Garry spoke this morning about Joseph as a type of Jesus, our suffering Saviour. Joseph was sold as a slave to Potiphar (Gen 39:1-2); he went from being the favoured son of Jacob (even though he was not the oldest) to being a slave. In the same way, Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, became a servant who pointed the way forward as being the One who came to serve and not to be served (see Matt 20:20-27). He fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of the Suffering Servant (Is 53) and in Gethsemane proved His servant heart by praying for God’s will to be done, not HIs own. The One who in truth was over all was secure in His identity and therefore was willing to serve all (see John 13). Not only did He wash His disciples’ feet, but He even washed the feet of the one who would betray Him.

Joseph had no choice in the matter of becoming a slave; Jesus, however, willingly chose this path (Phil 2:7, Heb 12:2) In the Parable of the Wedding Feast (Luke 12:35-40), we see how being a servant does not mean being servile. It means being willing to serve and being ready. The servants were called to keep the lamps burning and to wait with expectation and anticipation for their Master’s return. In that parable, the Master was willing to share the spoils of the wedding feast not only with favoured guests but with his slaves, the lowest of the low, and in the same way, Jesus shares His riches with us, giving us access into all the riches of God.

On Palm Sunday, we remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when He was hailed as the coming King by the crowds. Yet Jesus knew what lay ahead of Him: rejection, crucifixion and death before resurrection (see Luke 18:31-34). He was willing to tread this path for us because of His great love for us and He continues to lead us in the way of servanthood.

“Lord, how can we tell people of Your love during a pandemic when we are in lockdown and have to stay at home?”

That question weighed heavily on my heart at the end of last year and the beginning of this one as the news seemed so very bleak and church outreach seemed so very difficult. Working with other local churches, we decided to build on our Advent project when we had distributed 48 knitted angels around Goldthorpe. What if, we mused, we could put hearts out into the community and aim to put some in Thurnscoe and Bolton-on-Dearne as well as Goldthorpe, to represent the main areas represented by our churches? We decided to aim to do this by Easter (Valentine’s Day seemed too near!), as a prophetic gesture to remind people of God’s love. Each heart would have with it a label giving an Easter message and would be left in prominent local places for people to find and take home.

And so the ‘Whispers of Love’ project was born, the title for the project coming from the famous hymn ‘Blessed Assurance’ with its line ‘echoes of mercy, whispers of love.‘ Surely, surely at this time of fear, unrest, confusion and uncertainty, what we all need are God’s whispers of love.

Fast forward to the end of March, a week before we are due to distribute the hearts, and what can I say? My original (largely unspoken) target was 300. I reasoned that we could surely make 100 hearts for each of the three villages – after all, we were in lockdown, so some people had time on their hands! In February, we decided that we should offer hearts to residents in local care homes, who at that time were not allowed any visitors at all, as well. Every single home we contacted embraced the idea with an enthusiasm that staggered even me. And so the number of hearts needed rose… but by then, hearts were coming in on a regular basis. Knitted hearts. Sewn hearts. Decoupage hearts. Wooden hearts that were painted. Card hearts decorated with buttons and jewel stickers. Foam hearts. Cross stitch hearts. Key ring hearts. Beaded hearts. Hearts painted on pebbles. Painted glass hearts. Cards with hearts on. The sheer variety of hearts was astounding. Schools and after-school clubs joined the project. Young children took to this with enthusiasm. Older people said that they had found it therapeutic to have something positive to do in lockdown.

Today, as I’ve collected heart-making kits from a friend at Encaustic Art Plus in Elsecar, we have reached the total of just over 1000 hearts. I’m staggered, but I’m also thankful. Thankful for all the people who have embraced this project, thankful that we can do something to spread God’s love in our communities at Easter. May these whispers of love reach far and wide, a reminder that God’s word is never chained, even if we are. (2 Tim 2:9)

Paul’s arrest, imprisonment and trials (which take up a large part of the latter stages of Acts) arise primarily because of the fact that he consistently preached about the resurrection of Jesus and how in Jesus all the prophecies of the Old Testament about God’s Messiah were fulfilled. In Acts 24:21 Paul said, ‘It is concerning the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you today.’  Festus told King Herod Agrippa II that the disputes were ‘about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive.’ (Acts 25:19) The one consistent thread to all of this is the fact that Jesus was dead and is now alive!

The death and resurrection of Jesus remain at the heart of the Christian faith (see 1 Corinthians 2:2, 1 Corinthians 15). This is why Easter is such an important time for Christians, because it is the time we remember Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross and that God’s acceptance of this sacrifice is seen through the resurrection. Death and sin could not keep a hold on the sinless Son of God; He was raised to life for our justification. (Rom 4:25)

We can understand why Festus seems rather perplexed about all this. After all, it makes no logical sense to say that a dead man named Jesus is now alive. Dead men don’t rise. They don’t come back to life. The one thing we learn from an early age is that death is the end.

Except in God’s kingdom, it isn’t. And that is the utterly revolutionary truth we need to proclaim. We serve a risen Saviour! Jesus said, ‘I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.’ (Rev 1:18) As we approach Easter once again, let’s be as convinced as Paul was that the dead man named Jesus is now alive, and let’s live in ways that reflect the hope and joy that this brings.

The Bible calls people to obey civil authorities as God’s representatives on earth (see Romans 13), but also makes it clear that God’s laws supersede civil laws. The line between the two can cause clashes, for God’s kingdom is very different from the world’s ways of doing things. In the book of Acts, we see how the apostles were frequently in trouble with religious and civil authorities and how they declared ‘we must obey God rather than human beings!’ (Acts 5:29) At times, that resulted in imprisonment and even death; there is a price to pay for being a follower of Jesus which all of us need to acknowledge.

In Acts 25, we see Paul still imprisoned and facing charges brought against him. This time, a full two years after he was first arrested, he is being questioned by the new Roman procurator at Caesarea, Porcius Festus. John Stott tells us, ‘The disturbances which Paul was alleged to have caused were religious in their origin but civil in their character.’ (‘Acts’, P 366) The Jews knew that the Romans were unwilling to convict people on purely religious charges, but were obliged to take note of civil unrest, and therefore they tried to give ‘a political twist to the religious charge.’ (ibid., P 366)

We may feel this is unfair, but the truth is that our faith does not exist in a spiritual vacuum. We are physical beings and spiritual things affect us physically as well as spiritually; we live in the world and therefore our faith has implications for how we live in this world. If we don’t have an integration of the two, we are likely to be ineffective for God and unhappy in ourselves. God calls us to think through issues and apply our faith in the real world. Obedience to God has to be our starting point, and may well lead us, as it did Paul, into conflict with the world. It’s not that we are looking to be disobedient or rebellious, but there are times when we will feel, as Martin Luther did, ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ Obedience has a price to pay; faith must prevail over expediency.

Both Paul and Festus (the successor to Felix as the Roman procurator in charge of Paul’s imprisonment) found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Strictly speaking, Paul should have already been acquitted now, because he had not been found guilty of any crime, either religious or political, but Festus was keen to placate the Jews and therefore suggested moving the trial to Jerusalem. Compromise was his bedfellow, at the expense of doing what was right. Paul knew that would only lead to fresh accusations from the Jews (and potential ambush en route there.) If Paul were guilty of a capital offence, he was willing to bear the penalty. But if the Jewish accusations were false, no one – not even the procurator – had the right to hand him over to them, and so he used his right as a Roman citizen to appeal to Caesar.

This raises the interesting question of how far we must push at doors to open them and how far we must wait for God to move. God has promised Paul he would testify for Him in Rome (Acts 23:11); Paul now ‘nudges’ the scene a step closer to Rome. Tom Wright says of this chapter, “This is an important point about the interaction between God’s purposes and our praying. Sometimes, when we pray and wait for God to act, part of the answer is that God is indeed going to act, but that he will do so through our taking proper human responsibility in the matter. It’s hard to tell in advance what the answer will be. There are times when ‘the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still’ (Ex 14:14), and other times when it is ‘be strong and very courageous, for you shall put this people in possession of the land I swore to give them.’ (Josh 1:6) Discerning and discovering which applies in which case – and note that even in the latter case God is giving the people the land which Joshua is giving them – is a major element in the discernment to which all Christians, and especially Christian leaders, are called.” (‘Acts For Everyone Pt 2’)

It is not always easy to know when to be still and when to be pro-active. There are numerous cases in the Bible of people getting it wrong (Abraham with Hagar, Moses taking the law into his own hands and murdering someone and so on), and we clearly need much wisdom in this area, but the balance of our action and God’s action is a delicate one! One thing is clear. God specialises in the ‘third way’, doing things we generally haven’t even considered because they are so bizarre, unconventional or downright miraculous!

Yan Hadley quoted a famous poem tonight by John Greenleaf Whittier:

When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is strange with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns
And many a failure comes about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell just how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.