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Jubilee Series
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It's a pleasure to be here this morning speaking as one of the senior leaders of this church. There's a lot of change happening — how we're giving the tithe, how we're doing communion, the leadership — but hopefully it's good change. This term we're unpacking the theme of Jubilee, and we're doing that week by week through different Psalms, because the Psalms are part of the wisdom literature of the Bible, and as we seek God in this season, we are keen to seek His wisdom.
I want to start with a story from my Easter weekend. We went for a family walk in Wales — my kids are six and nine. We set off as you do at the beginning of a walk: sun shining, children skipping, flowers picked from the hedgerow. Then we started going uphill. There was definitely a point where my daughter Nancy was being pulled along on the end of a stick.
We stopped at a beautifully positioned bench and looked back at how far we'd come — only to check the map and realise we were just a third of the way round. I hadn't registered that most walks go uphill and then down again; this one kept going up and down, up and down, for another three hours. By the end we had numerous sticks, flowers, and feathers collected along the way, sore feet from new walking boots, and Nancy so caked in mud we had to strip her off to get her in the car.
It made me think about where we're at as a church. Life is a journey with its ups and downs, a journey where you pick up things along the way, and a journey where you have to stop and take breaks. That's what the Sabbath and Jubilee years in the Bible are about — stopping and taking a break from the normal routine.
That's why we've chosen the picture of a fallow field for this season. In ancient agriculture, there were other ways to restore nutrients to soil — planting different crops in rotation, for instance. But that isn't what God told His people to do. He told them to let the field lie fallow completely: not to plant, not to harvest. That rest allows the soil to be restored, allowing future years to be fruitful.
That's the kind of rest — that fallow time — I want to unpack today. We're on a journey; we're not at the beginning of it, and we're not at the end. We're just taking a break, and doing some reflection in this pause.
As the deer pants for streams of water, my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long,
What you get in church is actually a bunch of broken people. And it's incredible—the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus loves each and every single one of us, and nothing that we have done, none of our brokenness, separates us from Him. We are accepted, we are loved in His family. If you're here hearing that for the first time or the thousandth time, I want you to know and believe that God accepts you. You are loved.
But then we have to get along, you know what I mean? There's a group of people who you may not be thrown together with in any other scenario—we wouldn't necessarily be in the same book club or the same sporting club. We're thrown together and we have to get along with one another. And so pain happens, doesn't it? We hurt each other in all kinds of different ways.
I'm not trying to use my first talk on a Sunday to make digs at people, but I just want to acknowledge that pain happens. Particularly—I don't know if you've been following it—there's been some stories in the media recently about a church from my hometown, Watford, where the leader of that church was doing some stuff that was pretty horrendous.
It's worth acknowledging that people in leadership can cause a lot of pain. They can do it accidentally, and they can do it intentionally sometimes. I want to acknowledge that, and I've thought this morning that actually you might be carrying something. I don't know your church backgrounds, I don't know where you've been, but I want to take an opportunity to say, on behalf of leaders, that I'm sorry for when that happens, and I'm sorry in advance for the pain that we will undoubtedly cause—hopefully not intentionally.```
Another tricky thing about being a leader—I'm not necessarily talking about the scenario in Watford now—is that leaders can get put on a bit of a pedestal and have an even higher expectation. Then when we make mistakes, which we will undoubtedly do, the pain can be all the more great, can't it? Because you kind of hoped better of that person. It's tough.
We're going to cover forgiveness later in the series, but my thing this morning is more about wanting to give permission. Because when it comes to dealing with pain in church it can be quite tricky, because we also love one another and we've had a good impact in each other's lives.
Most of the time, the pain that we cause one another is absolutely unintentional. We're loving one another, we want the best for one another, and then we mess up and do stupid things. It was interesting—if you've followed that story at all—there's a guy who said he found it really difficult to deal with because this person had had such a good influence in his life. It's difficult to also hold the pain when you know someone meant the best for you or loves you. We can all be caught in that, can't we?```
My message this morning is: you have permission to deal with it. It might be that this season—a bit of a lull—might be a time when God brings something up and says, let's deal with this properly, let's process this. It seems to be something happening across the wider church in this country, that God is shining a light on some things.
The devil wants to separate us from God's family, and he can use damage caused within the family to do that. But God wants us to be in His family for better or for worse—the church is God's thing, He created it, He wants us to be in it for better or for worse. God wants us to be healthy and know how to function healthfully in the church body.
The devil wants things to stay hidden. He wants you to feel ashamed, he wants you to feel you can't talk about it. But God wants to bring things into the light.
I'm not saying that you just "get over" things, but if we think about that journey—you get through a journey, and it might change you, but you keep going. Sometimes these things can stop us, and I think that is the plan of the enemy: to stop us.
I had a friend, a colleague, who had something terrible happen in her family recently. She said to me, "I just feel like this is going to be the end. I feel like they're never going to move forward from this—the rest of their lives are just going to be stuck at that point." That is not what God wants for us. He wants to redeem things, He wants to restore things, He wants to bring healing to our hearts so that we can keep living life in God's family—not just get over it, but move healthfully through it.
You know that kids' book, We're Going on a Bear Hunt? You can't get over it, you can't get under it—you've got to go through it. That's still moving. That's what God wants to do.
"I will put my hope in God again; I will praise Him again, my Savior and my God." (Psalm 42/43, paraphrased)
The psalmist is modeling to us that it is possible to praise God again. That's what this is about this morning—you go away and figure that out in a way that works for you. But I just want to give you permission to do that. There's nothing dishonoring to God about processing pain, even if it's caused by His family, even if you know the person didn't mean it—you might still need to process it.
My last point is disappointment with God. I've covered this recently so I won't go into loads of detail, but I want to touch on it again. There's a question in verse 10: "Where is this God of yours?" It's an interesting question. I expect we've all been there—where was God in that? Where is God in this situation?
It is normal to look back and have some sense of disappointment. Me and Sue were having a chat in the office, and she said, "To be honest, I just kind of thought that by this point in the church's journey, more people would have been saved." She had an expectation, and recognized, oh, it hasn't necessarily lived up to what I expected.
Now, God doesn't let us down. God doesn't break His promises. God is faithful, always. But we can expect things that God hasn't said—we can hear things and then extrapolate on them. We can be sold something as "a word from God" that isn't.
It's like in a relationship—me and Jack have had this joke: next year I'm buying my own Easter egg, because my expectation of what an Easter egg needs to be just shifts and changes, and he can't get it right—not because of anything he does, but because my own expectation means that whatever egg he gives me, I'm probably going to be disappointed. So we just said I'll buy my own egg and that will save the tension. It's on me, it's not his fault—he makes an excellent effort every year.```
It can be the same with our relationship with God. It's not on God—God doesn't let us down. But sometimes we do need to pause and think: okay, where did I get that expectation from? Why am I feeling that disappointment? What's going on there? God can handle it. He's not bothered by our disappointment; He can cope with it. The psalmist is modeling pouring some of that out and choosing to trust in God again.
One interesting thing, if you read these two Psalms together, is that apparently in the original Hebrew they are not so much a conversation with God as a conversation the psalmist has with himself. He's pouring out his emotions, and then he's choosing to hope in God—speaking to his own spirit, saying:
"I will put my hope in God; I will praise Him again. Each night I sing His songs, praying to the God who gives me life. I will praise You with my harp."
The psalmist is not doing that thing that you can do, particularly if you're British—just pushing it down and keep going, keep on swimming. Nor is he stopping and saying, "Well, it's so bad, that's just the end," and sitting in a puddle on the floor. He's expressing it, and then he's saying: I will choose to trust in God again. I will choose to find God in this. I will choose to believe that there is a hope and a future.
I guess that's why it speaks to me of this fallow season, this Jubilee season—just like me and the kids and Jack on our bench, on our walk. I really encourage you to find some head space somehow between now and September, and ask the Holy Spirit:
Like you might have a drink, you might put a plaster on a blister—whatever it is you need to do, so that you can get up and walk forward healthily. That is what God wants for us. He is our Good Shepherd—that's one of the many analogies for Jesus in the Bible—He wants to lead us into health, He wants to lead us into wholeness, and that is His heart for us.
As we stand this morning, let's just take a moment to say: Holy Spirit, what are you saying to me from all that stuff that's been shared? As we've been praying as a leadership team, we've been getting a number of words. One of the words we've received is about wounds—that some of us have something we still need to deal with. Others of us received a word that it looks like you've got a scab, and it's almost like it looks like it hasn't healed, but actually it has—and maybe for some of us it's about acknowledging what God has already done, rather than living like we've still got a wound.
So I just invite you to wait on God for a moment: what is He saying to you?
