Southern Cross Presbyterian Church

almost daily I read a story in the paper about the tough financial times facing Australian families – rising interest rates, rising fuel prices, the ongoing challenge to “make ends meet” – and then I see it, that phrase again, those two words that somehow go unexamined and yet which reveal so much about our modern Australian way of seeing the world: “no choice”.

I read it again just today on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-small-step-for-their-small-packages/2008/09/29/1222650989514.html). The story was about the federal government’s new direction on paid maternity leave and appeared under the title “Great leap forward seen more as a small step”. It was basically a human interest angle which presented the views of two new mums on the adequacy of the governments proposed 18 weeks’ paid materniy leave. Their reaction? Basically, disappointment. One woman, Alison Barnes, 35, an academic and mother of 11-month-old Madeleine said all women deserved 26 weeks “because it allows a genuine choice. You should not feel guilty about having to return to work too soon after your child’s birth because you have no choice.”

No choice… really? I hear people say this sort of thing all the time but how real is it? For example I wonder how Dr Barnes would finish this sentence: “I had to go back to work earlier than I wanted to, otherwise…” Unless her next words were “I/my baby/etc. would die/be killed” then she had a choice didn’t she? In fact even then, she would still have had a choice. But the reality is that what she really meant was “I had to go back to work earlier than I wanted to, otherwise… we would have been under greater financial pressure OR otherwise we would have had to re-finance our home loan OR otherwise we would have had to put off our holiday to Fiji…” and the list could go on.

You see we always have a choice. In Australia, no one is holding a gun to our heads. We have incredible freedoms. We’re just not willing to make choices that compromise our ability to “have it all” and so we say we have “no choice” to justify the decisions we have made.

Do you do this? I read somewhere once that we either allow the truth to shape our reality or we massage the truth to justify our decisions. Which is it for you?

I think Jesus is a great example of someone who was always aware of the choices available to him and yet always chose to do what was right in submission to his Father, God. Even when he knew that his choices were leading him to certain death, he still chose to go that way. And he made those choices for you and me. How easy it would have been for him to justify other choices – “they don’t deserve it”, “I’m innocent”, “they need me here”… but he didn’t. Jesus, the way, the truth and the life, chose our good over his own and for that we can be eternally grateful.

How should that effect the choices we make? Let me tell you about how one family in our church has responded to all that Jesus has done for them. What do you do when you realise that your precious rural hideaway (and the debt you’ve incurred to pay for it) is making it hard for you to love and serve your church family? Do you have a choice? Yes… but it’ll cost you. But one family was prepared to pay the price so they found a cheap rental in town, close to church, put their property on the market and have been taking every opportunity to serve that they can lay their hands on – hospitality, joining ministry teams, catching up with small group members, and the list goes on.

How many of us are making those sorts of choices for those sorts of reasons? I’m praying that more and more of us will understand our freedom in Christ Jesus as an opportunity to serve like he did, to make choices like he did so that we will mirror him to the world around us which has become enslaved to all sorts of idols as revealed in the conviction that in so many things they have “no choice”.

What do you reckon you can do in about 6 minutes? make a cuppa, send an email, jog for a km, read a short story to your kids… all good things, but I’ve got a better idea!

For the next 3 Sundays in church we’re diving into the book of Jonah – and don’t you just love Jonah! So why not invest the 6 minutes that it’ll take you to read through this little gem and give yourself a headstart for when Sunday comes around. Better still – do it with someone else. I promise you – it’ll be 6 minutes well spent!

So were you taken by surprise on Saturday that apart from voting for Councillors and for a Mayor you also had to vote on a possible change to the Constitution? And if you hadn’t given it much thought (if any), what was your instinct? My guess, for most of us, the instinct was to vote “no”. We’re a bit sus of change.

Regardless of this particular result, Australians have a well documented tendency to say “no”. Australians almost always say no to referendum questions. Only 8 out of 44 referendums since 1906 have been carried. That’s a whole lot of no’s for the occasional yes… No. No. No. No. No. No. Yes. We’re very sus of change.

Of course we’re different at church. Aren’t we? You know the old joke: “how many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?” Answer: “change?”.

We have seen in 1 Corinthians this term that there is one thing we must never change: the gospel. We have also seen that faithfulness to that gospel will demand many other changes in how we share it (see 1 Corinthians 9:19-23). Fixed on the message. Flexible on the methods. Unchanging gospel. Ever-changing gospel mission.This may mean we need to unlearn our anti-change instinct. Our “no” instinct. Just look at the change Apostle Paul was forever embracing in order to stay effective in gospel mission.

Every letter in the New Testament called churches to some sort of change. It would be arrogant to presume we’d be any different. Indeed, unless we’re claiming perfection, change is always needed.

It’s worth thinking that through as we build to Connect 09, a year of mission. The definition of insanity is to keep on doing what you’ve always done and expect different results. If we have an inkling that there exists the possibility of a much more vibrant and effective mission to the unbelievers of our city than we have ever seen to date… change will be needed. New ideas will need to be met with a … YES. Calls to step out of our comfort zones will need to be met with a …YES. Changes in our personal priorities will need to be met with a …YES. God given opportunities will more than ever need to be met with a… YES.

Practice it now. “YES”. Amen brothers and sisters.

It seems a good while since we’ve had a good old-fashioned “end of the world” prediction, but that’s what we got yesterday. However, this time the script was written a little differently, wasn’t it? This warning didn’t come through the predictions of some wacky cult group. Strangely, this one was served up for us because of the activities of the elite scientific community, of all people.

This “is this the end of the world?” question was raised in connection with yesterday’s startup of the Large Hadron Collider at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, outside Geneva. What is a Collider? I’m not exactly sure. But it’s something to do with getting very small things to collide at very high speeds. Sure it all sounds like harmless fun, but as we all know…that could cause blackholes… which could start sucking in the world all around it… and thus the end of the world!!

Most scientists assure us that such fears are unfounded even as the Collider continues smashing protons together over coming weeks and months. They simply hope to grab a piece of the primordial fire, forces and particles that may have existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Assuming that’s the way it all happened, of course…

It’s hard to know what to say about a world where our brightest and shiniest seem to be missing the key ingredient for understanding both ends of world history… and therefore fundamentally misunderstand everything of ultimate importance in between! It’s all in God’s hands. Always was, always will be. In the beginning was…God. If you don’t go back that far, you simply haven’t gone back far enough. And ‘the end of the world as we know it’ will also be brought about by… God. And if you’re not prepared for meeting him… well, that’s a massive collision up ahead you really do want to seriously rethink. Which means coming to terms with Jesus, the one who called himself the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End (see Revelation 21:6), the who makes sense of all world history, past, present and future.

Hebrews 9:27-28 warns of the ultimate collision and how to prepare for it …
27Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,28so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.