was *rubbish*!

Paul knew for sure that salvation only comes by grace, and by grace alone. God had a different purpose for Paul for which his background was irrelevant. And in finding this purpose, Paul achieved peace and fulfilment to such an extent that he gladly dismissed all that he had done before as a waste.

God has a purpose for each of our lives. What is God's purpose for you, dear Reader? We only find peace when we are at the centre of God's will for us. Amen.

Sunday 31 March: The Book of Revelation

Preacher: Daniel Brink

Readings: Genesis 2:4-9, Revelation 21:1-4 (NIV)

How do you approach the Book of Revelation? Is it a Book of the Bible that you avoid, because of its complexity and obscure symbolism? Let's try and look at it the way the original readers would have seen it. This is because it was basically a letter - a letter to the early church with the purpose of encouragement and exhortation. It was written by John, who urged its readers to take it to heart. It was clearly an important document, and we shouldn't avoid it at all!

If anything, it is a reminder that God is sovereign, and that Jesus is victorious over death. But it is a complex Book, containing references to the past, the present *and* the future. By the time we arrive at Revelation chapter 21, we see a future-oriented part of the Book, describing scenes from ‘eternity’.

Eternity, as described here, takes the form of an entirely new Creation, similar to the current Creation, except much, much better: “like a bride prepared for her husband”. In the new Creation, God dwells with His people.

There are two features of this wonderful prospect for God's people that we should look at:

- God's presence as the *culmination* of God’s rescue plan for us; and

- The *comfort* of being with God.

First, “culmination”. It is interesting that the Bible opens with God’s act of creation, and it closes with another creation - a new Creation. It encompasses the entirety of God's plan for His creation, His ‘Story’ for us. ‘Stories’ are much appreciated by mankind all over the world. All of us are drawn to stories that feature a grand dilemma, a problem to be overcome. We want a story to have a hero. Perhaps this is because we are the creation of God, whose story for Mankind is one of rescue from evil.

God's presence with His people is a repeating theme throughout the Bible. First, there was the Tabernacle, then the more permanent structure of the Temple. By the time we get to the Book of Revelation, the new Jerusalem is described as a perfect cube. This would have meant a lot to first Century Christians, because the Holiest of Holies was a cube room which was the dwelling place of God in the Temple.

Second, God as our *comfort*. The good news is that in that New Jerusalem, chaos and suffering no longer appear. The Lord is on the Throne, and brings an end to suffering and loneliness. God dwells *with* His people. Our relationships here are tainted by the Fall. But in the Lord, we reach the fulfilment of our need for the perfect, intimate relationship with God. We belong to Him, and how wonderful it is to be where we belong. God's rescues His 'Bride', His people, through His Son. This is the culmination of the purpose of Mankind, and is our greatest comfort.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Sunday 24 March: “Good, old-fashioned repentance”

Preacher: Lisbet Duerinck Van Gysegem

Readings: 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 & Luke 13:1-9 (NIV)

“Repentance” is not a particularly popular topic nowadays, is it? It's like it went out of fashion with black and white TVs! When you say the word “repentance”, people tend to dismiss it as belonging to the distant realm of some isolated, old-fashioned “hellfire and brimstone” churches.

What does the word evoke in you, Dear Reader? In the Bible, repentance is described in terms that include “missing your aim”, “turning away from old ways” or “mourning our mistakes”. There is an important undercurrent here: the really important thing is how we react *after* we have sinned.

Do we persist in being a ‘barren fig tree’, like in the Reading taken from the Gospel according to Luke? Or do we change our ways, turn to Christ, and begin bearing fruit?

You may then ask, should it matter how *big* the sin was? It may surprise some to learn that determining how “big” a sin is is largely *irrelevant*. A sin is a sin! It is the persistent presence of sin that prevents us from entering into God's presence.

Jesus bore the consequences of our sins, and offers us the possibility to be washed clean of them, so that we can enter into God's presence. Consequently, we must not make the mistake of losing sight of Christ when we repent.

God will judge us, but in His grace, He provides us with the means to forgiveness, through Jesus. Amen, and thanks be to God!