Look at this beautiful little church [St John's, Ohau].
People have been worshipping here for a long time: more than 100 years. The timber chosen for the building will have been locally-felled totara and rimu; those trees may have been growing 500-1,000 years ago. That takes us back perhaps halfway to the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago… So, 2,000 years is not so long ago, really! I’ve been thinking about this issue - what is a ‘long time’ – for many years now, off and on. It seems that 5,000 years ago, the development of writing allowed the transmission of ideas across multiple generations and between scattered groups of people; 150,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa; as hunter-gatherers.
Everything that is special about humankind: all known religious belief, art and architecture developed since then; that is, not just writing, but probably even speech. Before this time, there may have been no conveying of complex or abstract ideas from one person to another.
I believe that somewhere in last 150,000 years, God breathed His spirit into mankind: this is the meaning of the events in Genesis, where God set us apart from the rest of His creation here on earth; enabled us to reflect on who we are, why we are here, what we ‘ought’ to do with our lives. Millions of years of preparation gave us hands that could shape tools; brains that could string ideas together; but for less than 150,000 years we have had the ability to distinguish right from wrong; to ask moral questions. How we answer those questions needs a value system: a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. There is a huge and complex jump in moving from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’: ‘That man is hitting a child’ to ‘I ought to stop that man hitting that child’.
I believe God breathed His Spirit into early Man; gave us the capacity to appreciate beauty, to be creative, to rise above our animal instincts. We now have free will to choose how to spend our time: a gift that comes with a responsibility. For God does have expectations of us: He gave us work to do: to look after this part of His creation. In fact, I think He gave us these clever brains, these dextrous hands, to share His love in the world. 2,000 years ago: God gave us Jesus. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jn 1:14. And in Jesus, God showed us how to live: To heal the sick, work for justice, help the poor. Perhaps more than that: to foresee problems and work to avoid them; to dare to hope for a better tomorrow, and to commit ourselves to working for it.
So: here we are in a beautiful little church worshipping God, as people have done for a very long time. God prepared this beautiful world for us to live in and for 100 years we’ve been doing that here in Ohau. For 2,000 years we’ve been marvelling at the story of how God came to live among us, to show us how to live a life worth living. For something less than 150,000 years we’ve had the mental capacity to realise God loves us; to ponder the meaning of life and share our reflections with others.
God’s patient preparation has led to you being here today. An amazing, complex, highly capable creation, with the power to choose: will I be a life giver? Will I bring hope to the hopeless, love to the unlovely? Remember: God loves us enough to have come and lived amongst us; each Christmas is a chance to re-commit ourselves to loving God and loving others. Let’s go and love the world in His name! Let’s play our part in establishing God’s Kingdom here on earth!
People have been worshipping here for a long time: more than 100 years. The timber chosen for the building will have been locally-felled totara and rimu; those trees may have been growing 500-1,000 years ago. That takes us back perhaps halfway to the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago… So, 2,000 years is not so long ago, really! I’ve been thinking about this issue - what is a ‘long time’ – for many years now, off and on. It seems that 5,000 years ago, the development of writing allowed the transmission of ideas across multiple generations and between scattered groups of people; 150,000 years ago, modern humans left Africa; as hunter-gatherers.
Everything that is special about humankind: all known religious belief, art and architecture developed since then; that is, not just writing, but probably even speech. Before this time, there may have been no conveying of complex or abstract ideas from one person to another.
I believe that somewhere in last 150,000 years, God breathed His spirit into mankind: this is the meaning of the events in Genesis, where God set us apart from the rest of His creation here on earth; enabled us to reflect on who we are, why we are here, what we ‘ought’ to do with our lives. Millions of years of preparation gave us hands that could shape tools; brains that could string ideas together; but for less than 150,000 years we have had the ability to distinguish right from wrong; to ask moral questions. How we answer those questions needs a value system: a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. There is a huge and complex jump in moving from an ‘is’ to an ‘ought’: ‘That man is hitting a child’ to ‘I ought to stop that man hitting that child’.
I believe God breathed His Spirit into early Man; gave us the capacity to appreciate beauty, to be creative, to rise above our animal instincts. We now have free will to choose how to spend our time: a gift that comes with a responsibility. For God does have expectations of us: He gave us work to do: to look after this part of His creation. In fact, I think He gave us these clever brains, these dextrous hands, to share His love in the world. 2,000 years ago: God gave us Jesus. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jn 1:14. And in Jesus, God showed us how to live: To heal the sick, work for justice, help the poor. Perhaps more than that: to foresee problems and work to avoid them; to dare to hope for a better tomorrow, and to commit ourselves to working for it.
So: here we are in a beautiful little church worshipping God, as people have done for a very long time. God prepared this beautiful world for us to live in and for 100 years we’ve been doing that here in Ohau. For 2,000 years we’ve been marvelling at the story of how God came to live among us, to show us how to live a life worth living. For something less than 150,000 years we’ve had the mental capacity to realise God loves us; to ponder the meaning of life and share our reflections with others.
God’s patient preparation has led to you being here today. An amazing, complex, highly capable creation, with the power to choose: will I be a life giver? Will I bring hope to the hopeless, love to the unlovely? Remember: God loves us enough to have come and lived amongst us; each Christmas is a chance to re-commit ourselves to loving God and loving others. Let’s go and love the world in His name! Let’s play our part in establishing God’s Kingdom here on earth!