Again by popular demand (!) some jottings from this week's sermon. Readings: Hosea 2vv14-23 & Mark 2:18-22:
Don’t you just love a good wedding?
It’s not just the delicious canapés, and the champagne and everyone in their glad rags.
A good wedding is such an occasion of happiness and hope.
Weddings are full of joy.
It would be most odd if the guests at a wedding were gloomy and miserable, if they refused all the food and drink and behaved more like they were at a funeral than a wedding.
That’s the argument that Jesus uses in our reading.
Some people ask Jesus (v18),
“How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”
Jesus answers (v19):
“How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?
They cannot, so long as they have him with them.”
It would be totally inappropriate for Jesus’ disciples to fast during his ministry on earth because he’s the bridegroom and the’re like guests at a wedding.
Guests at a wedding are meant to rejoice.
The point is that Jesus brings joy.
For Bible readers, it’s charged with significance that Jesus calls himself the Bridegroom.
Throughout the Bible, God is described as the husband of his people.
Israel is an unfaithful bride, she flirts with other gods and becomes a prostitute, but God is determined to win her back.
That’s what’s going on in our reading from Hosea.
Despite her unfaithfulness, God says he will allure his people again and speak tenderly to her.
God will be his people’s husband and they will be betrothed, engaged, pledged to one anotherm for ever in righteousness, justice, love, compassion and faithfulness.
In the Bible, God is the bridegroom and his people are his bride.
And now Jesus turns up, claiming to be the bridegroom.
So, implicitly, Jesus is claiming to be God, The Bridegroom, come to win back his people.
It’s rather like the healing of the paralysed man, earlier in the chapter, that we thought about a couple of weeks ago:
Only God can forgive sins,
Jesus can forgive sins
Therefore Jesus must be God.
God is the bridegroom,
Jesus is the bridegroom,
Therefore Jesus is God.
The Bible often describes the climax of history as like a wedding banquet.
Jesus is throwing a wedding party, and we’re all invited to the feast.
The Lord’s Supper that we’re about to share together is a little foretaste of that wedding feast.
It’s meant to be a joyful celebration, yet we often make it more like a funeral that a wedding!
We’re meant to enjoy this Communion together.
You don’t have to stare seriously at your boots!
You’ll allowed to acknowledge the other guests at the fest.
In Jesus’ ministry on earth, the future was breaking in to the present.
Jesus was always feasting, and remember last week, 2vv15-16, eating with sinners.
That’s exactly what Jesus does at Communion: he shares his bread with sinners.
Jesus’ ministry was like a bit of heaven on earth, a bit of the future in the present.
Jesus’ healing miracles, for example, are a sing of the way Jesus is going to transform and renew the whole creation.
Of course, we’re not in heaven yet!
Jesus says, v20:
“But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.”
On Good Friday, Jesus will be taken away from his disciples, his life will be taken away.
On that day, it was appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to fast.
There were other times when the first Christians fasted too, and we might fast from time to time.
Jesus is not with us now in the same way that he was with his first disciples in his earthly ministry.
Now, Jesus is both with us by his Spirit, but also absent, bodily.
We have some of the blessings of Jesus’ presence now, but not fully and finally.
The Wedding Supper of the Lamb is yet to come.
We live looking forward to that day.
The Christian life is a battle.
We’ll have our struggles and sorrows.
Jesus often spoke of the cost of following him.
Our lives won’t be one long wedding party from now until eternity.
Yet we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that Jesus brings joy.
The Christian life is the most blessed life, the most happy and hopeful life.
It’s the best way to live.
The Apostle Paul says:
“Rejoice in the Lord always.
I will say it again: rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)
It’s possible for us to get this all out of balance.
The Old Testament required just one fast day a year, on the Day of Atonement.
And yet some of the Jews of Jesus’ day were fasting every Monday and Thursday.
We too can get the balance wrong.
Joy is to be the key-note of our Christian lives.
Do we know the joy that Jesus brings?
Have we pledged ourselves to Jesus, the bridegroom, are we seeking to be faithful to him?
Jesus brings joy.
Secondly and finally, Jesus brings radical transformation.
That’s the point of all this talk of new and old cloth and new and old wineskins in vv21-22.
I’ve never tried this, and I’m not about to, but apparently, v21, a new unshrunk piece of cloth, patched into an old garment, will pull away and make the tear worse.
V22: new wine will burst old wineskins.
New wine requires new wineskins.
Jesus is doing something new, and it requires new structures, new ways of life.
Jesus brings in a New Covenant, and so we no longer live under the law of Moses as the people of Old Testament times did.
Jesus is doing something radically different, something new and explosive.
Jesus can’t be fit in to our existing way of living and thinking.
Jesus changes everything.
Jesus is not an add-on or an optional extra.
Jesus came to be our husband, not our hobby!
It’s no use getting married and living as if you were still single.
Jesus claims the first place in our lives.
We can’t follow Jesus on our terms, as long as he’s not too inconvenient.
Jesus is Lord.
Trying to fit Jesus in to the existing way of things can be the worst of both worlds.
A compromised Christian will be a miserable Christian.
Following Jesus wholeheartedly isn’t easy, but it’s the way to joy.
Jesus brings joy.
And Jesus brings radical transformation.
Let’s commit ourselves afresh to following him and allow him to radically transform us, to dictate the way we think and live.
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