Last week we looked at how, by our faith alone, our sins are forgiven, and we are judged in Christ himself; who presents us without blemish before the Father.

Today’s reading from Hebrews gives us examples of living the faithful life and how to persevere and mature in our faith.

Now the beginning of this chapter in Hebrews tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).  Our faith is the basis of our hope, and the writer of Hebrews tells us that our hope is assured or guaranteed by Christ himself. 

In today’s reading from Hebrews, we see a list of many faithful saints of the Old Testament who, just like us, are commended for their faith and nothing else. They ran the race that was set before them, just are we are to do.

Today we are going to look at a very unfashionable aspect of this Christian life, judgement.

As a minister of Christ, I am obliged to be faithful in all I teach, yet to avoid speaking on Judgement is to avid speaking on love and justice.

What is seen as judgement for one will be justice and consolation for someone else.  And if God loves all of us equally, then judgment of an injustice is as much part of the character of God as love is.

It is the flip side of the same coin.  There is no love without judgement.

I sometimes hear people talk of the “God of the Old Testament”, as if he were a different God to the God found in the New Testament. 

As if one was a God of wrath and the other the God of love.  Yet the Old Testament is full of passages that show is great and powerful creator God loves us like a doting mother.

Today’s reading from Colossians is all about becoming real. As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we live a new life in the fullness of Christ and today’s message is a very practical look at what behaviours we display in our lives that show this reality.

There is a quite famous old English Christmas story that I read when I was very young, called The Velveteen Rabbit.

Some of you will almost certainly know it, and I have mentioned it before but in a whole different context – that of being real with ourselves - and relating to a different passage of scripture.

We were to continue exploring Paul’s letter to the Colossians, however our gospel reading from Luke today is too compelling, and what a wonderful passage of scripture it is!

It is a portion of some of Jesus’ teaching on prayer, which is the source of all growth in the Christian life; by us for sure, but also by the fact that Jesus and the Holy Spirit themselves are constantly interceding (that is praying) for us!

It begins with the Lord’s Prayer (also recorded in Matthew’s gospel) – the great model of how to pray and what to pray for.

Then it moves on to the importance of perseverance in prayer, and concludes with an answer as to why we should pray and what happens when we do. 

There is a full sermon in every line of the Lord’s prayer!  But this morning we are focusing on the end of today’s gospel and homing in specifically on just two verses, 9-10.

We will be spending a couple of weeks in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, so first let’s get some background and context for this remarkable letter.

The city of Colossae was around 180 or so kms east of Ephesus, in the Roman province of Asia, what we would call eastern Turkey.

Ephesus was a very important centre in the early Church. Paul spent three years there and his teaching we are told, “spread throughout the province of Asia.”

Our understanding of the three-fold ministry of deacons, priests, and bishops (also called overseers) comes from Paul’s organisation of the early church.

So we can legitimately describe Paul as the Archbishop who oversaw other bishops to lead the other provincial churches.

The Jews have a way of teaching that was based on the idea that the shortest distance between a speaker and the truth is a story. 

Jesus knew this, and when addressing groups of people or individuals who may have understood a thought or a concept in their heads, but not in their hearts, he too used a story, or what we call a parable, as the shortest distance to the truth.

Now the priest, the Levite and perhaps especially the lawyer who initiated this beautiful response from Jesus, had a great head knowledge of the Old Testament law, which was not at all reflected in their hearts.

As he did on the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7), and many other places, Jesus radically reinterprets this law to show its original intention. Jesus wants his listeners to understand who their neighbour is, and what love is.

He also wants them to know that this love will be demonstrated in himself for them and for us and for all the world.

Today’s gospel is about mission, a helpful definition of which is, ‘finding where God is active and jumping in’ (former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams).  And God is active always and everywhere!  

To put today’s gospel in context. Jesus had earlier sent out his twelve apostles on the same task, to go before him to cure the sick and the broken in mind and spirit.

Immediately on their return, when Jesus was debriefing them, a crowd of 5,000 showed up whom Jesus and the disciples fed.

Jesus now sends out seventy more disciples, not the twelve, on the same mission.  To learn how to feed his sheep.

The Lord operates in his kingdom the same way today.  After we believe and come of a certain spiritual age, God starts to use us, or ‘send us out,’ even if we are not aware of it.

This morning, we are looking to Paul’s letter to the Galatians to show the two ways we can live our lives: self-directed living, or God directed living, which Paul calls living by the Spirit.

First, let’s play a little word association game.  If someone were to say the word ‘God’ to you, what would be the first word that would come into your mind?  Your first thought? 

Would it be an old man with a long flowing beard?  Would it be a judge?  Would it be a distant father who never seems to visit or care for us? Would it be guilt?

Perhaps though, it would be the word, ‘Grace.’  So, let’s look at these two different ways of living through the prism of grace. 

Our reflections and thoughts this morning are on the unique and fascinating OT prophet, Elijah, in today’s reading from 1 Kings.  They are not so much theological as pastoral.

Something has happened to Elijah that has totally punctured him, and he is emotionally exhausted.  His flame has burnt out and he can’t go on.  

The heroic and ever-active Elijah, used by God absolutely uniquely, has become passive and fearful because of a nasty letter.

This exhaustion can present itself as extreme lethargy, anxiety, and an exhausting inner tension, brought about by severe emotional disturbance in our lives.  Quite often sudden grief in all its forms, sometimes accumulated stress in an occupation.

Now I think this relates to us as well as Elijah. From time to time all of us have or will suffer a form of this emotional exhaustion to one degree or another.

We are exhausted but can’t sleep.  Life becomes too much for us, and we need the very pampering of God himself, just like Elijah.

Our readings from 1 Kings 19 today can teach us a great deal about coping when we are in a dark place.

The Holy Trinity.  In some ways I’d rather begin by saying nothing, for a sermon about the Trinity is a sermon about God’s own self. 

But we have been talking about the Trinity in some way or another ever since Lent, and so this morning I will try to talk about the trinity in different way.

When we get over our compulsion to do a lot of talking and explaining about God, we come to realise that our first and best response before God is simply to stand in wonder and awe in and of his great love for us.

The greatest and most powerful love story ever told.  

Today my friends we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at the time of the Jewish harvest festival called Shavuot, or the festival of weeks, or Pentecost, as it was fifty days after the Passover.

Jesus ends today’s gospel with,

“’I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father…  If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, the helper, to be with you forever.  17 This is the Spirit of truth, … You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you’”  (Jn 14:14-17 selected).

That’s what this day, the Day of Pentecost, is about.  It’s about the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ sending the Advocate, the Comforter, the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to the church, to help the church, who, as one, are the children of God.

Today we are celebrating Ascension Day which fell three days ago on Thursday, forty days after the resurrection.  Now I’d like us to consider the ascension as the essential ‘third movement’ of the completion of Jesus’ work – death, resurrection, and ascension.

I found this confirmed in my reading this week, as the gospels, Acts and Peter’s and Paul’s letters also see Ascension Day as a third movement of the completion of Jesus’ work as the Son of Man.

Here is just a sampling of how Scripture refers to the importance of the Ascension, then we’ll conclude by looking at what that means for us.

For one last week, we look at Jesus’ remarkably comforting words to his disciples at the last supper.  This morning we are talking about that very underrated fruit of the Holy Spirit - peace.

The worldly culture we live in tries to sell us its version of it every day.  It’s not hard to see how much time and energy and attention and purpose we spend in the search for peace of some sort.

We may not use the word ‘Peace,’ but it is the one thing everyone in the world seeks.

Last week we spoke about how Jesus knows us by name, and if we listen for his voice and follow him, he will lead us into rich and protected pasture because he is a Good Shepherd.

Today’s passage from Revelation 21:1-6 shows the purpose for his shepherding of us – so we can live with God forever.  It also shows the extraordinarily deep devotion God has for his children, his people.

This reading is often heard at funerals because it offers such comfort to the grieving.  It also provides great comfort for us, the living.  Grab hold of these beautiful promises and don’t let go of them ever.

When Moses asked God, by what name should he be known, God answered, My name is “I AM.”  Seven times in John’s gospel Jesus names himself the same way, followed by an aspect of what he does for us.

Today we look at a core name of our Lord from both old and new testaments.  Jesus says earlier in this chapter from John’s gospel we heard this morning, “I am the Good Shepherd” (v.11), and more than that, in v.7 he says, “I am the gate” (or door), through which the sheep must come.

After two years of letting it lie fallow, this morning we are taking (I hope) a fresh look at what this means through the magnificent art of the 23rd Psalm.  This shows us exactly how the Lord shepherds us into fullness of life, the life of his resurrection.

This morning we are going to take a closer look at one of the most poignant and profound encounters between two people in all of the bible – the one-on-one conversation between Jesus and Peter.

Before we get there though, we need to briefly set the context for this conversation.

Although Jesus had met Peter in a group with other disciples, no gospel records a private one-on-one conversation with the person whom, from the very first calling of the disciples, was to be the rock on which Jesus would build his church.

After the two meetings with all the disciples we read about last week, Jesus had vanished again, and Peter was still tormented by guilt and things unsaid.  So he went back to Galilee, to his hometown, and this is where today’s reading is set.

When we talked about this gospel passage last year, we touched very briefly on the disciple Thomas, but focussed more on the disciples as a whole and their receiving of the Holy Spirit, the very breath of the living God.

There is so much going on in today’s gospel, but every few years its is very much worth our while to look in particular at Thomas; faithful, loyal and courageous disciple.

For many centuries, he has often been referred to as Doubting Thomas.  Is this doubting aspect of Thomas really negative or should we see it as a positive trait?

Perhaps we can see it as evidence of an inquiring mind that needed to see the truth to believe, but was more than willing to believe once he saw the truth.  Perhaps he just had some questions and wanted them answered.

Two days ago, on Good Friday, we asked ourselves the central question: What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us on the cross?  We talked about how Jesus took God’s justice fully onto himself because he was the only one who could, and through his blood shed for us, we can be one with the Father in the same way Jesus is one with the Father, through faith in the same Jesus Christ.  Today let’s move on to part two of this same central question.

When Jesus died the world became a different place.  The first sign of this totally different world is what we are celebrating today.  In this new world, Jesus was raised from the dead.  Nothing short of a revolution had begun.  It wasn’t just a surprising and happy ending to what we thought was a tragedy.  It was the beginning of a new sort of life, a new way of living.  This beginning meant that what we thought was the darkest, most inevitable power in the world, death, had been defeated.

What does it mean when we say that Jesus died for us, for me, on the cross?

John's Passion account is its own sermon, extending from betrayal at a place across the valley, Gethsemane, to devotion at the foot of the cross; from Peter's three-fold denial to Pilate's three-fold acquittal.

From the many who call for Jesus' crucifixion to the two who remove him from the cross; from those who bind him by force at his arrest, to those who bind him in love at his burial; from the beginning of the end in one garden to the end of the beginning in another.

On this day, like Pontius Pilot, all we have is questions.

Today we begin what’s called Holy Week, a time for the children of God to faithfully and courageously enter into the Passion of our Saviour Jesus.  Today is also a day that goes by two names.  The one that we’re most familiar with is “Palm Sunday.”

What we are seeking to do today is understand more fully what this Passion is, in order to enter it and experience it more fully in this coming week.  Holy Week and Easter are to be experienced, to be gone through, in order to come out again, filled with new life.

So in that sense, Palm Sunday is I think, the perfect day to do this, as we are in a position to survey what is happening and about to happen.