Urban Rescue
Urban Rescue is a revival band from Los Angeles and the first ever act signed to Rend Family Records – a partnership between Irish celebration band Rend Collective and Capitol Christian Music Group. With a drummer to rival ‘Animal’ from the Muppets, these guys gave a great introduction to the Rend Collective concert last night.
Their songs:
Rend Collective: irrepressible exuberance and infectious confidence
Last night I had the privilege of worshipping alongside Urban Rescue, Rend Collective and hundreds of other people in Sheffield. It was an experience not to be missed.
Rend Collective, a Northern Irish band with a dazzling array of talent, a plethora of musical instruments and a passion for God and His church, bring to music an irrepressible exuberance and infectious confidence in the goodness of God. Zany, quirky and refreshingly unique (where else would you find confetti showers, bubble bursts and musicians wearing panda heads and a unicorn head? – because ‘seriousness isn’t a fruit of the Spirit, but joy is’), they bring a message of hope wrapped in music that sets your feet dancing and your spirits rejoicing.
Their songs proclaim the freedom that God has purchased for us (‘the only difference between a sinner and a saint is that the sinner is running to God for forgiveness’) and urge us to take the message of radical love and dazzling hope byeond the four walls of church. ‘Worship is simply the soundtrack to our lives as we go into the world,’ we were reminded, with the obversation that we can be quite good at the ‘family’ part but not so good at the ‘going’. The gospel is meant to be lived out by ordinary people in a world that’s full of darkness and pain, for Jesus makes us more than conquerors: these songs provide the soundtrack for our everyday lives.
Their set list (click on the highlighted titles to listen):
Our responses
Looking at other people’s responses to God’s generosity, forgiveness and grace will never be enough, for God speaks to each one of us personally and asks us to respond individually.
The characteristics of extravagance are challenging: we’re taken out of our comfort zone, out of the politeness of the tit-for-tat society we inhabit, away from the world of quid pro quo into the realm of total surrender, radical devotion and actions which may well be misunderstood, frowned upon and opposed.
The responses to extravagance may well be hard to deal with: disdain, disgust, confusion, bewilderment, rebuke, even betrayal. But this story shows us that God’s response to extravagance is worth it. He rejoices; He blesses; He is excited by extravagant worship and passionate devotion to Him and rewards it in ways beyond our wildest imaginings.
So what will our response be? Will we settle for mediocrity? Will we draw back from total surrender, from fervour and passion and emotion because we think it’s messy, reckless, a waste of our time and money? Will we be like Simon or the disciples or even Judas? – full of pragmatism and good reasoning, but ultimately missing the point and having no heart? Will we be like Michal, David’s wife, who despised his extravagant worship of God, greeting him with sarcastic words designed to cut him down to size? (2 Sam 6:20) Will we spend our lives in true British decorum, never really risking anything for God because we’re not really aware of the enormity of the debt He’s cancelled for us and so we love little? Or will we be like this woman, prepared to risk everything, prepared to break open our alabaster jars of expensive perfume, whatever that may look like in our lives, prepared to do anything, absolutely anything, out of devotion to the God who has done everything for us?
E is For Extravagance (2)
The Characteristics of Extravagance
Generosity is one of the hallmarks of extravagance, for the woman in Mark 14:1-11 gives lavishly of probably her most prized possession. She does not count the cost, but responds to the lavish love of God in equally lavish fashion. Generosity is a characteristic of God (see Jn 3:16, Luke 11:13) and for all who see and understand the cost of salvation to God, our heart’s response is to hold nothing back from one who held nothing back from us.
Extravagance doesn’t care what other people think and can look emotional. So often, fear of what others will think of us holds us back from serving God and we are wary of emotion, but God touches every aspect of our lives. Extravagance will risk looking fanatical and extreme because it will keep God as the sole focus of attention; it is single-minded in the pursuit of God.
The Response to Extravagance
Each person in the story responds differently to the woman’s extravagance. Simon’s response is one of disdain and disgust. He knows this woman is a sinner and thinks less of Jesus for accepting her, but Jesus reminds him that it’s all a question of understanding the debt which has been cancelled: ‘whoever has been forgiven little loves little.’ (Luke 7:45)
The disciples respond with pragmatism and rebuke, focussing on the cost of the perfume and the perceived waste of money (Mk 14:4-5). This response, whilst perfectly understandable from a purely logical and rational point of view, fails to take into account the generous heart of God (see 2 Cor 9:6-8) and God’s mathematics, which very often don’t seem to tie in with ours! (see Mal 3:10-12)
Judas, in particular, was incensed by the woman’s actions; it seems that this was the final straw for him, leading him to betrayal (see Jn 12:5-6). He may well have rationalised his attitude in pseudo-concern for the poor, but his heart’s state was not receptive to God’s grace and Jesus’ statement that this parable would be remembered forever seems to have been the thing which finally tipped him into going to the leaders to betray Jesus.
Jesus, on the other hand, responded to the woman with commendation, understanding her heart and investing in her actions an eternal significance which is worth pondering. It seems that God doesn’t mind extravagance and even positively endorses it!
The Consequences of Extravagance
The woman left the encounter with Jesus financially poorer (since the jar and the perfume were gone), but immeasurably richer in other ways. She left with the assurance of sins forgiven and the knowledge that her action had blessed Jesus prior to His death. Jesus invested prophetic significance to the woman’s act of extravagant devotion (Mk 14:9), significance far beyond what she herself had understood or intended. God takes our smallness, our daily gifts of devotion, our loaves and fishes, and He multiplies them and invests in them meaning and significance far beyond our comprehension. Even giving a cup of cold water to a disciple will reap a reward. (Matt 10:42) Our extravagance can never out-give God’s extravagance.
E is for Extravagance
Tonight’s sermon continued the alphabet series, ‘The A-Z of Christian Faith,’ looking at the letter E – E is for Extravagance. The story of the woman who anointed Jesus prior to His death (see Mk 14:1-11, Luke 7:36-50, Matt 26:6-13 and John 12:1-9) is a vivid example of extravagance in action.
Jesus was dining at the house of Simon, a formal occasion shattered by the arrival of a woman who broke her alabaster jar of perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet with the costly perfume, weeping over him and wiping his feet with her hair. Such a ‘lack of restraint in spending money or using resources’ as this woman demonstrated drew different responses from all those present and gives us insight into both the characteristics and consequences of extravagance.
God calls us to live in extravagant surrender: ‘I lay me down, I’m not my own, I belong to You alone.’ (‘Lay Me Down’, Matt Redman & Chris Tomlin)
His love and acceptance of us, His lavish forgiveness, His abundant grace need to lead us to the place of extravagance, for ‘love so amazing, so divine demands my life, my soul, my all.’ (‘When I Survey The Wondrous Cross’, Isaac Watts)
Change through acceptance
The city of Leicester was celebrating recently because of the unexpected (to some) success of the local football club in becoming Premier League champions; the club’s footballing success has been the buzz of conversation all season and the underdogs’ triumph has captured the imagination of people far and wide.
Dave spoke this morning about how Jericho was buzzing when Jesus was passing through that town (Luke 19:1-10). Everyone was crowding around to see this teacher with the amazing reputation, but one man, Zacchaeus, was frustrated. Small of stature, he could not get even a glimpse of Jesus, so, ever-resourceful, he climbed a sycamore-fig tree in order to get a better view.
Zacchaeus had probably spent a lifetime suffering scorn and ridicule because of his size and looks; added to that, he was a chief tax collector, which in Jewish eyes was the lowest of the low. Tax collectors were looked down on as colluding with the Roman enemy and being deceitful, claiming additional taxes which they kept for themselves. Such an individual was not expected to be noticed by Jesus, but in this story, we see how the Saviour is always looking for the individual; ‘the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.’ (Luke 19:10)
Zacchaeus may have been the ‘wrong sort’ of person for a respectable Jew to be involved with. Far from being afraid of being contaminated by sin, however, Jesus’ grace and generosity were contagious. He focussed on the individual, not condemning Zacchaeus for his sins but building a relationship with him through acceptance which would lead to salvation.
People are often aching from loneliness and longing for someone to listen to them and value them. Rather than labelling Zacchaeus as others did, Jesus saw beyond the labels and refused to judge him, seeing the dormant life within him. Such acceptance warmed Zacchaeus’ frozen heart to faith (see Ps 19:6 in the Message version.) As He gave Zaccheaus the room to breathe and believe, Jesus unlocked the potential in him.
We need to remember that God offers grace to us and therefore we need to offer grace to others. May we have the faith to see people as Jesus sees them, for we are the only Christ that some people will ever see, and our response, if modelled on Jesus’ response, can lead people to radical change and whole-hearted salvation.