Because we bear your name February–March 2024

Most people want their church to look good! We want to apply the same rigorous routines we apply to our bodies and wardrobes to our church! We do this both to the building but also to congregations.

Of course, we must listen to the wisdom of the people in the field of church planting. People from outside a church need to know that the place is cared for. There is an intuitive awareness that goes on in the mind of a visitor to the church – ‘If these people care for their church building, then maybe they will also care for me’. Up-to-date websites, ease of parking, clear signage and friendly welcomes at the church door are vital for congregational vitality.

But deep down we know that church is not about looking good. It is about the goodness of God for us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As I write this to you, the season of Epiphany is upon us. In our culture, Christmas seemed to come to an abrupt end with the Boxing Day sales. Hot cross buns went up for sale along with ‘back to school’ resources. Businesses in New Zealand and Australia target us with so much marketing that it is very easy to drift into a mindset that we are simply ‘consumers’ needing to consume more!

In the Epiphany gospel reading from Matthew chapter two, we hear of the wise men who follow the star until they meet with King Herod in Jerusalem. They are then directed to Bethlehem where we are told, ‘they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy’ (Matthew 2:9,10).

Travelling through life, walking by faith in this story of the manger and the cross, is about joy. Joy was proclaimed by the angel to the shepherds at Bethlehem, ‘I bring you good tidings of great joy’. Joy was the experience of the disciples when the Lord Jesus appeared to them behind closed doors after his crucifixion and resurrection, ‘The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord’.

The scriptures speak of this joy as the joy of salvation. God has come into our midst to break down the dividing wall so that we would have peace with God. On the cross, our Lord brings the great exchange: our sin for his righteousness. We are baptised into his death that we would walk in newness of life. We bring nothing, he gives everything. Because of this great exchange, we come to God with complete confidence, as children to a loving Father.

But we know that the story of the wise men takes an ugly turn. This is an event that is often skipped over in the romantic portrayals of the Christmas nativity. The wise men are warned in a dream, not to tell King Herod of the baby. When Herod finds out he rages, and he orders all the little ones around Bethlehem to be murdered. This is a horrific story, showing the human heart that is in all of us. Herod is set against the way of God and provides an alternative to God’s way. Even in the Garden of Eden, Adam declared to the Lord God, ‘It was the woman that YOU gave me’.

Scripture tells us that the wise men left ‘by another road’. They did not go the way of Herod. Herod’s way was to seek to thwart the good and gracious will of God. Herod’s way was human scheming and the destruction of human lives.

Christian faith is this ‘other road’. Our gracious God sends us along the way of the gospel of Jesus Christ to stand against the ‘way of Herod’. On this ‘other road’ the people of the church work together to keep our focus on the Christ and the work of his cross as the fulfilment of God’s plan of salvation. On this ‘other road’ the people of the church speak out against the use of power to destroy others.

As the church travels this ‘other road’ sometimes it might not look so good to others. But, in the name of the Lord, it will bring God’s peace and joy, that is the forgiveness of sin.

See hymn 804 LHS.

In Christ,

Paul

‘Lord Jesus, we belong to you,
you live in us, we live in you;
we live and work for you –
because we bear your name’