Believing for the impossible

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” Luke 17:5-6

Jesus liked to surprise his hearers - even, sometimes, to shock them. (His seeming tetchiness with the Syrophoenician woman, Matthew 15:21-28, is a classic case.) He knew that we often need to be jolted out of our spiritual sluggishness and laziness and forced to think (something that many of us, sadly, aren’t used to!). We find ourselves sitting bolt upright and saying, “What did he say!”

This little passage is a case in point.

The apostles ask Jesus to “increase our faith”, and his reply, taken literally, contains more than one absurdity. In essence, he tells them that the tiniest faith imaginable (“as small as a mustard seed”) can achieve the utterly impossible (transplanting a mulberry tree into the sea). Matthew 17 gives us a different version of the same saying except that in that case it’s not a tree that is moved but a mountain! - which is, if anything, even more impossible. (It seems Jesus wasn’t afraid to repeat the same lesson in differing forms.)

How odd!

Sticking with Luke’s version, the commentaries tell us that the tree in question (literally the “sycamine” tree) was thought of by the Jews as the deepest-rooted of all trees (think, perhaps of Japanese knotweed, only infinitely worse), so the parable contains two impossibilities: first the uprooting and then the replanting.

Once we have allowed the strangeness of the saying to sink in we find that the meaning isn’t in fact so hard to pin down; we only have to recognise that Jesus, like all teachers across all time and throughout the world, enjoyed using non-literal, metaphorical language. Here he is using a figure of speech called hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration) to make a simple point. Two clear messages emerge…

First, what matters is not so much great faith, though that, of course, is good, but faith in a great God. There is a big difference. We refer to God as “almighty”, meaning that he can do anything. But do we really believe it? In theory, probably yes, but what about in answer to our prayers?

The message is: We may feel our faith is pathetically feeble, and no doubt we’re right, but let’s bring it to God anyway: simple faith expressed with humility fills him with delight.

Faith isn’t, after all, something we can conjure up, so to speak, by sheer willpower; we can only bring what we have and lay it at God’s feet. Our job is to bring it; what he does with it is up to him.

Second, radical change really is possible. True, it may not take quite the same form as Jesus’ dramatic illustrations, but with time and perseverance (and no doubt lots of hard work), the very landscape around us can be reshaped. The poet Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of” – and indeed we will never know what changes in our world and in our personal circumstances are the result of the simple faith of a friend - or a stranger - expressed in prayer.

The alternative to praying is obvious: not praying. But if we have any kind of confidence in the Bible, that is simply unthinkable; from beginning to end it shows us men and women talking with God and listening to him. As Christians we belong in that great tradition.

I wonder if anyone reading this is faltering a bit in your prayer life? It can easily happen, especially when the novelty of being a Christian has worn off, or the way seems particularly hard. Or, of course, when after much prayer mountains haven’t been moved and trees haven’t been transplanted. The temptation is to give up, but that is a temptation we must resist.

And if we are finding that kind of perseverance beyond our strength, that’s the time to share with friends and recruit their prayers on our behalf.

Do it! Don’t put it off! – they will feel it a privilege, and your request will refresh their faith.

Lord God, I’m afraid my faith is often terribly feeble. Please help me when I feel my prayers may be in vain. Help me, even in the next few days, to prove that my tiny faith really can transplant trees and move mountains! Amen.

False expectations

Jesus said, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Mark 8:36-37

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope… Romans 5:3-4

I don’t know if this is a virtue or a vice, but I must admit to a bit of an addiction to my morning paper; it keeps me in touch with the big wide world outside my own little world, and I experience sort-of withdrawal symptoms if for any reason I don’t get it.

But sometimes it annoys me intensely. On Saturdays, for example, it’s twice or three times its usual size, with various supplements, and a lot of it is about well-being or fulfilment… You know the sort of thing: you can be healthy if you eat a sensible diet, with plenty of fruit and veg and not too much salt and fat, if you get plenty of exercise (photos provided of people with extremely unlikely-looking bodies contorted into extremely unlikely-looking postures), if you get plenty of sleep and rest. It’s pretty much variations on the same theme week after week.

And then there are the psychologists and other experts telling us how to sort out our damaged relationships and how to have a perfect sex-life. Not to mention the adverts for wildly expensive holidays in all sorts of wonderful-looking places, and the luxury of having a car that most of us can’t so much as dream of ever owning.

It’s not just the constant repetition that niggles; it’s the unspoken assumption that all this is what life is really about. It smuggles into our minds the belief that we’re missing out on what is somehow our right, our entitlement, if we don’t have them; it stirs up discontent and envy in us. (Little do we realise that that person we know who seems to “have it all” is in fact deeply miserable and unfulfilled.)

Dickens wrote his novel Great Expectations about the prospects (the expectations) of his central character, the orphaned boy Pip. I sometimes feel that across the front of all these newspaper supplements should be written “Unreal Expectations” or even “Lying Expectations”. I keep wanting to shout out “This is nonsense! Life just isn’t like this!”

Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with people being happy, healthy and fulfilled – may it be more and more so! But feeding into our minds the idea that this should be – can be - our constant situation is simply a lie. As somebody has wisely said, It’s OK not to be OK. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that for the great majority of human beings life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. A bit cynical? Perhaps. Yet he wasn’t far wrong.

Jesus promised his disciples the gift of “life in all its fulness” (John 10:10). But think what life must have been like for the majority of Jesus-followers in those earliest days. Many, of course, were slaves. Not much health, wealth and happiness there! – even if you were fortunate enough to have a kind master.

We hear talk about “job-fulfilment”, as if it’s every person’s right. And in a perfect world it no doubt would be. It’s certainly the responsibility of all of us who have inherited (probably through no merit of our own) many of the good things of life to do all we can to ensure that they are spread as far and wide as possible. But the expression job-fulfilment would very likely evoke a hollow and even bitter laugh from untold millions of people: who would want to be an ordinary person in Ukraine today? a woman in Afghanistan? a child in North Korea? a Uighur Muslim in China? or…? Job-fulfilment must seem like a bad joke.

Jesus’ great words in Mark 8:36-37 are worth pondering: what indeed is the good of having everything this world offers – everything those Saturday newspaper supplements try to convince us can be ours – but lose our souls? Yes, we aren’t only bodies, minds and emotions; we are “souls” too; we have a spiritual dimension which relates us to God himself and in which, through faith in Christ, we find true fulfilment.

And with his help we can learn that that fulfilment comes from doing good things, even tiny, insignificant-seeming good things, that God has prepared for us: as Paul puts it in Ephesians 2, we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works”.

Every day of our lives – even dark, cold, miserable, rainy days in November – there are good, Christ-like things waiting to be done. Forget those tantalising enticements in the weekend papers and grab hold of every opportunity to do those things. That’s the “full” life of which Jesus spoke!

Or perhaps I should say it’s the start of the full life. For he also told us that he is going ahead of us to “his Father’s house” where he will “prepare a place for us”. And Paul (who knew what he was talking about when it came to suffering) could boldly assert that our sufferings “are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). The best is yet to be; oh yes, the best is yet to be!

The message can be summed up like this: Look for happiness, and you won’t find it; look for holiness, and you will get happiness as a by-product.

Father, Jesus teaches us to seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, and promises that all other good things will be ours as well. Please help me truly to believe that – and then to live by it day by day. Amen. 

Jesus the man

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15

Many years ago, when I was a very new minister, I tried to help someone in the church who had a serious mental health need. And I largely failed. Of course I was pleased when she told me a bit later that she had found help elsewhere, but also a bit sore (secretly!) that somebody else had succeeded where I had failed.

She had talked to another minister, and his advice largely boiled down to a simple suggestion: focus more on the human Jesus rather than the divine Jesus, on Jesus the man rather than Jesus the Son of God. I don’t think this advice solved all her problems immediately – in fact I know that it didn’t – but it certainly made a difference. She started to view Jesus through new eyes: perhaps rather as he may have been viewed by the people of Galilee during his earthly ministry.

She had absorbed so much teaching (not least from me) about Jesus as the second person of the trinity, as God in the flesh, that somehow it had created a distance between him and her, putting him, so to speak, out of reach.

As Christians we take delight in the dual nature of Jesus. Yes, he is indeed God in the flesh, God “incarnate”. But do we tend to forget or play down the fact that he is also fully human? This truth is spelt out in the verse above, Hebrews 4:15 (where “tested” could also be translated “tempted”). The old hymn echoes that verse: “Jesus knows our every weakness;/ Take it to the Lord in prayer”.

It's impossible to explain how one person can be both fully divine and fully human; but that is what the Bible tells us, and so we must try to hold the mystery in our minds. What we mustn’t do is turn Jesus into some kind of spiritual superman, God merely masquerading as a human being. But I suspect that, even if only subconsciously, that is what we tend to do. (I once heard it said that because Jesus was the Son of God “he would have known all 150 psalms off by heart”. But would he? Why? How? What evidence is there for that?)

The humanity of Jesus is a strand running through all four Gospels. Here are a handful of places where it is most clear…

In Luke 2:52 we read that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man”. In other words, he was a normal child, needing to learn to read and write, plus also the niceties of social behaviour. Can you picture him as a boy at his desk in the synagogue school? playing in the street with his friends? growing up into adolescence and puberty?

In Matthew 4:1-11 we read that he was “tempted by the devil” (and what a fearsome temptation it was!). And let’s not say, “Oh yes, but being the Son of God he couldn’t have fallen!”, for a temptation you can’t fall to is, surely, no real temptation at all, but simply play-acting.

In John 2:16 we read about his anger at those he felt were desecrating the temple. True, it was a controlled anger (“zeal”), but in both actions and words he was pretty fierce.

In Matthew 23:13-36 he uses extreme language against those who were misleading the people: “fools”, “hypocrites”, “snakes”, “vipers”.

In John 4:6 we read that he was “tired” from walking from Judea through Samaria towards Galilee, and so sat resting by a well. John didn’t need to tell us about his tiredness, did he? But he had no qualms about doing so. He knew the human Jesus!

In Matthew 24:36 Jesus explicitly declares his own ignorance regarding the time of his return: “… about that day or hour no-one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. So no talk, please, about “Jesus, being God, knows all things”.

In Luke 19:41 he surveyed the beautiful but doomed city of Jerusalem and “wept over it”.

In John 11:33-35 he was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” and “wept” at the tomb of Lazarus.

In Mark 14:34 he comes to Gethsemane to pray before his death and displays his need of the companionship and support of his disciples: “Stay here and keep watch with me” – and of his disappointment when they let him down: “Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour?” (verse 36). It’s wonderful to think of Jesus saying to these hopelessly fallible men, in effect, “I need you! Stay with me!”

And all this, of course, is before we get to Good Friday - the agony of crucifixion and the “cry of dereliction”: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I wonder if just gathering these texts together will be helpful to some of us. I do hope so. Whatever, let them be a reminder to us that in all sorts of senses, Jesus is on our side!

Lord Jesus, please help me to read your word with openness and understanding, and so to see you as you fully are: both mighty and glorious, and also meek and humble. Amen.

Jesus the man

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews 4:15

Many years ago, when I was a very new minister, I tried to help someone in the church who had a serious mental health need. And I largely failed. Of course I was pleased when she told me a bit later that she had found help elsewhere, but also a bit sore (secretly!) that somebody else had succeeded where I had failed.

She had talked to another minister, and his advice largely boiled down to a simple suggestion: focus more on the human Jesus rather than the divine Jesus, on Jesus the man rather than Jesus the Son of God. I don’t think this advice solved all her problems immediately – in fact I know that it didn’t – but it certainly made a difference. She started to view Jesus through new eyes: perhaps rather as he may have been viewed by the people of Galilee during his earthly ministry.

She had absorbed so much teaching (not least from me) about Jesus as the second person of the trinity, as God in the flesh, that somehow it had created a distance between him and her, putting him, so to speak, out of reach.

As Christians we take delight in the dual nature of Jesus. Yes, he is indeed God in the flesh, God “incarnate”. But do we tend to forget or play down the fact that he is also fully human? This truth is spelt out in the verse above, Hebrews 4:15 (where “tested” could also be translated “tempted”). The old hymn echoes that verse: “Jesus knows our every weakness;/ Take it to the Lord in prayer”.

It's impossible to explain how one person can be both fully divine and fully human; but that is what the Bible tells us, and so we must try to hold the mystery in our minds. What we mustn’t do is turn Jesus into some kind of spiritual superman, God merely masquerading as a human being. But I suspect that, even if only subconsciously, that is what we tend to do. (I once heard it said that because Jesus was the Son of God “he would have known all 150 psalms off by heart”. But would he? Why? How? What evidence is there for that?)

The humanity of Jesus is a strand running through all four Gospels. Here are a handful of places where it is most clear…

In Luke 2:52 we read that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man”. In other words, he was a normal child, needing to learn to read and write, plus also the niceties of social behaviour. Can you picture him as a boy at his desk in the synagogue school? playing in the street with his friends? growing up into adolescence and puberty?

In Matthew 4:1-11 we read that he was “tempted by the devil” (and what a fearsome temptation it was!). And let’s not say, “Oh yes, but being the Son of God he couldn’t have fallen!”, for a temptation you can’t fall to is, surely, no real temptation at all, but simply play-acting.

In John 2:16 we read about his anger at those he felt were desecrating the temple. True, it was a controlled anger (“zeal”), but in both actions and words he was pretty fierce.

In Matthew 23:13-36 he uses extreme language against those who were misleading the people: “fools”, “hypocrites”, “snakes”, “vipers”.

In John 4:6 we read that he was “tired” from walking from Judea through Samaria towards Galilee, and so sat resting by a well. John didn’t need to tell us about his tiredness, did he? But he had no qualms about doing so. He knew the human Jesus!

In Matthew 24:36 Jesus explicitly declares his own ignorance regarding the time of his return: “… about that day or hour no-one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. So no talk, please, about “Jesus, being God, knows all things”.

In Luke 19:41 he surveyed the beautiful but doomed city of Jerusalem and “wept over it”.

In John 11:33-35 he was “deeply moved in spirit and troubled” and “wept” at the tomb of Lazarus.

In Mark 14:34 he comes to Gethsemane to pray before his death and displays his need of the companionship and support of his disciples: “Stay here and keep watch with me” – and of his disappointment when they let him down: “Couldn’t you keep watch for one hour?” (verse 36). It’s wonderful to think of Jesus saying to these hopelessly fallible men, in effect, “I need you! Stay with me!”

And all this, of course, is before we get to Good Friday - the agony of crucifixion and the “cry of dereliction”: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

I wonder if just gathering these texts together will be helpful to some of us. I do hope so. Whatever, let them be a reminder to us that in all sorts of senses, Jesus is on our side!

Lord Jesus, please help me to read your word with openness and understanding, and so to see you as you fully are: both mighty and glorious, and also meek and humble. Amen. 

You are infinitely precious

You are not your own; you were bought at a price. 1 Corinthians 6:20

Bought at a price.

Four little words (only two, in fact, in Paul’s Greek), but what a wealth of meaning they convey! You could print them on a tee-shirt, or stick them on the fridge door as a kind of motto to sum up what it means to be a Christian.

We are freed slaves, liberated from the bondage of sin and death. And the price that has been paid is, of course, Christ’s death on the cross. As Paul put it during a tear-jerking farewell talk to the leaders of the church in Ephesus, we are those “whom he bought with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). That is how much God loves us.

Peter echoes and amplifies the same thought: “You know it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

The Jewish people were well familiar with the idea of blood sacrifice, offered routinely at their temple in Jerusalem. Well, the blood sacrifice offered nearby on the hill of Golgotha was the final one, the one to end all those sacrifices, leaving no need for more. And so, set free from that “empty way of life”, we now enjoy a whole new existence – what the Bible calls “eternal” life, starting in the here and now and finding completion beyond the grave.

In 1 Corinthians Paul uses this pithy little phrase twice.

Here in chapter 6:20 it is in the context of sexual purity. Paul is talking about our bodies: they are the gift of God, “temples of the Holy Spirit”, and we are to regard them as sacred. This doesn’t only apply in the area of sex, of course: it applies also to gluttony and drunkenness, to name just two of the many forms of abuse which may tempt us.

But in the sex-mad world in which, very likely, we live, it’s not bad to be reminded of this truth: sex is designed for marriage as a covenant of love between one man and one woman until parted by death. Let’s not be embarrassed to uphold this ideal, even while we show understanding and compassion to those who have fallen short.

Then in 7:23 Paul uses the same expression in the context of our life-situation. Throughout the chapter he is insisting that while our “place in life” is obviously very important - married or single, slave or free - it isn’t the key thing. No, what really matters is how we go about it – we are to live like those “bought at a price”.

There are perhaps two main situations in day-to-day living when it’s especially important to keep this in mind.

First, when I’m tempted by sin.

How easily we excuse our sins! How readily we allow the tempter to convince us they don’t really matter that much! And by “sins” I’m not only talking about gross ones such as sexual laxity or other forms of self-indulgence. No; every spiteful thought, every yielding to jealousy, every slump into laziness, every flicker of pride, every callous indifference to the needs of others, every failure to do the good we know the Spirit is prompting us to do – all these are sin.

Jesus made it clear that it is “what comes out of a person that defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come…” (Mark 7:20-23). Oh yes, we may be able to tidy up our outward behaviour; but God sees our hearts – and he is perfectly holy. Somebody famously said about God, “Forgiveness? Oh, that’s his business”, as if we can just take it for granted. But how wrong can you be…

The battle against sin is a daily, even a minute-by-minute, business. Reminding myself of these great words, bought at a price, is no magic fix, but at least it can keep us in touch with reality.

The second situation where these words can strengthen us is when I’m discouraged.

You don’t have to be a Christian long in order to discover that it can be just plain hard. There are times when our prayers seem not to be answered; times when the things we attempt, including for God, fall flat; times we read the Bible and find it puzzling and dead; times bad things happen in our lives through no fault of our own. Our heads can go down and our shoulders can droop.

Again, just reciting to ourselves four little words is no guarantee of an immediate change of mood. But it can remind us that behind the scenes “God is working his purpose out”, and our business is to grit our teeth and hang on.

I love Graham Kendrick’s song (I take the liberty of adapting some of the words): The price is paid,/ Come let me enter in/ To all that Jesus died to make my own./ For every sin/ More than enough he gave,/ And bought my freedom/ From each guilty stain.

Yes – slavery to Jesus is the meaning of perfect freedom: freedom to be the person God always intended me to be.

The price is paid. Alleluia!

Heavenly Father, thank you for that wonderful price Jesus paid even for me. Please help me to remember constantly that I have been bought at a price, and may this be both a safeguard in times of temptation and an encouragement when the way seems just too hard. Amen.

A misguided zeal?

Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Romans 10:1-2

My wife and I were walking through the city centre the other day when we came across a street preacher. No great surprise, that – such preachers are probably a feature of most busy shopping areas. But in this case the person in question was someone we knew as a fellow-Christian.

Now, street-preaching isn’t something we normally do – we are, after all, true-born Brits and find it slightly embarrassing! So we were surprised and, for a moment, didn’t know quite how to react. We carried on through the crowds of shoppers with a perhaps slightly patronizing response of “Well, it wouldn’t be quite our thing – but all credit to him for his zeal! Not for us to criticize or judge”.

Done well, real open-air evangelism surely has its place even in staid Britain – as long as it doesn’t just irritate or inconvenience people, and perhaps makes skilful use of music, graphics, street-theatre and so-on. But simply haranguing a crowd who are showing no interest and who probably dismiss you as a religious nutter – well, you have to wonder about its value.

But further reflection brought a story to my mind…

Some years ago I was on the top deck of a London bus when a young woman stood up and started to preach. Her words – and I don’t think I’m being unfair here – were incoherent, wild, repetitive. The reaction was split. From one or two there were cries of encouragement – “Keep it coming, sister!” From several others an exasperated “Sit down!” Most of us, I think, kept our eyes firmly fixed on the floor and hoped she would stop. To me it just seemed a bad witness for Christianity, more likely to put people off than to interest or attract them.

I told this story a few days later at a fellowship group, whereupon an African lady responded excitedly “That’s how I became a Christian!” Apparently in her country people preaching on buses is, if not what you might call “normal”, certainly a recognized form of evangelism. So that put me well and truly in my place and knocked the superior stuffing out of me. (There’s nothing like a lesson in humility, is there?)

The broader lesson, of course, is that what’s acceptable in one setting or culture may clash violently in another. Although he is speaking in a different context, this is the point Paul is making when, in Romans 10, he commends his fellow-Jews for their zeal but expresses doubts about their wisdom. Zeal is good, of course – but it can be misguided.

Peter says much the same thing when he speaks about how Christians should go about evangelism: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do it with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3: 15). In other words, be sensitive to the mind-set of your hearers.

A further thought struck me about our friend in the shopping centre: knowing him as I do I haven’t the slightest doubt that, before he went out that day, he will have bathed his efforts in prayer. He will have given time and real effort to his preparation. He had one or two friends in the crowd handing out tracts and, again, I haven’t the slightest doubt that they will have joined in prayer before setting out.

Which leads me to wonder: who knows how God might honour their efforts and zeal – even if we are right to feel it was a little misguided?

I can almost hear in my mind’s ear somebody standing up in a church somewhere in ten years’ time to testify to how they came to follow Jesus: “I was in a shopping precinct one day when I was in a really bad way, my life was a horrible mess, and there was this man preaching. I thought at first that he was just some kind of religious nutter. But though I didn’t really take in much of what he was saying there was something about him which caught my attention and impressed me. And here I am today…”

Let’s make no mistake, God has been known to use some pretty unlikely instruments in carrying out his purposes! I think of a friend who was converted through the testimony of a fellow-worker who was dismissed and derided by everybody else as a crank.

Why, perhaps God has used even you; even me…

Another thought strikes me. Somebody may indeed be acting in a somewhat misguided way. But if they are acting in good faith and from pure motives, does that give me – who, let’s be honest, would never have the guts to do what they are doing - any right to criticize?

And so the question arises: All right, I may feel uncomfortable about the way a fellow-Christian goes about their ministry. But am I doing it any better?

Indeed, am I doing it at all?

Thank you, Father, for those who love you enough to go out on a limb and witness for you in unconventional ways. Bless their efforts with fruitfulness, and help me to learn from their example true humility and new courage. What do you want me to do, Lord? Amen.

What kind of true?

In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. Job 1:1

So begins one of the most remarkable books ever written, whether in the Bible or out of it: the story of Job. It has been suggested that those first words could be translated, “Once upon a time in the land of Uz there lived a man called Job”.

Why that suggestion? Because the book reads rather like what we might think of as a folk tale (“once upon a time”), an ancient legend put down on paper.

When did Job live? We don’t know. Where did he live? – in “the land of Uz”. But where was that? In Jeremiah 25:20 Uz is mentioned as a kingdom, and in Lamentations 4:21 it is associated with ancient Edom, but that is all we have.

In Ezekiel 14:14 and 20 Job is bracketed with Noah and Daniel in a trio of righteous men, and of course in the New Testament James refers to his “patience” (James 5:11). But again, that is all we have.

Rather like, say, Robin Hood, Job emerges not as a clear historic figure like David or Abraham or Simon Peter but as a shadowy character from the long-distant past who has become embedded in the national consciousness of the people of Israel (though there even have to be doubts over whether or not he was himself an Israelite).

You might compare him with the mysterious Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20) – though the rest of the Bible makes rather more of him.

Whatever, every serious Christian ought to read the book of Job, for it has much to teach us. It is, after all, part of the inspired word of God. But over it all a question hovers: Is it actually true? Is it fact or fiction? And does it matter?

Some Christians will be shocked at the mere question - Of course it’s true! – it’s in the Bible, isn’t it? And the Bible is the word of God, and God “does not lie” (Titus 1:2). There’s nothing more to be said.

But wait a minute. This isn’t a matter of truth against falsehood, but of the various ways in which truth can be conveyed.

The Book of Job reminds us that truth – including God’s inspired truth – comes to us in many forms. You don’t – or shouldn’t - read the psalms in the same way you read the New Testament letters; or the Gospels in the same way you read the Song of Songs; or Acts in the same way you read Proverbs. A detective novel and a recipe book are both books; but you wouldn’t read them the same way, would you?

We all know that as well as being a book, the Bible is also a collection of books, written and put together over many centuries. As well as being inspired by God through the Holy Spirit, it was also written by very different human authors and they used a variety of literary forms: well, if scripture can include history, poetry, prophecy, teaching, humour, song, narrative, metaphor, why not also folk legends?

Many people think of Job as a kind of dramatic poem (most of it is in verse) with Job as the central character – no doubt it goes back to some bedrock in fact, but it just doesn’t read like a straight narrative, like Kings or Acts.

By way of comparison, you might ask the question, Are the Narnia stories true? To which there are two answers, and they are both right. First… Of course not! They are obviously fairy tales, purely the work of someone’s imagination. Narnia doesn’t exist; no such lion as Aslan exists. Don’t be so silly.

But the second answer is also right… Yes, they certainly are true! They convey in story form the Gospel. Aslan stands for Jesus, crucified and raised again, and bringing light and hope to a world in darkness.

To put it another way: Not all truth is literal truth. This applies in all languages and cultures; and it applies also to the Bible. Are the fires of hell literal? Do unbelievers literally burn without end? Are the six days of creation in Genesis 1 literally six twenty-four hours, or do they stand for something else? Did the Promised Land to which God led his people literally “flow with milk and honey”? Of course not! It’s a figure of speech, a metaphor.

Some Bible truths are clearly presented as literal: above all, the virgin birth, earthly life, crucifixion, resurrection and eventual return of Christ. But other truths may take on a different form. Sometimes – as with Job – it may not be easy to tell where literal truth shades off into metaphor or parable, and we have to live with uncertainty (not to mention with tolerance towards others who may draw the line in a different place).

But if we put the Bible in a straitjacket, insisting that a particular passage can only mean this, and no other interpretation is possible, then we miss much of its rich variety. And, as a result, much of its truth…!

By the way, the thought occurs to me that, if “Once upon a time” might have been a suitable opening for the Book of Job, “And they all lived happily ever after” might have been a suitable ending.

And that is, of course, a fitting ending too for every person who has their trust in the Lord.

Let’s learn the lesson of Job!

Thank you, Father, for the great variety of your inspired word, the Bible. Help me to read it, not just for what I want it to say or what I think it ought to say, but for what it does say, whether I like it or not, and in whatever literary form it comes. Amen.

Spiritual millionaires?

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field… Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it. Matthew 13:44-46

Why would Jesus tell two tiny parables which teach pretty much the same lesson?

Well, in general he wasn’t afraid to repeat himself – and, as any teacher will tell you, there is no harm in pressing home identical truths more than once. In the course of his earthly ministry of up to three years he must have repeated the same truths many times with variations. (This is very clear if you compare the “Sermon on the Mount”, Matthew 5-7, with the “Sermon on the Plain”, Luke 6:17-49). It looks too as if the four Gospel-writers often picked up slightly different versions to include in their respective books.

The basic truth of Matthew 13:44-46, the stories of “the treasure hidden in a field” and of “the pearl of great price” is very clear: being part of the kingdom of heaven is infinitely more precious and valuable than anything else we might ever own, achieve or experience.

Isn’t this, in essence, what Jesus was trying to get across to the rich young ruler (Luke 18:18-22) when he told him to “sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”? Isn’t it what Paul was driving at (Philippians 3:7-9) when he said he regarded everything valuable he had ever had as so much “garbage” (“dung” might be a better translation) in comparison with “knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”?

Sometimes preachers make this point by telling us that we are “spiritual millionaires”, which is a natural enough illustration. True, the word “millionaire” perhaps strikes a slightly artificial note – given that, being realistic, the Christian life sometimes seems to entail at worst great sacrifice and even suffering, and at best a whole lot of daily plod.

But we get the point. What a privilege it is to have gained what we might call the gospel “package”… forgiveness of sins, the assurance of eternal life, the gifts of prayer, of the Holy Spirit, of inspired scripture, of inner peace, of the fellowship of the church, the body of Christ. “Count your blessings” said an old song; and we know that they are literally uncountable.

Is it time you stopped for a few minutes and reflected on all that is yours in Christ? Perhaps look at it from the opposite angle and ask, Where would I be today if I had never come to know him? Where indeed!

There’s no doubt then about the basic lesson of these companion parables. But is there something more? I think there may be. Jesus doesn’t spell it out, but I don’t we’re straining the stories too much if we find it there.

Put simply, the two men are very different, and this suggests, first, that God is concerned for all sorts of men and women; and second, that he deals with us in very different ways.

The man in verse 44 seems to have been poor, quite likely a day-labourer, working hard in someone else’s field to eke out a living. He suddenly hears a clink of metal under his spade and… his life is changed for ever. He wasn’t looking for treasure; it just happened, completely out of the blue. (Burying valuables in the ground, in a world without banks, was a common practice.)

The man in verses 45-46 on the other hand is clearly rich: a merchant who trades in precious stones. He has a dream of one day finding a fabulously beautiful, breathtakingly valuable pearl, and he makes it his business to search far and wide for it. One day… there it is! - and his life also is changed for ever.

One man stumbles across great riches purely by accident; the other finds them as a result of persistent, determined searching. In just the same way, some Christians come to Christ by what almost seems like chance: they have no interest in the things of God, but then one day he simply breaks into their lives, turning them upside down and inside out. To borrow C S Lewis’s phrase in describing his own conversion, they are “surprised by joy”. (In fact, in the interests of accuracy, we ought to say that “surprised by joy” is a line borrowed by Lewis himself from a poem by William Wordsworth; but never mind.)

Other followers of Jesus only find him after months, perhaps years, of searching, questioning, agonising, doubting, arguing. Then one day it suddenly clicks into place and everything changes.

Most of us probably sit somewhere on a spectrum between those two types of conversion. And the point is: it doesn’t matter a scrap which one best fits us. All that matters is that our trust is in Christ, and our lives conform to his teaching.

So… let’s be very careful never to doubt the reality of someone else’s conversion just because it was different from ours. Let’s take very seriously the words of Paul in Romans 14:4: “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master they stand or fall…” -     implying, “so keep your nose out of their spiritual affairs!”

We have entered into riches beyond measure: how exactly we came by them matters not at all!

Heavenly Father, please refresh my appreciation of all the riches  that are mine in Christ, and so help me never to become spiritually stale. And help me too, day by day, to live a worthy life as a result. Amen.