HOLINESS
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight: O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.
We continue our sermon series on Discipleship and the topic today is ‘Holiness’
Oh Lord it's hard to be humble
When you're perfect in every way
I can't wait to look in the mirror
Cause I get better looking each day...
How many people do we know who are truly humble? The words in this song by Mac Davis are a bit extreme but, as people in general, we do tend not to be humble in our approach to the world.
Humble man story....humility can be complex...even though sometimes we think that we understand... it is hard to exactly define...
...and the same applies with the concept of ‘holiness’...except that it might be even more difficult to define!
noun: holiness
1. the state of being holy.
Synonyms:
sanctity, divinity, godliness, saintliness, sanctitude, sacredness, faith, devotion, devoutness, divineness, blessedness, spirituality, religiousness, piety, piousness, righteousness, goodness, perfection, virtue, virtuousness, purity, sinlessness
"a life of holiness and total devotion to God” ...how complex is this- each topic could be a discussion point all on its own!?
We need to ask ourselves – what do I understand by ‘Holiness’?
From incidents in the Old Testament such as when the people of Israel come to Mount Sinai and when Moses sees the burning bush – one can get the feeling that ...’don’t get too close because it’s holy and so it’s very, very dangerous and you may be struck down!’
So people may still feel cautious about holiness – it’s often linked to people with halo’s and an ephemeral aspect – people who are depicted in stained glass windows - perhaps not substantial and real. In a nutshell – people who are not like us!
This is why the way that Jesus talks about holiness at the Last Supper is so important and so transforming – holiness is seen as going to the heart of where it is perhaps most difficult for us to go – to where people suffer and are humiliated – the poor, the destitute, the unemployed.... echoing the discipleship message from last week’s sermon.
To quote Rowan Williams from his excellent book – Being Disciples - ‘ if we take this seriously, the Christian idea of holiness is to do with going where it’s most difficult. He wants us to be holy like that.’
There is an important distinction between being holy and simply being good or even very good.
We perhaps feel inadequate when we meet people who we think are Very Good or even saintly – just because they are so good. They could perhaps have an unconscious aura that they have or are something special –
Holy people who are saints rather than saintly would make us feel better than we are - they would be showing us something that is wonderful, simply to have in the world.
A holy person lets us see things in ourselves and around us that we perhaps have not seen before. That’s why we say of Jesus that he is the ‘most holy one’ because he above all changes the landscape and casts a new light on everything. As Paul says to the Corinthians - when we are in Jesus Christ there’s a new creation; nothing looks the same...
So, if we start to build a picture of holiness – it’s not an extra special type of goodness because it’s not about competing levels of goodness. It’s perhaps about enlarging the world and being involved in the world – about making people see things and other people in a fresh, new way.
Holy people allow us to see not them but the world around them. They allow us to see not them but God and his wonderful world...
The problem is, of course, that we cannot become holy by trying to be holy....because if we set ourselves goals to be unselfish, ultra helpful, ‘don’t think about me think of others’ and so on we can’t monitor ourselves - because that would be self-defeating as we would keep thinking about ourselves!! Think about the being humble story!
To quote Rowan Williams again - ‘ Becoming holy is being so taken over by the extraordinariness of God that that is what you are really interested in, and that is what would radiate from you to reflect on other people.
There’s the catch: if you want to be holy, stop thinking about it. If you want to be holy; look at God. If you want to be holy, enjoy God’s world, enter into it as much as you can in love and in service – not duty! And, who knows, maybe one day someone will say of you, ‘You know, since I met them, the landscape looked different.’
This whole train of thought leads on to the Church itself...how does the church become holy? Not by having rules and policies about holiness! There is no way to measure holiness – to set theoretical measurable levels?
A holy church is taken over by the excitement and the extraordinariness of God. It wants to focus and talk about the beauty and splendour of God and to show the self-forgetting love of God by being where people are most human and in need.
Holiness is certainly about being unselfish but not in the sense of having a policy about how to be or become unselfish!
We should all be so interested in God and the world that we have no time to brood on ourselves...
We are all called to it and we are all in Jesus’ Spirit empowered for it, as it constantly renews in us the ability to pray with integrity and conviction and to pray to God intimately as to a parent.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18
‘Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s Glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.’
Our transformation is “from glory to glory” through various stages of Christ-likeness.
In other words, our life’s purpose is to resemble Christ more and more each day—a difficult assignment, absolutely; but notice the last phrase of the verse: “from the Lord who is the Spirit.” How can we resemble Christ? As the Holy Spirit transforms us gradually from the inside out.
Again as mentioned in last week’s sermon ‘The Holy Spirit is continuously making connections come alive for us/those ‘light bulb’ moments between what’s going on around and within us and the workings of our Triune God.’
Moses experienced outward transformation when he saw the glory of God. Christians enjoy inward transformation when we see the same glory. Working through His Holy Spirit, God completes the work of salvation in our hearts and lives.
Consequently, worship represents the primary means of our transformation into the image of God. You can’t be like Christ if you’re not reflecting Christ, and you can’t reflect Christ if you don’t first behold Christ in worship.
When we come to church our prime thought should be ‘what am I bringing to God and what can I do to help in building His kingdom on Earth’ – it’s not about ‘what we get out of the service’ it should be more about ‘what can we give’... after all, to quote from the Matt Redman song - ‘it’s all about you Jesus’
Matt Redman story...
“When the music fades, all is stripped away,
And I simply come; longing just to bring something that’s of worth
That will bless Your heart. I’ll bring you more than a song,
For a song in itself is not what you have required.
You search much deeper within through the way things appear;
You’re looking into my heart.
I’m coming back to the heart of worship,
And it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus.
I’m sorry Lord, for the thing I’ve made it,
When it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus.”
Amen
Roger Lee, July 17
