This week’s Lent theme is ‘Loving’, right at the heart of the Christian message, but possibly the hardest thing we find to do! God’s love is perfect, and we are to love as He loves: to extend our love beyond our families to those who may be unworthy in our eyes, to those who may actively hate us, to love without ceasing, regardless of the effort or cost involved!

Our reading today (Matt 5:43-48) leaves us, as Sally Welch puts it, quailing at the thought! We hear the words to ‘be perfect’ and give up at the thought of this, let alone at any attempt! But she goes on to offer the thought-provoking notion that Jesus is not so much commanding us to be perfect as promising us His perfection which opens the door to a new kind of living. This is not to pretend that loving others as Jesus wants us to is not difficult or costly. He wants much more than ‘fluffy, indiscriminate love.’ He wants incarnated love, love that can be seen and felt, love that is articulated. But knowing that we do not have to love in our own strength is a weight off our shoulders and helps us to realise that God’s love needs God in our lives if we are to see this manifested at all.

The proverb tells us ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’ I’ve spent a lot of time this week baking cakes and quiches, and it struck me that you can’t really make anything with eggs without breaking them! Even boiled eggs, which are cooked in their shells, have to have those shells broken to access the egg inside. Any time we want to use the goodness of eggs, we have to break them. There is no goodness, no nutrition, no benefit to eggs which doesn’t involve brokenness.

We don’t much like to talk about brokenness, valuing strength, intactness and wholeness much more. But Easter reminds us that God chooses to use brokenness to mend brokenness.God chose to send His Son in obscurity, clothing Himself with human flesh, allowing Him to be born in a stable in Bethlehem, and then sealed our salvation through His death on a cross, and the lowliest form of death at that: crucifixion. Paul says we preach Christ crucified, which apparently didn’t make much sense to either Jews or non-Jews in his day and still doesn’t nowadays, but the truth is that ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.’ (1 Cor 1:25)

God took up our pain; He bore our suffering. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. (Is 53:4-5) He was broken so that we could be made whole; as Isaiah goes on to say, ‘the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.’ (Is 53:5)

We might hope that Jesus being broken puts an end to all talk of brokenness now, but the truth is that we all have broken lives, and actually God seems to specialise in brokenness before there can be wholeness and restoration.Life has a habit of breaking us and we don’t see how we can serve God in this state. We want to be whole eggs. We want to be perfect people. But Paul says, ‘we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.’ (2 Cor 4:7) We have to be broken in order to become whole. The egg seems whole and perfect but is essentially useless without being broken. We too have to be prepared to bring our brokenness to God in order to be restored to that place of wholeness and completion which was His original purpose for us.

It doesn’t matter if we’re broken. We are still welcome in God’s presence. He still wants us. He doesn’t shun us because we are broken, the way we might throw away a broken toy as useless. He actually takes our brokenness and makes something beautiful from it: ‘You assemble all our broken, shattered pieces/ More beautiful than I had ever known.’ (‘Long Live The King’, Aaron Shust) Brokenness is no barrier to God. After all, ;a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.’ (Ps 51:17)

One of the things we are reminded of in the Bible is that it’s always time to choose God’s ways. 2 Cor 6:2 tells us ‘now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.‘ We are so grateful that we have the opportunity still to choose to follow God and to be saved!

Sisters, brothers
Thieves and lovers
Come on, come on, eternity
Turn your faces
From finite places
Heaven’s grace has set you free.’ (‘The Time Is Now’, Phil Wickham)

Last night, we looked at the topic of time. For children, it can be hard to learn about time; they live in the present and find it hard to understand what has gone before (the past) or what lies ahead (the future). They are a good example of living in the present, but can find it hard to understand what is special about the past.

We looked at how time in our Christian world is divided into B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (‘anno domini’, in the year of the Lord, measuring from Christ’s birth) and how Christ is the defining point of history. We explored why Jesus had to die at Easter, exploring the fact that sin (our disobedience to God) meant it was necessary that a perfect Man died for our sins and how we could not manage that for ourselves! Only Jesus, being fully God and fully man, could do that.

Time may seem to be a paradox at time, but a God-centred view of time will always take the ‘long view’, unlike Satan who focuses on the now, trying to convince us that this is all we have. Ultimately, we live godly lives now because we know we have the future hope of Christ’s return and heavenly rewards await us.

Garry spoke from Gen 41:33-40 this morning, looking at Joseph’s plans for dealing with the impending famine in Egypt. The change, from being in prison to being 2nd in command to Pharaoh, was a rapid one; we could say that Joseph had ‘hit the big time’, sine he was appointed suddenly to a position of power and infuence. Finally, we see a ‘successful’ Joseph! But of course, this begs the question ‘What is success?’ How do we measure success? What does God call success? What do we have to do to be successful?

In Matt 17:1-5, we see the Transfiguration of Jesus and hear God’s commendation of Him. By this time, Jesus was well into His ministry, had healed many people, raised the dead, cast out demons and done many miracles.Yet God’s commendation of Jesus (calling Him His beloved Son with whom He was well pleased) was exactly the same at His baptism, before His ministry had started. (Matt 3:13-17) From this, we see that God measures success through our obedience, not through the outward results which matter so much ot us.Micah 6:6-8 reminds us that what God requires of us is ‘to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.’ We are required to walk humbly with God, following His ways, learning to obey Him wholeheartedly. In the Parable of the Talents (Matt 25:14-15), we see that God gives responsibiity according to ability and what matters is our obedience to Him. God is looking for faithfulness and reliability (see Luke 12:48, 1 Cor 4:2).

We are not to despise the small things or consider anything unimportant or inconsequential.Joseph was a success in each situation, whether in prison or as prime minister. Success is to do the will of God, whether that is for an audience of One or for many. God measures success by how faithful we are. We don’t hit the big time by doing great things necessarily, but by doing what God wants in every situation so that we can hear his ‘well done, good and faithful servant.

Rom 12:1-2 urges us ‘in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.’ Each one of us has something precious to offer to God: ourselves! We all have gifts to share, talents that God has given to us, and our life of joyful sacrifice starts with ‘an openness to God’s will, a readiness to be vulnerable for the sake of others and a joyful attitude of love and service.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story’, P 158)

The Message version says, ‘Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.’ Nothing is too small to offer to God; nothing is too big to withhold from him. When we realise that God is interested in everything in our lives, then we can give Him that most precious gift of ourselves.