In our latest sermon from our ‘Connections‘ series, we looked at our connection to God the Son, often described by Paul as being ‘in Christ’, with Christ also living in us (see 1 Cor 1:2, Eph 1:1, Phil 1:1,1 Thess 1:1, Col 1:27). Being in Christ is Paul’s recipe for successful living. Those who are in Christ Jesus are free from condemnation. (Rom 8:1) He knows that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:39) Grace is given to us in Christ Jesus. (1 Cor 1:4) God has called us into fellowship with His Son, Christ Jesus (1 Cor 1:9); we are now safe and secure ‘in Christ Jesus’ (1 Cor 1:30). For Paul, it’s this connection with the living Christ that makes all the difference to us.

Our connection to Christ begins when we are born again and is maintained as we remain in the vine (see John 15:1-8). It’s a connection based on grace and faith (see Eph 2:8-9), and we have to continue in this same vein if we are to flourish spiritually (see Gal 3:1-6).

We can be reassured that the connection we have with Christ is not something flimsy or superficial. All the fulness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Christ (see Col 2:9-10) and we have been given fulness in Him. Just as Jesus was in the Father and the Father in Him, so we too can rest secure in Christ (see John 14:10-11, John 17:21). Nothing whatsoever can separate us from God’s love in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:37-39); we are safe and secure in God’s bear hug! (God’s love is stronger than any Gorilla Glue, even!)

In Christ we have redemption and forgiveness (see Eph 1:6-7). We are people who have been given a fresh start. We don’t have to live life with the baggage of yesterday, weighed down by our sins. We are people who can enjoy life, who can enjoy our connection to God because we know that Jesus has taken all our sins and our sorrows and made them His very own precisely so that we don’t have to carry them anymore. Moreover, this fresh start – we’re new creations in Christ Jesus, remember! (2 Cor 5:17) – carries on day after day.  It doesn’t just last for a short time and then fade away, like jewellery that can get tarnished if it’s not constantly polished. Instead, ‘the Lord’s compassions never fail; they are new every morning.’ (Lam 3:23)

I am reading a book about Jeremiah, and in that, the description ‘creative constancy’ is applied to the prophet. (‘Run With the Horses’, Eugene Peterson) That phrase intrigues me. It’s an oxymoron, a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. ‘Creative’ has the connotation of freshness, newness, difference; ‘constancy’ has the connotation of repetition, faithfulness, things being the same. How do these two things combine in one person? We are used to thinking of them as opposites: can they really be integrated?

Jeremiah proves to us that they can. Jeremiah (one of my favourite Biblical characters) spoke out the word of the Lord faithfully for years, a word that was highly unpopular as it was a word of judgment. In Jer 25:3, he says, ‘For twenty-three years—from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah until this very day—the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.‘ There’s definitely an element of constancy there! It must have been hugely discouraging at times to be speaking this word, only to have people mock him, oppose him and even ultimately imprison him, but nothing deterred Jeremiah from sticking to his God-given task.

Because the word he brought was so unpopular and because he lived at the time when Israel was threatened with exile (which eventually happened towards the end of the book), Jeremiah has become associated with lament, weeping, pain and sorrow: not a very appetising mix, we may feel. But it would be wrong to categorise Jeremiah as all doom and gloom, with no creativity. Instead, Jeremiah learned to seek the Lord each day and report His word with freshness and vivid imagery (see Jer 2:20-25). He was ‘not stuck in a rut; he was committed to a purpose.’ (ibid., P 113) There is power and force in his creative words; there is nothing tepid or stale about Jeremiah’s message.

Creative constancy seems to me to be the aim of every Christian. We serve a God of creativity and are made in His image, so there is the scope for freshness, innovation, a ‘new thing’ in all we do. We also serve a God whose faithfulness endures for all generations (Ps 100:5) and therefore are called to perseverance, faithfulness, constancy. May the apparent contradictions in this phrase startle others and prove to be a conversation-opener, leading us to talk of the creativity and constancy of the God we serve.

A hole in the heart (a septal defect) is a congenital defect of the heart which results in inadequate circulation of oxygenated blood, causing breathlessness. Sometimes this hole closes naturally as a baby grows and there is no need for surgery; in other cases, surgery is required to effectively ‘close the gap’. It can be very frightening when such things are diagnosed, but most babies now born with this defect survive to live normal lives.

Because of our experience of this condition in the physical realm, we may well respond to the idea of a ‘spiritual’ hole in the heart with alarm, suspecting this implies a lack of compassion or kindness, an inability to receive or pass on God’s love. When I talk about a ‘hole in the heart’ in spiritual terms, that’s not what I mean. I am thinking more in agricultural terms, where the farmer digs holes ito plant seed. If we think of our hearts as a field of unploughed land into which God’s word is the seed that will produce fruitfulness in us, the idea becomes more understandable.

Hosea urges God’s people to ‘break up your unploughed ground, for it is time to seek the Lord.’ (Hos 10:12) Breaking up unploughed ground is hard work. It involves digging, tilling, ploughing and harrowing until hard soil is loosened, softened and ready to receive seed. In the same way, we have a responsibility to prepare our hearts to receive God’s word each day. We have, in effect, to make a hole in the heart, to dig into our hard hearts to remove the sin and unbelief that so easily lodge there so that we can, by faith, receive the seed of God’s word and give it the best possible environment in which to grow.

So before you gather to worship today, do a little heart-digging and make room for God’s word so that the seeds He wishes to plant in us are not scattered onto dry, rocky ground where they can be snatched away. Dig a hole in your heart which can receive the word of God and let that word transform you, nourish you and produce a harvest in due time.

We live in a soundbite culture, in a society where the desire is for a short, memorable phrase or sentence which pithily sums up all we mean. Twitter, the social media app beloved of so many (330 million people use Twitter, including the US President), enables people to ‘tweet’ opinions (and policies…) using up to 140 characters. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with slogans or being succinct, but it concerns me that we are becoming a people unable to read, mark and inwardly digest God’s wonderful book because of the influence of the soundbite culture on our habits and concentration.

Our Bible study tonight looked at Acts 7:1-53, Stephen’s speech defending himself against accusations of blasphemy and speaking against Moses and the temple. Such speeches were a normal part of society at that time. People were used to the oral tradition of listening and remembering what they heard. In good speeches, arguments are laid out in logical fashion and there is coherence in what is said. Stephen gave a very succinct history of Israel (effectively summarising much of the Old Testament!), but I don’t think many people nowadays would call this speech succinct. They would find it difficult to follow. Our soundbite culture means we want things to be summarised into tweets. Preaching is often seen as boring: ‘I can’t listen for more than fifteen minutes,’ many people tell me. This inevitably will limit what we can absorb and learn; we need to be willing to move beyond the milk of God’s word to the meat (see Heb 5:11-14). It takes longer to eat a steak than to drink a glass of milk…

Bible study and understanding God’s word require us to move beyond soundbites. Memorable phrases are all very well, but we need to be a people, like Stephen, so soaked in God’s word that we not only know the facts of that word but what God is saying to us through it. This means a radical re-thinking of our culture and our obsession with and attachment to technology, social media and visual stimuli. It means a devotion to God’s word and a willingness to meditate on it. God has far more to say to us than can be fitted into 140 characters. Grow up and discover the joys of communication with God.

Praise be to you, Lord;
    teach me your decrees.
¹³ With my lips I recount
    all the laws that come from your mouth.
¹⁴ I rejoice in following your statutes
    as one rejoices in great riches.
¹⁵ I meditate on your precepts
    and consider your ways.
¹⁶ I delight in your decrees;
    I will not neglect your word. (Ps 119:12-16)

Stubbornness is defined as a ‘dogged determination not to change one’s attitude or position on something.’ Whilst determination is seen as a good quality, stubbornness implies an intransigence which is not always praiseworthy. I was once on a car journey back from the Alps in France and my father took a wrong turning onto the motorway, taking us further south instead of back north to catch our ferry home. Despite being told by everyone in the car (including my nine-year-old son) that he was heading in the wrong direction, he refused to change his attitude for some miles, adding miles and hours to our journey. He did not want to admit that he had made a mistake; stubbornness generally is connected to pride in some way.

The people of God have a history of stubbornness. They were often described as ‘stiff-necked’, a wonderfully evocative phrase which implies a rigid position of the head which fails (deliberately) to look at any other position (see Ex 32:9, Ex 33:5, Deut 9:13, Deut 31:27). Moses frequently despaired of the Israelites during the wilderness years and the whole history of Israel is of a people failing to heed God and His warnings through the prophets. (Jer 17:23) It was this stubbornness and intransigence on the part of the religious leaders that led to the crucifixion of Jesus and the persecution of His followers. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7:1-53 is a vivid résumé of the history of God’s people and their ongoing opposition to God.

Flexibility is the opposite of being stubborn or stiff-necked. When we are physically flexible, lithe and nimble, we can move freely and see a range of viewpoints. Stephen’s condemnation of those accusing him was heartfelt: “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.” (Acts 7:51-53) He showed us that stubbornness can lead to greater sins: resisting the Holy Spirit and disobeying God. We need to be spiritually flexible, willing to change our position and open to the new things God is always doing. Paul reminded the Thessalonians, ‘Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt ²¹ but test them all; hold on to what is good.’ (1 Thess 5:19-21)

My son has discovered the benefits of stretching exercises (the tennis player Novak Djokovic once described stretching as his hobby, his favourite thing to do!) We need to learn to stretch ourselves spiritually so that we don’t become stiff-necked and stubborn.

Tom Wright, in his commentary on Acts 7, says, ‘Sometimes a story is the only way of telling the truth.’ (‘Acts For Everyone’ Pt 1, P110) Storytelling is embedded in the Bible, one of the chief ways that God unveils His story to us.

Stories engage us from a very young age. From the repetition and rhyme of many children’s stories through to the great adventure stories and fairy stories which we re-tell to each generation, stories capture our imaginations and enable us to enter a world that is larger and more wonderful than the reality we presently inhabit. Stories open our eyes to the invisible world, not only through fantasy and imagination, but by enabling us to identify with characters and evaluate actions and responses without the defensive wall of protection standing in the way. Think of Nathan’s skilful storytelling piercing David’s sinful defences (2 Samuel 12) or the way Jesus’s simple story of a prodigal son leaves us marvelling at the father’s compassion and love and wondering if the older brother will change his ways or not (Luke 15). Jesus told stories about people which draw us in in oblique fashion; in the words of Emily Dickinson, they ‘tell it slant.’

Stories refresh the parts of the brain which information can’t (to paraphrase a lager advert from the 1970s), and in giving us an apparently random history of Israel, Stephen is actually drawing us into the story of God. We are lulled into thinking this is just a history lesson, and may even be mildly interested in which parts of the story he focuses on and which parts he omits. Nonetheless, his dénouement (Acts 7:51-53) hits us with powerful force. Suddenly, Stephen is no longer talking about the past, which we can comfortably embrace or dismiss as we will. He is back in the present: ‘You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!’ (Acts 7:51) This is the skill of the storyteller – to draw us in as 3^rd person observers and then to bring the punchline home with force so that a 1^st person ‘now’ response is required. We’re not observers; we’re participants. Jesus’s death was not just a historical fact to be learnt along with the dates of the kings and queens of England; ‘ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers’, as Stuart Townend’s powerful lyrics go (‘How Deep The Father’s Love For Us’). Stephen’s defence, far from being boring or repetitive, is a tour-de-force in storytelling. His death is the proof they got the point.