We have three wonderful Bible stories to explore this week! What do you think might be the connection between the three? I hope you’ll know the answer, especially as we recall Andrew’s sermon from last week. Everything in the Bible has to be translated by HI - that is Human Intelligence! - and sifted through the filter of love, remembering that every word is there for our sake as a guiding gift from God.

Let’s look at our gospel story first. There was a pool in Jerusalem, probably fed by a natural mineral spring. Every now and again the waters were stirred up, and the first one to bathe in them was healed! The winner takes it all - I know a song about that! People with diseases would stay near to the pool, in the hope of being first next time. There wasn’t a queue or a ticket system as we might organise in Britain today. It wasn’t fair. So one man had been there for 38 years, living in hope, with no-one to help him.

When I went to the Holy Land, we visited the site where this really happened. It’s been excavated and you can look down at the ruins and see the porticos, and where the water would have been. It’s a very special place. Jesus was there. He healed the man there. He was the spring of water. But what he did was against the rules. He wasn’t supposed to go near to diseased people, nor to heal anyone on the sabbath. But Jesus was using HI and acting through the filter of love, while the rule book had been written by those who saw every word of the scriptures as a tablet of stone, to be followed to the letter for God’s sake - except for when it suited them to do otherwise. Instead of being delighted that the man had been healed, the enforcers of the laws were critical and judgemental of Jesus for healing him.

God had sent prophets to try to help such people in the past, one of whom was Ezekiel, which takes us to our next story. A prophet is someone who receives God’s word and does what God asks of them. God asked him to prophesy to the bones: “Hear the Word of the Lord” - I know a song about that! The bones became bodies, but they still didn’t have life in them until he prophesied again: “Breathe on them, that they may live”. And they did. I recommend that you read this story and what follows for yourself. Depending upon how you interpret it, using HI with the appropriate filters, you might see that it foretells of Jesus the Son and of the Holy Spirit, without whom the bones would remain dry.

And so we’ve seen Jesus in action, and a prophet from the past, so let’s go on to what happened next, our story in Acts.

God gave Paul a vision to go to Macedonia, in modern-day Greece, and so some of the disciples went to Philippi. To Europe. On the sabbath day, they went down by the riverside - I know a song about that! Wild church is not new - they supposed that there would be a place to pray by the river. They sat down and spoke to the women. Oh dear, this is all against the rules! They were not supposed to talk to women, especially to gentile women! And Lydia was certainly unclean, as her purple cloth would have used urine in its manufacture! Not only did the disciples baptise her, but she prevailed upon them to go and stay at her home - which meant eating with her too, and treating her as an equal, to judge her as someone as faithful to the Lord as they were.

Here is where I sigh. It’s 2000 years since this happened, and women are still not yet treated as equal - not in life, and not even in the church! - even though the first recorded European Christian in the Bible was a woman! Paul was as open to God’s guidance by way of the Son and the Holy Spirit as Peter had been, when he went to the house of the gentile Cornelius and said “Who was I that I could hinder God?” (Acts 11:17) when he was challenged.

So what do we draw from these three wonderful Bible stories to help us in our lives today? What is the connection between the three stories? The love of God!

1: Don’t forget that the scriptures are there for our benefit, each chapter and verse written in context to help the people of their time, but from which we can also glean insight about God using the filter of love and Human Intelligence.

2: If we want the dry bones of our world to be healed and to come alive, they need the love of God the Father, the wisdom of the Son and the guidance of the Holy Spirit before they will do so. We need to keep praying for this.

3: And as we are refreshed in the spring of spiritual, healing water who is Jesus, listening to the Holy Spirit, it’s up to us as today’s disciples not to hinder the God of love or to be judgemental, but to serve as faithfully as Peter and Paul did, including and loving everyone as equals.

Amen.

Julie Rubidge, Lay Minister.