Telling the Wonders of God

I wonder if you ever watch those TV programmes or films where they have messed around with the timeline? You know the kind of thing, the film starts with a wedding and then the rest of the film is flashbacks to things that have happened in the lead up to the wedding. Through all the ups and downs of the relationship you know that there’s a happy ending, because you’ve already seen it.

Well, there is a sense in which we heard our readings in the wrong order today. In the reading from Acts we see and hear the sights and sounds of the Day of Pentecost, and then we had a flash back to an earlier scene, where we hear some of the things that happened in the lead up to that astonishing day.

In the reading we heard from John’s account of the good news, we hear Jesus making a promise and telling us something about the person who is going to be the fulfilment of that promise.

We hear Jesus as he speaks to his followers for one of the last times. They are meeting together in the days before Jesus is going to be crucified, and then raised to life. Jesus’ followers are afraid and confused. Jesus has been with them for three years, and now he is talking about leaving them.

Before he goes, he tells his followers about some of the things that are going to happen in the future. He tells them that those who have faith will do even greater things than he himself had done. (given that what Jesus has done included walking on water, raising people from the dead, healing the sick, and feeding several thousand people with a few loaves and fishes, this was a pretty big promise).

He then goes on to promise that he will not leave his followers alone. When he has returned to the Father, he will ask the Father to send someone else, the Holy Spirit.

And what does Jesus promise that the Holy Spirit will be like?

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What King do you see?

Today is the feast day of Christ the King. I wonder what kind of picture comes into our heads when we hear the word, “King”. I wonder how we react to the idea of someone being King over us? What does it mean to have a King? These questions are difficult enough when we’re thinking about a King here on earth, but I think that sometimes they seem even more difficult to answer when we are talking about Jesus as King. But that is what I’d like to do this morning. We’re going to have a look at the three readings, at the things that they show us about Jesus as King, and think about what that means for our lives now.

The first reading we heard is part of the book of Daniel. You probably know him best from the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den. Daniel was an Israelite, probably from one of the ruling families in Jerusalem, who had been carried off into exile in Babylon when Jerusalem had been defeated about 600 years before Jesus was born. He was a faithful worshipper of God, who, throughout his exile proved the practical wisdom of following God faithfully.

A few years before the incident with the lions, Daniel had a series of dreams or visions, in which he was shown things that were to come about in the future. The descriptions of the things that he was shown sound foreign and strange, even when they’ve been translated into English. What is it with all these beasts and horns, and wheels on a throne?

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