A worship service was held at 10.30am in the church on Sunday 3 May.  The service was simultaneously broadcast on the Church Facebook page.  For the next four weeks, you can catch up here.

The Bible passages were Luke 23:32-43  and Revelation 22:1-7 David Sim led the service and preached.  The sermon starts at 33.07 in on the video.

It was a wonderful service this morning!

David’s theme was seeing God’s love reflected in nature.

He mentioned the risk of being so caught up with our thoughts and plans that we lose sight of the astounding beauty of nature around us – a beauty which points to the Creator.

He spoke about descriptions of ‘paradise’ at the beginning and end of the Bible – a garden in Genesis and a garden city in Revelation where people encounter God.

He spoke about Jesus telling the thief dying with him ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’

He reminded us that ‘paradise’ is not just past, future, or ‘later today’ but now.

The creation around us points to a God dimension lying behind all things, a God dimension which we encounter when we stop looking at nature simply as ‘beauty’ and dissecting it scientifically, but see it as an expression of God, and invitation to encounter the Christ who sustains all things.

Jesus, David reminded us, is Alpha and Omega, beginning and ending, yet constantly with us. Jesus, he implied, is paradise and we enter paradise by opening our lives to him.

David then led is in an prayer, leading us to reflect on and pray for ourselves, those close to us, friends, folk we don’t know very well, folk we don’t like very much, in each case asking for God to bless and encourage them.  And there was in the room a whisper of Paradise.

You can read David’s sermon below.

Sermon:   Experiencing Jesus

Scriptures Luke 23:32-43,  Revelation 22:1-7

A few weeks ago I was walking through Ness Islands and… I was distracted. My brain is often like a monkey in a banana tree! I was thinking about this sermon – how to help people encounter God, not just talk about God.

Funny thing is… I walked the whole circuit of the islands – head down, lost in thought. And when I got back to my car, I realised… I hadn’t seen a single thing. Not the trees, not the people, not even the dog that tripped me up until it was too late.

Which reminds me of a story told by a Bible scholar called Tim Mackie…

Some of you will know Tim from the Bible Project – we sometimes use Bible Project videos here. Tim has devoted his life to examining the Scriptures and helping others to learn from it.

Tim related how he was on a hike, in a place called Mount Hood, near Portland in the US, just to clear his head and give himself some space to think. He had been walking all day, in pretty much complete solitude encountering no-one else on the trail, and was heading to a fork in the trail, to an overnight campsite called – wait for it – Eden Park.

Hold on to that name.

And as he walked in this wilderness, he heard a rustling in the bushes, and saw them start to move. Now Mount Hood is where you might encounter a rattlesnake, a black bear or a cougar.

Tim’s now thinking “this is how I die – mauled by angry wildlife while thinking deep thoughts about Genesis”.

And from the bushes out pops… a woman.

The woman looked at him, her mouth stuffed full of fruit, and said…

“look at the blueberries… they’re everywhere.”

And Tim looked around… and realised he was surrounded by thick, dense, blueberry bushes, loaded with fat, juicy blueberries.

When Tim looked back down the trail, there were miles of blueberries, back where he had been walking. And up the trail there were, as far as the eye could see, more blueberries. And he hadn’t seen them at all, so intent was he on his thinking and deliberating.

And so he did the only reasonable thing he could; he joined the woman by shovelling fresh blueberries into his mouth.

Tim is a Bible nerd; he’s devoted his life to the study of Scripture.

But he realised in that moment, that he was missing something. Just like he had missed the blueberries all around, he had missed a whole realm of experience that is available in the journey of following Jesus.

After all, we can read about blueberries. We can see pictures of them. We can understand a lot about their biology.

But what if we don’t notice the blueberries right in our path! What is the value in reading about blueberries if we miss the opportunity taste their juicy goodness?

We read about Jesus. We see pictures of Jesus. Many of us understand a lot of the doctrine and theology around Jesus. But what is it like to actually expect to experience Jesus?

Let’s go back to the Bible, and I’m going to reflect some of Tim Mackie’s commentary here.

Our first reading today is a famous one which you may have encountered at Easter. Jesus is being crucified and encounters two criminals, also facing the death penalty, either side of him. And one of the criminals turns to Jesus and says:

Would you remember me when you come into your kingdom?

And Jesus says a line that has vexed theologians ever since:

Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Now most of us would read that as… “today you will be with me in heaven” or something similar. Which isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s only half the story.

Jesus doesn’t say ‘heaven.’ He says ‘paradise’ – which really just means ‘garden.’ And any first-century Jew hearing ‘garden’ would think… Eden. The beginning. The place where God walked with humans in the cool of the day. That’s where Jesus is inviting this dying criminal. Not some far-off afterlife – but into God’s presence.

When? Today.

Today you will be with me in the garden.

So we have this place: ‘paradise‘ where the criminal is going to meet Jesus ‘later today‘. But Paradise – the garden – is also way back at the very beginning of the biblical story, in the past.

Hmmm….

If Paradise is a garden, then it must have a centre. In Genesis, that centre was the Tree of Life. And look where we find that tree again, at the very end of the Bible story…

The river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb – down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood… the tree of life.

The tree of life, which was found… in the garden of Eden.

So in the future… we are in paradise.

Are you keeping up with this? 🙂

When is Paradise?

Is it in the past, as in Genesis? Is it in the future, at the end of time, as in Revelation? Is it later today, as for the criminal? Is it right now, as for Paul in 2nd Corinthians?

And the answer is…:
YES!

It is all of those things. Past, future, later today, right now…

Here’s a thought… What if Paradise is the dimension where God is, which has been humming underneath all of creation all along – past, present, future – but we keep missing it because we’re too busy thinking about God instead of noticing God right here, night now?

What if Paradise is all around us, and has been for all time, and always will be, sustaining the world, something so astounding it is inexpressible, and we keep missing it?

Here’s one more piece of Scripture I’d like to share…

In Revelation Chapter 22, Jesus says: :

Revelation 22:13 – NIV2011

13. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

First, last, beginning, end.
Past, present, future.

What if Paradise is less about a physical place… and more about somewhere we find… a person…?

What if God is right here, right now, with us and surrounding us, his presence, and love filling every corner of this room?

What if we’re missing the restored, lush, earthly communion with God.

One of the early church theologians, St. Augustine, argued that “the page of Scripture” and the “face of the earth” both lead to the same creator. Maybe some of you have experienced that moment.

We can look at the night sky as a simple thing of beauty, or even as a spectacle of science and physics. But there is a third way of seeing: where we are suddenly awestruck by an underlying mystery and spaciousness that connects us to everything else.

It’s the sense of wonder you may experience gazing from a mountaintop, or seeing a sunrise, or noticing the plumage on a kingfisher, or seeing a vast canyon.

Commander Reid Wiseman from the recent Artemis II trip to the moon didn’t say that the voyage was fascinating, or technically brilliant… He said it was “the most majestic, gorgeous thing that human eyes will ever witness.” He broke down in tears after the mission, saying that humanity might not yet have evolved to fully comprehend the wonder of what they saw.

It’s that third way of seeing that suddenly, and sometimes quite unexpectedly, connects us with the creator and fills us with awe and wonder and joy.

It’s not that we can do without our Holy texts which tell us so much about God and our evolving relationship with God, but by paying attention to both Scripture and Creation we connect in a way that draws us into knowing God in a way that is beyond words.

How can we encounter Paradise?

How can we connect with the true version of reality?

How can we see the blueberries all around us?

Most importantly… how can we encounter the Person? The beautiful, beautiful mind who – when he wanted to communicate love – became flesh and came as a human and poured out his entire life in an act of self-giving love?

The Garden of Eden represents the original design where humanity lived in perfect harmony with God and nature. In Eden, humans were meant to “enjoy and delight in creation,” walking and playing alongside their Creator… When we pause regularly to truly see the beauty of nature and live mindfully in the present, we are actively starting to recapture the wonder of Eden.

And to be clear it doesn’t have to be an open sky or open seas. We also glimpse the awe of God in art, music and literature.

Perhaps the Good News is not all about getting into heaven when we die.

Perhaps the Good News is about heaven getting into us WHILE WE LIVE!

So here’s what I’m proposing. For the next week, let’s all do a daily ‘blueberry check’:

• Once a day, stop what you’re doing
• Take three slow breaths, and just pause for a moment.
• Ask: ‘What blueberries am I missing right now?’
• Notice one thing: a person, a moment, a kindness, beauty, an opportunity to serve
• Say ‘thank you’ to God for it

That’s it. Sixty seconds. No pressure to have a mystical experience. Just… noticing.

Let’s try actually expecting God to show up. Not because we’re super spiritual, but because… what if God’s already here and we just need to notice him in our broken, but beautiful, world?

God said:

Be still, and know that I am God.

Be still, and know that I am…

Be still, and know…

Be still…

Just… be…

Prayer

God, we want to see the blueberries. We want to taste Paradise now, not just read about it. Help us stop missing you. Amen.