It is surprising – but gratifying – to find so much space is being given on radio and television and in the serious papers – even the Guardian – to this year’s 400^th Anniversary of the Authorised - or King James – Version of the Bible. 

It is being hailed as one of the most beautiful, accurate and influential books in English Literature which has given us many familiar phrases which are now part of the language. Rightly, we are being shown how it has influenced the history and politics of the English speaking world.  All that is true, but it misses the point; the purpose of any translation of the Bible is to allow God to speak to individuals in terms of their own lives and circumstances; in the words of Tyndale, the grandfather of the KJB, a translation should allow the boy at the plough to hear the word of God.  

Comparisons are made to show the superiority of the AV to usually unnamed modern translations.  And, yes, some modern versions are pretty awful , but to dismiss all modern translations as “plumbers’ manual English”, as Simon Schama did, is silly. 

• The AV was “appointed to be read in churches” and its cadencies designed for this purpose. Since most people could not read and could not afford a Bible that was the only way they would have access to it.  Even when it was published its language was already becoming old-fashioned.   Some modern translations – “Good as New” for example, which I find is often stimulating – are attempts to bring out the meaning by using colloquial language for private use, but at times it paraphrases the text rather than translating it.  Other versions are scholarly translations designed to be accurate renderings of the Hebrew and Greek into modern English for prayer, study and for public reading.  NRSV which we use in the Common Lectionary is as splendid and as successful at this as one could hope for.  
• Yes the AV is magnificent but, to quote Archbishop Cranmer, an equally important influence on the English language, from his Preface to The Book of Common Prayer some sixty years before AV: “There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in the continuance of time hath not been corrupted.”  

Indeed, it is surprising that the AV has stood the test of 400 years so well.  Its enthusiasts quote the great bits but some passages are hard to understand and others just wrong.  We need new translations because, first, we now have a better text to work from than the 1605 Committees did; second, we know more about the languages in which it was written; third, the English language has changed considerably in the last 400 years.

• First, we have a better text.  Until 1455 when Guttenburg produced the first printed Bible, copies of Scripture – and any other book – had to be copied by hand.  In the process variations crept into the text because the scribes made mistakes, or even altered the text to what they thought it should be.  When the AV was translated there was only one printed text of the Hebrew Bible and another of the Greek NT.  Since then more parchment MSS have been discovered and thousands of paper fragments which have enabled scholars to sort out the MSS into families and work out what was probably the original text. 
• The surprising thing is how few important variations have crept into the text, and it is usually not difficult to see why they were made.   We can now, for example, be sure that what Mark wrote ends at chapter 16, verse 8, and scholars argue whether there was another page or two to round off that gospel.  It would be exciting if in some remote monastery in the Middle East a very early copy of Mark were to be found complete with the missing pages.  Would it tell what happened when the Lord appeared to Peter on that first Easter Day?  Not impossible if as we think Mark is based on the memories of Peter.  But that is wishful thinking. The important thing is that we now have a better text of the NT to work with than Lancelot Andrewes and the others did in 1611.

Second, we know much more about the Greek of the NT than they did. 

• NT is not written in the Greek of Plato or Sophocles 400 years earlier, but in the κοινή or Common Greek which was spoken all round the Mediterranean from Spain in the West to the borders of the Roman Empire in the deserts of Syria, from the north coast of the Black Sea into the farthest south of Egypt.  Until about 200 AD it was the common language in Rome itself.  In the Latin Mass the Greek phrase, kyrie eleison, Lord have mercy, is still found.
• κοινή is a simpler form of Greek, but it can be a sophisticated language and has a considerable literature.  In the NT Mark wrote very rough Greek, but Luke and whoever it was wrote the Letter to the Hebrews write in a much more literary style.  The elegance of KJB fails to do jusrtice to the difference between Mark and Luke. The 1611 translators did not recognise they were dealing with a different kind of Greek from the classical authors.  Since then archaeologists have discovered thousands upon thousands of documents – personal and business letters, financial accounts, government correspondence, tax returns,  and so on – which have given scholars a better understanding of the κοινή Greek. 
• Further, a word for word translation of the Greek as the AV Commissioners tried to do, does not give the best translation, because Greek words have different shades of meaning from the English.  For example, justify and justification in English means “using questionable means for making something seem right or correct, even when it is not”, so modern translations often translate these words as “to be put right” or “to make acceptable to.  Again, Greek puts its sentences together in a very different way from English; Ephesians 1.3-14 is one sentence in Greek, but in English is normally broken up into anything from six to ten sentences.  Word for word translation can often fail to communicate the meaning.

Our new knowledge of the NT Greek and a better recognition of the difference between the two languages make new translations desirable.

Third, the English language itself has changed in the last 400 years.  We may revel in the language of the AV, Shakespeare, and the Book of Common Prayer, but that is not the way we speak or write today. 

• Since AV some words have changed their meaning.  One of the BCP collects starts, “Prevent us, O Lord in all our doings with thy most gracious favour . . . “, a direct transcription of a Latin word which means “go before”.  It is a prayer that God will prepare the way for our good works.  Nowadays the word means to hinder or stop an action – not the same thing at all. 
• Modern English is far less sonorous than when the KJB was translated, but we do not complain that modern poets do not sound like Shakespeare or John Donne; they are of a different time.  BCP and KJB were meant to be in the language of the people but 400 years later their persistence has created an artificial – and for newcomers an unreal – language of religion which seems irrelevant. 

I remember a prominent actor being asked why he did not appear in Shakespeare.  He replied, “I can understand and speak it, but it is a foreign language; I prefer to act in my own.”  Similarly while I value the BCP and the AV, and can speak the language, I prefer to speak to God in my own.

A better text, a new understanding of the Greek, a changed language, these are all good reasons for making and using new translations.  We are right to celebrate the achievement of the AV, but it can get in the way of the true purpose of Scripture which is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

• The familiar eloquence of the AV can hinder our understanding of what God is teaching us through the Bible.  It can blunt its power to show us where we fall short of our Christian calling and need to be put right.  It can obscure what we need to do to live a life which shows we belong to God.  A good modern translation can do this more powerfully than the old version, but it does not work by magic. 
• We have our part to play.  As Cranmer taught us we need to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the words of Scripture.  Reading and pondering the Bible so that it becomes part of us is still an essential aid to living as a Christian.  It takes time and patience to build up the habit of reading a passage, the gospel for the coming Sunday perhaps, or take one of the NT books and to read it through with care.  Use one of the aids to Bible reading such as Bishop Tom Wright’s NT for Everyone series.  Ask yourself as you read, “What does it say?” “What does it mean?”  “What must I do about it?”  If we do this with patience God will indeed teach us and reprove us, so that we can find our way of following Jesus in his way.

We should indeed thank God for the KJB, for way it has enriched the English Language, certainly, but much more for the way that it has enriched and empowered the witness of the Church and individual Christian lives.  We should also thank God for the work of Bible scholars and teachers who have helped us find a more accurate text and given us a clearer understanding of what it means.   Whether you find the AV speaks to you or one of the modern versions, take it, read mark learn and inwardly digest it.  And then put it into practice as you follow Jesus who is the Word of life.

 

 

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

• That is not what the women felt as the approached the tomb early on that Sunday morning.  They knew Jesus had been tortured to death as a rebel; that he had been buried in a hurry just before Sabbath began on Friday night.  Now their sorrowing love brought them to the tomb to do for him what there had not been time to do then.  But the stone in front of the cave was rolled back.  Mary Magdalene rushed off to tell Peter and John that someone had stolen his body. 
• They ran to the tomb to see what had happened, for they knew he had been killed.  Peter blundered straight into the tomb and saw the burial clothes just lying there, and he did not know what to make of it.  Later in the day he had no doubt for the Lord appeared to him. When John had arrived at the tomb he hesitated to go in, but when he followed Peter he saw what Peter saw, and as he looked carefully it dawned on him, “The Lord has risen from the dead; but can he?” 
• For Mary Magdalene it was when she heard that voice, “Mary”, that she knew it was the Lord, and with “Dear Master!” tried to grab hold of him, only to be gently rebuffed with a “Do not cling to me”; things have changed but go and tell my brothers that I am returning to the Father.   

Each of the gospel-writers tells how the Lord showed himself to his followers and transformed them from sorrowing disappointed disciples into confident witness to Jesus crucified and risen.   They wrote their accounts between thirty to sixty years after the events and each with their own slant on the story.

Much earlier than this, only two or three years after the events, the infant church had an official summary of what had happened.  This first Creed was what Ananias taught Paul as the ABC of Christian faith after he too had seen the Lord on the road to Damascus.  Paul reminds the Christians at Corinth what he had taught them in turn as the fundamentals of Christian belief. 

“Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
that he was buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas/Peter, then the twelve.
Then he appeared to more that 500 followers (most were still alive twenty years later), to James, to all the Apostles,

and finally in that life shattering experience he appeared to Paul.  Some of these appearances can be identified with the Gospel accounts; we would love to know more about the others.  

What happened during that Easter night we do not know but something did which changed the disciples, so that  six weeks later  the apostles were standing in Jerusalem and telling everyone including the High Priests, “This Jesus whom you crucified, God has raised up as part of his work to bring right a world gone wrong”’

I have lived with these stories for sixty years since I first started studying theology seriously.  Scholars have analysed and compared them minutely, so much so that sometimes I think they miss the wood for the trees.  They have tried to get behind the stories to discover what really happened, to get rid perhaps of legend and mythology.  As a scholar and a preacher I have followed their debates and struggled to understand.  Every Easter I have tried to find what I could say to help people hear the Easter message.  In the last twenty years or so biblical scholarship has become much more positive.  We recognise that the four gospels tell the same story but with different emphases.  They are not contradictory but complementary.  They tell the same story.  Jesus shows us God’s way of putting right a world gone wrong.  That is what we mean when we say the crucifixion and resurrection happened “according to the Scriptures” – not “That is what the Bible says” but this is the way God has worked all through history as it is told the story of Israel.  

The resurrection of Jesus is essential to the Christian message, not because it showed that one man has come back from the dead but that through Jesus, through his life and death in the service of others, we see God’s way of dealing with evil and offering us his life so that we can take our share in bringing right lives and a world  gone wrong.  

So my text this morning is I know that my redeemer liveth.    I am not claiming to have seen the Lord as Mary did in the garden or Paul did on the Damascus road.  I am not speaking of lofty mystical experiences such as he was given later on.  Like most Christians my encounters with Jesus are more like the two on the road to Emmaus.  My heart is warmed and strengthened as he opens the scriptures to me or makes himself known through the breaking of bread in communion.  Often I have seen the Lord in the characters and actions of people who would be surprised to hear me say that, people who walk with Jesus and it is clear from the people they are that they have been with him.  And, yes, there have been times when I have been met by a presence with power who gives meaning to life.

This is what the life and death and resurrection of Jesus do, they show us the way of life which works with God to heal a broken world, and bring about the purpose for which it has been made.  You and I are offered the privilege of working with him.  But that will mean we change the way we live.  Another part of the primary teaching in the early church was about conduct – put off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. That is why the beginning of the Christian life is “Repent”; change the way we look at life, what is right, what is important.  We strip off our self-centredness and instead look to the good of the other. My self-centredness is so deep rooted that I have to go back again and again and try to dig it out.  It’s like couch grass; leave one little bit and it grows again with vigour.  But God meets our efforts with his life to grow in us the new life which shows itself in compassion, and kindness, humility and patience – especially with our own failings.  

From early times the Church normally baptised converts at the great Easter Celebration, and  already established Christians took the opportunity to remind themselves of their own commitment, to admit their failure to live up to it and to renew their dedication with the newcomers.  And so today I invite you to renew with me our baptism promises.

• Once again repent of all that separates you from God and your neighbour. 
• Turn to Christ as your Saviour and your Lord. 
• Commit yourself again to follow him the way, the truth and the life

And do this, trusting in not in our own power, but in the God who makes us and remakes us and transforms us.

If you have not been baptised, if you have not yet committed yourself to share this work of Christ, why not?  Can you? 

Should you be coming forward to accept Christ as your Lord and Saviour? 

Christ is risen and is at work to in us so that we can seek those things that are above, not hidden in some esoteric spirit-world but in the ordinary things of life, our relationships and family, our work and our recreation.  He is risen and set free from the bounds of time and place to carry on his work of bringing right a world gone wrong, and he still says to us, “Take courage; I have overcome the world”. 

Yes, I know that my redeemer liveth.  Alleluia! Christ is risen!

 

In this village in recent months we have experienced repeated personal loss because of the deaths of friends and loved ones.  This has been unusual in its frequency, but it is an inevitable part of our human mortality.  How does our faith, as followers of Jesus, inform our response?  Since Easter we have explored fundamentals of that faith and today, Whit-Sunday, we recall those friends of Jesus who had purposefully come to terms with Jesus’ death.  What they experienced has for many centuries been summarised for us in the Creed: “...  We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, ...”.

What those first Jesus followers remembered as being significant about him is recorded for us in the four Gospels’ separate accounts.  ‘Gospel’ means Good News for ordinary people seeking to liberate their God-given humanity.  Yet each Gospel is, in the balance of its content, mainly an account of Jesus’ ignominious death, whilst first explaining that death’s significance against the background of the impressive quality of Jesus’ life.  They describe his liveliness, and how he responded positively to all kinds of people as they faced delusions of wealth and social status, and the demons of disease, depression and death.  Based on the core values of the Jewish scriptures, Jesus encouraged all kinds of people to understand life’s true potential.  As a consequence, the offended powers-that-be swatted out his life.      

His close friends, and many others who thought his Way of living was right, had to cope with this.  If death could be so wickedly and easily used to end a life like that of Jesus, faith in God and his goodness was vain.  In the Sundays since Easter we have heard a variety of accounts of their experiences of Jesus after his crucifixion, in which he was still with them, but in a new way.  They came to understand that his constantly generous response to everyone whilst deliberately risking death had been a triumph for the values of true humanity which come from God.  Most recently, at Ascensiontide, we celebrated their perception that, in the glorious mystery of God, physical death is a gateway through which Jesus confidently leads.  The Gospel writers were not concerned with irrelevant technical details of physical resurrection, but with entry into life on another level than mere physicality.  Those who shared this perception became known as followers of the Jesus Way of life. 

This morning’s Gospel reading is the last in a series from St. John’s Gospel, a Gospel written in a deeply meditative way after most of the first Christian leaders had died.  By this time, the turn of the first century into the second, those with faith in the Way of Jesus were being attacked from three sides:

[1] The Jewish rabbis excluded followers of the Jesus Way from synagogues.

[2] The Roman authorities regarded them as treacherous atheists because they did not worship the Gods who protected the Empire.

[3] Many people dismissed the Jesus Way as impractical idealism.

Against such pressures, and sporadic but intense persecutions, how could it be worthwhile to follow the Jesus Way?  

St. John wrote his Gospel to help his fellow Christians in those dauntingly dangerous times to find the dynamic energy and wisdom which comes in this life from following the Jesus Way into God’s eternal kingdom.  What we can experience now guarantees our faith in the eternal values which Jesus demonstrated.  What St. John emphasised again and again was that God gives energy and wisdom to all who commit themselves to the Jesus Way, a gift of the same Spirit as that which motivated Jesus.  As the Creed puts it: “[the Holy Spirit] proceeds from the Father and the Son ....” .  It is a gift, and Christians certainly do not have a monopolistic right to it.

Living as Jesus did involves courageous acceptance of the God-given value of other people.  Neither the religiosity nor the moral background of the Good Samaritan were relevant to Jesus’ commendation of his generous response to another’s needs.  Neither the worthiness of ourselves nor of the recipients of our generosity is relevant.  Let me relate two accounts of unworthy people in our own times, who behaved with selfless dynamism for the sake of others.

A recent headline read “Anti-paedophile unit saves 1,000 children”.  This vile behaviour has always existed, but society has only recently become sufficiently aware to organise a more adequate response to it.  When I was involved in related matters I wanted to find out how this changed response had come about.  A Detective-Chief Superintendent in a northern city told me about a young man, no stranger to prison, who escaped from court whilst awaiting yet another sentence, and went on the run.  Weeks later, in the city centre, he saw a man holding a young boy’s hand.  He recognised the man as one who had sexually abused him in a children’s home when he had been that boy’s age, and he sensed with urgent concern that the boy was in danger.  He immediately surrendered at the nearest police station and explained why he was sacrificing his freedom. 

At that time prosecutions for such offences were rare and assumed to be technically very difficult.  The police were so impressed with the young man’s impulsive dynamism that they, and other public services, examined the background with a new technical thoroughness, and eventual far-reaching success. That young man showed the same contempt for self-preservation that Jesus constantly demonstrated, and found the energy to do what was right.  I wish I knew what became of him.  

A more recent example of the cost of selflessly responding like Jesus to other peoples’ needs is that of Salman Taseer, the Governor of the Punjab murdered last January by one of his bodyguards.  He, too, was no paragon of virtue in conventional Muslim or Christian terms.  He was the son of a distinguished Muslim academic and an English Christian mother, but his father died when Salman was a boy, and his mother, in straightened circumstances, later managed to save for his airfare to England where, supporting himself by casual work, he qualified as an accountant.  Returning to Pakistan he became a very successful businessman, but when he actively opposed military dictatorship he was gaoled, and once he was held in absolutely solitary confinement for over six months, for part of which he was shackled to the floor, frequently beaten and deprived of sleep.   

When he became a government minister he was among the first to visit a Christian community whose homes had been torched by Islamist militants, and when these militants then attacked two mosques of a heretical Muslim sect he was the only governmental figure to visit the injured in hospital.  After a sectarian bomb attack on a religious minority’s procession he was the first to pay his respects to their local leaders.  He was murdered because, although he knew the risks he had already created, he fought for the pardon of a poor Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy under Pakistan’s easily manipulated anti-blasphemy law, the mother of six children, including a ten year old handicapped girl.  We do not yet know what consequences his sacrifice will have; one of his daughters was recently in Britain to lobby our government to use its influence to strengthen Pakistani governmental control of religious extremism. 

What we do know is that the history of the Church, from the time of Jesus onwards, is justified by people who have let the dynamic of the Spirit which motivated Jesus change their self-centred mind-sets, to their own and others’ benefit.  Jesus preached the challenge of ‘God’s kingdom’, and to our advantage the Church provides us with ‘the means of Grace’ - to use a now largely forgotten phrase.  These means of grace come from the Church’s encouragement of fellowship, experiential conversation and rational meditation on the reliable accounts about Jesus’ life and, because the Spirit “has spoken through the prophets”, on the Jewish holy writings on which Jesus based his thinking.  In this year, when we celebrate the 400 year old victory of translation of the Bible into English, can we rediscover its riches as the basis for our mind-sets? 

On this birthday celebration of the Church, we are challenged to join the Jesus Way. If we do, to use the Church’s barely adequate coded language, we too can enter now into the eternal glory of ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’, to whom we traditionally attribute, ‘as is most justly due, all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and for ever’.  Jesus’ victory over death is there, for us to accept.

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A few years ago my brother Paul and I set off on a camping trip on Snowdon.  We set off early one morning planning to climb Snowdon, camp the night and then walk further the next day.

On our backs between us we carried a tent and all our food and drink. When I say drink you must remember we were in our twenties and it wasn’t all water.  A few cans of beer made their way into our packs.

It was a warm day and after a few hours Paul seemed to be struggling a bit.  Not wanting to be outdone by his younger brother, however, he didn’t say much.

He just struggled on and seemed more and more pleased at every rest.

Finally having climbed to the summit, we found a good place on the way back down to pitch our tent beside a cool mountain stream.

Paul threw off his rucksack with a groan and lay flat out on the ground.

Before putting up the tent we decided that it would be ideal to put some cans of beer in the stream so that afterwards we could sit and enjoy a well-deserved cold beer.  So we began to unpack our rucksacks.

Now Paul and I remember the next part differently.  What Paul likes to say is this: he watched astonished as out of my rucksack came a t-shirt, some shorts, a pair of socks, a fleece, a sleeping bag and a map;

‘What exactly have you been carrying?’ he asked as out of his rucksack came a tent, several bottles of water weighing a kilo each, a stove, and two days worth of beer cans for two.

The way Paul tells it whilst I had waltzed up Snowdon carrying just my own clothes, he had slogged up the whole day carrying beer for both of us.

Now I think this has got distorted in the telling.  I’m sure we packed those rucksacks together and that it was distributed more fairly than that but the point is this:

when you’re going mountain climbing you don’t want to be lugging around any unnecessary weight.

And the same is true in our Christian walk.

‘Come to Me,’ says Jesus, ‘all you who are weary and burdened

and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you… For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

If we set out to walk with God we don’t want to be lugging around unnecessary weight.  ‘My yoke is easy’ says Jesus, ‘my burden is light.’

 

What does He mean by that? We’ll come back to that in a moment

but first a reminder of where all this fits into our sermon series.

Today is the second of our series on prayer.  Last week Richard looked at the verses earlier in Matthew where Jesus tells us not to worry because we can trust God who is our Father.

Prayer is foremost about a relationship with a God who loves us and knows us and is with us in all things.

A God who loves us and knows us and is with us in all things.  Do we believe that?  Do I believe that?  Do you believe that God loves you? Do you believe He is good?

You see what we believe about God will have a big impact on how we pray.  And that is what Jesus touches on in today’s passage.

And to understand how we need to think about what it meant in Jesus’ day to be a disciple.

If a rabbi or teacher ever said to you in first century Judah, ‘Come and follow Me!’ that was the greatest honour.

You became the rabbi’s disciple. You literally followed him. Went everywhere the rabbi went did everything he did, sat at his feet - listened to all he taught.

And rabbis would have different approaches, different methods – different disciplines. This was called the rabbi’s yoke.

We all know what a yoke is don’t we? Oxen in a field pulling a plough

have a heavy piece of wood placed on them. A yoke.

It’s through the yoke that the farmer drives them. And the Rabbi’s yoke – it’s what would drive you.

In following a rabbi you would take on his yoke, you would take on yourself his particular disciplines and outlook. His yoke.

What drove him would drive you too.

And why would you do that? Because you wanted to know God. The rabbi was there to teach you who God was, what He was like – and how you could come to know Him and walk rightly with Him.

By taking on his yoke you hoped you might come to know God

the way he did.

We get an idea as we go through the gospels of the approach of some of the religious teachers. "Want to know what God is like? Want to know Him?" say the Pharisees "then take our yoke upon you."

A heavy yoke that says God’s approval is something to strive for. Go to the greatest possible lengths to demonstrate that you’re keeping His laws and you may just win His approval.

Of course do no work on the Sabbath.  But go to the greatest lengths. Make sure it’s absolutely none. Not even good work – not even healing work.

And when you tithegive God a tenth, go to the greatest lengths to measure out everything in your calculations even the pickings of mint from your garden.

And when you fast be extreme in your fasting.  Make it obvious to all the world that you’re fasting.

God is a holy task master.  Work hard. Strive. Obey. And you might just win His approval.

And of course keep well clear of dirty sinners and those who fail to make the grade.  Don’t taint yourself by associating with them.

The Pharisees’ is a heavy miserable yoke. There is always more striving to be done, more law to be obeyed.  And God the holy task master never seems to approve enough.

‘They tie up heavy cumbersome loads and put them on people’s shoulders,’ Jesus says of the Pharisees in Matthew 23, ‘and then lift not a finger to help.’

 

And of course what, if he’s honest, even the apparently most holy Pharisee knows deep down is that inside he is a failure just like everyone else.

There is a very beautiful beach on Sark called Grand Grève. Blue sea and a wide expanse of sand at the foot of spectacular cliffs. After a day swimming and sunbathing and reading on Grand Grève there’s only one drawback.

Hundreds of feet of cliff to climb up hundreds of steps in the still hot afternoon sun. It’s a slow steady haul.

And one day when we’re on holiday there

Samuel is stoically plodding away step by step ahead of me.  A couple of times he says, ‘I’m tired Daddy.  My rucksack is very heavy.’  But I’m not taking the bait.

Through an act of selfless parental love I decide that it’s best for the development of his character if he learns to carry his rucksack himself.

And anyway it’s only got swimming trunks and a towel in it.  He can surely manage that.  Eventually near the top I relent.

I agree to carry the load the last part for him.  Immediately he slings the pack off his back and it crashes to the floor with a thud.

I casually reach down to pick it up. The bag doesn’t budge. ‘What on earth have you got in there Samuel?’ ‘Those are my stones Daddy.’

So I look inside.  And sure enough under the towel and the swimming trunks are two great rocks.

There’s obviously a great big question mark on my face because Samuel – who perhaps has a career ahead in geology – looks at me and simply says, ‘I liked them.’

 Carrying cans of beer up Snowdon is one thing.  Needlessly lugging rocks up a cliff quite another.

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day, they have loaded people’s backs with stupid needless heavy rocks.

Rocks that say ‘God is hard.’  ‘Strive to obey.’  ‘His approval is hard to win.’  ‘He has no time for failure.’

What about you and me?  Are we needlessly lugging around great big rocks.

When we pray do we come to a God who loves us and knows us and is with us in all things. A God we can call Abba Daddy?

Do you believe that God is good?  Because what we believe about God has a big impact on how we pray.  On whether we pray at all.

Have you got some useless heavy rocks loaded on your back?

Rocks that say "I’m not good enough for God", "I’m a failure", "I am unlovely – unloveable", "I’m useless"

"God has allowed bad things to happen to me because He is punishing me".  What yoke have you taken on?  What drives you?

Is it a yoke that says, "I must strive strive strive to succeed," "Only when I succeed am I worth anything."

Jesus’ invitation to people labouring under miserable yoke, to those who have been lugging around heavy rocks is this: ‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

 

 

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

Do you know there was once a man – a short man?  He worked for the Roman occupiers and was hated by many.  I don’t think he had prayed for a long time.

He hadn’t dared pray because he knew he had failed and failed and failed again.  God was a hard task master with no time for the likes of him.

Because he was short he climbed a tree just to watch from a distance when Jesus passed.

But Jesus didn’t pass.  No he stopped looks up and said, ‘Zacchaeus today I coming to eat with you.’

And there’s a woman.  She’s committed adultery.  She’s failed. She’s sinned.  I don’t think she can bring herself to pray.

 

I mean who would she pray to?  This task master God she has so clearly failed. Why would He listen to her?

And the mob they’re ready with the rocks, with rocks to rain down on her.

[Because of course people who are lugging around heavy rocks are always only to ready to throw them at others.]

And there’s Jesus.  In the midst of them.  ‘Go ahead’ He says, ‘throw the rocks but only if you’ve never failed yourself.’

And then she’s alone with Him and He’s says, ‘I don’t condemn you. Go and live a different life.’

And then there are those two boys.  The ones in the story Jesus tells. There’s the waster and gambler who has rejected his father and lost him a fortune.

And as he crawls back down the road he doesn’t know how to pray. On his back a load of heavy rocks, ‘I’ve failed. I’ll serve you. Just take me back as your servant.’

And there’s that older brother too.  The one who never left – and who hates his brother.  He doesn’t know how to pray either.

He lugs around some heavy rocks on his back too.  Rocks that say, ‘I have served you. I will serve you.  I will strive never to fail you. I am your servant.’

And the Father what does he do?  Whilst his boy is still far off he runs down the road to meet him.

Flings his arms around him and says, ‘You are my son. I love you.’Says to both boys, ‘You are not my servants.  You are my children.  Everything I have is yours.’

"I’ve failed.  I’ll be your servant.  I’m not good enough.  I am unlovely.  God is punishing me.  I am worth what I achieve.  I must strive."

What do we believe about ourselves?  What do we believe about God?

‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened’ says Jesus ‘and I will give you rest.

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.’

Jesus invitation is to throw off that old rucksack with all the heavy rocks and put on the much lighter pack He offers.

‘You are not my servant, you are my child.  Everything I have is yours.  I do not condemn you.

You are forgiven, forgiven through the cross.  Worth so much that Jesus died for you.  I love you.

Not because of what you do, not because of what you achieve but because you are My child.

Nothing you can do will ever make me love you less.  Nothing you can do will ever make me love you more.  Nothing. Nothing.  So put down your heavy load and come to Me.’

That’s Jesus’ yoke.  That’s who God is.  That’s what He thinks of you. Want to know God?  Then that’s the yoke you need to wear.  That’s what needs to drive you.

What does God think of me?

If you’re not sure about the answer to that question or if you think you might be lugging around a few useless rocks why not pray with another Christian about it?

In the chancel during communion the prayer team will be ready to pray with anyone who’d like to take up the opportunity.

Or why not grab Richard or me and fix up a time to pray to together.

Because if we’re struggling along, driven by some miserable heavy useless yoke, then it’s going to be hard for us to simply come into our heavenly Father’s presence and pray.