There’s a song by Travis whose lyrics include ‘Why does it always rain on me, is it because I lied when I was 17...’ I remember telling a lie when I was around 17. I don’t know what the original lie was now, but I do recall that the lie had to keep growing! I needed to tell another lie to cover up the first lie, and so it went on.
One of the lessons which came up time and again on our Lent course and which keeps coming up in Bible study group discussions and in our sermons, is the importance of being honest, of telling the truth to ourselves as well as to other people.
But what about hearing the truth? How do we know whether other people are lying to us - or distorting the truth according to their own agenda? We’re all being influenced by what those around us say, and by what’s said in the media: newspapers, radio and TV as well as the internet, whether we realise it or not. Some people have been given the title ‘Social Influencer’ - sometimes they give the title to themselves. It seems that anyone with more than 10,000 followers on any platform is considered to be a social influencer.
Who we follow is often dependent upon how closely their views tally with our own. But I think that it’s healthy to also listen to the views of those we don’t agree with, so that we’re challenged as well as affirmed and we keep thinking for ourselves. The truth can be given subtle nuances by those ready to manipulate it. We can all be led astray. We are in danger of doing what the writer of 2 Timothy 4 suggested: ‘The time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.’ (vv 3,4)
Some people will even try to use Bible texts to back up their own point of view, usually out of context and failing the acid test of love.
There is one truth we can be sure of: Jesus is the greatest social influencer of all time. He alone can be trusted. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6). We can follow the words and example of Jesus when we hear or read our Bibles, and know the truth of it as it will pass the acid test of love, and it will be spoken into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
What did we hear in our readings today? In an echo of Elisha’s feeding of 100 people with very little (2 Kings 4:42-44), Jesus fed 5000 with even less. In both cases, everyone had enough to eat and there was some left over. Those who witnessed what Jesus did would have known every story from the scriptures of the time, what we call the Old Testament. Everything Jesus did and said was significant.
It told the truth about who Jesus is, and about the abundant nature of God. There were twelve baskets of fragments left over: enough to feed the twelve tribes of Israel, all of God’s people. All of us.
The people recognised who Jesus was, and wanted to make him king. They recognised his status as the Messiah, but they still had human ideas of what that meant. God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8). Our world is the wrong way around. God’s world is the right way up.
Jesus needed to give everything up: his status, his whole self, his life, in order that God’s abundant love could flow to us all through the Holy Spirit - so that God’s kingdom of love would grow and the evils and deceptions of the world would be overcome by it. Love is all we need. Love is sacrificial.
If we take seriously the teaching and example of Jesus, if we turn to him as the only social influencer worth following, we will be ready to do the same. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to live in poverty, but for some it will. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to be church ministers or wardens, but for some it will.
It does mean that it is costly to follow Jesus, that it is a requirement for us to give generously, as he gives generously - to be willing to give everything up for his sake, if that is what we are called to do.
Jesus gave his all: his time, his talents, his life for our sake. All he had was given to us.
Are we prepared to do the same thing, to give our all for his sake?
I will finish by repeating the wonderful prayer of love which Paul sent to the Ephesians (3:14-21):
I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Amen.
Julie Rubidge, Lay Minister