The passage the sermon is based on is: For here we do not have an
enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Well….try to imagine you’ve been transported about 12,000 years back
in time. You’re living with your extended family as wandering nomads.
Maybe grazing a few livestock, moving from place to place, living in
tents, finding water and other necessities wherever you can.
But it’s a hard life. Unrelentingly difficult. A constant struggle to survive.
And dangerous! If it’s not rival clans or tribes that threaten you with
harm, it’s hungry wild animals looking to eat you.
Then someone comes along with a novel idea, something unheard of.
There’s going to be something called a city built. A place where people
settle together, with permanent dwellings, water provided, services to
hand, lots of things to make life easier. And best of all, a big wall all
around it, so it’ll be really safe. It’s one of the first of its kind. And it’s
going to be called Jericho.. Well who wouldn’t want to give that a go? So
much better, and it’ll last forever.
Except….. it didn’t last for ever. Thanks to modern science and
archaeology, we know that Jericho was destroyed and ruined at least four
times, quite possibly six. It didn’t last. It wasn’t an abiding city.
And that’s because, with one obvious exception, there isn’t an abiding,
or permanent anything.
Everything was created by God; and nothing he created is designed to
be permanent. Nothing’s unchanging. Everything God creates, it all
changes, disappears, and gets replaced by new stuff. And maybe that’s
hard to accept. But that’s God’s way.
The planet we’re on now; it’s not an inanimate lump of rock. It’s got an
active molten centre. The ground we stand on’s actually plates that
move and shift. Earthquakes happen, mountains get thrown up and then
fall down. Oceans and seas grow, shrink and even disappear. The
climate changes, from ice ages to baking heat. The earth’s dynamic and
ever changing.
Life forms evolve, thrive and then go extinct. Countries and nations rise
and fall. We change! – We grow. We learn and then forget. I’ve changed.
When I first came to St.Peter’s I had a full head of hair. And now I clearly
haven’t. I don’t think the way I did when I was younger; I like and dislike
different stuff. That’s God’s plan; change.
Think of the whole universe. Stars are born, live and die. Heavenly
bodies collide with each other and break up. Even our own planet won’t
last forever.
All that God made, on Earth and elsewhere, is ever changing. So no, we
have no abiding city, here or anywhere else. We have nothing that
permanently abides. God doesn’t seem to do static; God does dynamic.
There is of course one exception to that rule. God himself. God as
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God endures, never changing, for ever, for
all eternity. And the Kingdom of God, to which we all have an invitation;
that too’s forever. Have faith, and you can be assured of a place in that
Heavenly Kingdom. Forever.
The hymn writer got it spot on: “Change and decay in all around I see,
O Thou who changest not, abide with me”
So because this world we live in is such a tumultuous and changeable
place, we need Christ on our side, a safe, enduring, protecting friend.
To abide in the Lord means that we continually receive, believe and trust,
that Jesus is everything we need. And then, because of our faith, and
God’s everlasting grace, when we finally enter his glorious Kingdom;
only then will we at last find that abiding city.
St Peter's Church 