Chapter 6

On earth as it is in heaven

“You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

1 Peter 2:5 [ESV]

Jesus gave us a prayer that is central to the worship and spiritual devotions of Christian people of every tradition. In that prayer, we are encouraged to pray that God’s will be done on earth, just as it is in heaven.[1]

Prayer can take many forms, yet we often find that in prayer, we are asking God for something. When we listen in prayer, we often find that God’s response to our request is for us to do something. God chooses to do his work through people.

Matthew places the Lord’s Prayer towards the end of what we know as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We often interpret what Jesus said to the crowd as a kind of ethical or moral code to be followed in order to gain God’s blessing. Jesus said, blessed are the meek, merciful, peacemakers, and so on.

However, these are the kinds of people God chooses to work through. God works through people who are poor in spirit, people who recognise they need his help, people like Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10). God works through people who hunger and thirst for righteousness, like the Samaritan woman Jesus met at a well (John 4:1–42). God works through the pure in heart, people like Simeon and Anna (Luke 2:22–40). God works through people persecuted for their righteousness, people like John the Baptist. (Mark 6: 14–29).

We tend to think that it was only Jesus, along with 12 others, who walked around the Judean countryside for three years, healing and teaching. We forget that there were a huge number of people involved in this ministry. On one occasion, Jesus sent out seventy-two people into the local towns and villages to be channels of God’s love and to proclaim the Gospel of salvation. Those seventy-two were an answer to prayer. In Luke 10:2, we read Jesus telling the seventy-two to “ask the Lord of the harvest, to send out workers into his harvest field.” No doubt they did indeed pray, asking for workers. However, the answer to their prayer was that they themselves were sent like lambs among wolves into the towns and villages to do the work of mission and ministry. They were the people God chose to work through. Presumably, God chose them because, having prayed for workers, they had indicated a love of God and a concern for his Kingdom, plus a love of neighbour that they too would know God and find the peace and blessing of a life lived with God.

God chooses all and sundry. If it had not been for the prostitute Rahab, the Israelites would not have taken Canaan (Joshua 2). God chose a small boy to facilitate the feeding of a multitude of people (John 6: 8-9), and God decided that a woman, Mary, should be the very first person to witness and proclaim the resurrection.

When we read the New Testament, it is easy to get a picture of the Apostle Paul, together with a few friends, such as Barnabas, Mark, and Timothy, struggling alone, albeit successfully, setting up churches all over the eastern Mediterranean in the places we know of today as Italy, Greece and Turkey. Yet, in the final chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul names over thirty people who were engaged in ministry. It is a lesson that ministry is not something restricted to a few but open to many.

Indeed, Jesus called the disciples to become fishers of men and women.[2] His final words to the disciples prior to his ascension were that he was sending them to make disciples of all people and that they were to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. [3]

Was he only speaking to a handful of first-century fishermen beside Lake Galilee, or is he speaking to all who follow him? The journey with Jesus for those first disciples was one that began as followers, then as disciples, and then as apostles; people sent as missionaries into the world. That is the journey for all who turn to follow Jesus.

As lovers of God, we strive to keep the commandments, to love God and neighbour. Loving God demands that we respond positively to his calling, making Christ known in the world and bringing people to Jesus. Surely, there can be no greater need than for someone to know Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, for it is through faith in him we have eternal life. Loving someone so much that we seek to bring them to Christ demonstrates our love of God and his desire for the kingdom to grow.

Every person who proclaims Jesus as their Lord and Saviour has a calling to be a fisher of men and women and to make disciples of all people. For this task, we are equipped by the Holy Spirit. His gifting provides us with all we need. When the Spirit came upon the disciples on the Day of Pentecost, they were given the courage and self-confidence to step out of their locked room, stand up in public and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus.[4] The Spirit enabled them to do this in the many different languages the cosmopolitan gathering of people in Jerusalem at that time would have understood. The disciples, now apostles (that is, people who were sent), were enabled by the Holy Spirit to speak in ways that enabled everyone to understand.[5]

We read in the book of Acts that the apostles continued their ministry of preaching and teaching. However, as the church grew, pastoral demands were placed on the apostles. They were concerned not to be distracted from their main calling of teaching and preaching, and so chose Stephen and six others to conduct a specific ministry to the Greek widows who were among the family of faithful believers.[6] We are told the Word spread, and the church grew in number. No doubt that growth was due to the preaching of the apostles and the care the church was showing to the needy. People saw that what the church taught was lived out in the lives of the faithful.

Heartfelt faith, love, and devotion for God go hand in hand with Christian action. Of course, not all are gifted to preach, or teach, like the Apostle Peter,[7] or even to pastoral care, like Stephen. Nevertheless, as Stephen’s example demonstrates, God does equip people for serving in the Kingdom, and he does so in such a way that requires us to use his gifts collaboratively with others.

Paul uses the analogy of a body with many different parts: eyes to see, ears to hear, hands to do and so on. He writes about this both to the church in Corinth and Ephesus.[8] He speaks of people being gifted as apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists, miracle workers, healers, and even administrators. He lists these only as examples, for there are a whole host of ways in which we are gifted to show our love for God and for neighbours. Importantly, all are required for effective mission and ministry; all need to work co-operatively together. Notice that in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan needed the cooperation of the innkeeper to fully help the man beaten on the road. There is not one particular part of the body or one particular gift that is greater or more important than any of the others; all are required.

In demonstrating our love of neighbour, particularly when we work collaboratively in partnership with other Christians, we are Christ to others. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, he said, “You are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it.”[9] He was referring to the whole Church for the ‘you’ is plural. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul emphasises that the church comprises differently gifted members, each individually and collectively to be Christ to the world. Making the same point when writing to the church in Ephesus, he makes explicit that the purpose of these gifts is to prepare God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ, the Church, may be built up.[10] These gifts are to be used to grow the Church; nurturing new Christians and helping more mature Christians grow in their understanding of God’s Word as revealed through the scriptures and to develop their relationship with God. Equally, the Spirit gives his gifts to use in building up the Church by equipping people to be fishers of men and women, and making disciples of all, adding to the Church’s number of faithful believers. The Church is the embodiment of Jesus, and all who declare that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Saviour are a part of his body on earth.

When the seventy-two returned to Jesus following their ministry in the towns and villages, they did so with great “joy.”[11] Being sent like sheep among wolves actually gave them joy. They had been blessed, just as Jesus had said in his Sermon on the Mount. They had been blessed both as individuals and as a group because they had been gifted by the Holy Spirit to do the work, and because God had worked through them using them to fulfil his purpose.

Paul emphasises this in his first letter to the Corinthians. He writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “do you not know that your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit.” Here the context is one of sexual morality, but the point of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is made. God lives within each of his faithful people just as Jesus promised. After Judas had left to go and betray Jesus, Jesus spoke to the disciples, promising them that he would not leave them as orphans, but he would send the Holy Spirit to be with them, adding, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will realise that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”[12]

In Chapter 3, we reflected on Jesus’ teaching, that what we do for others, we do for him. Knowing that the Holy Spirit lives within God’s faithful people adds a whole new dimension to our understanding and what it means to be neighbourly.

Like each of the seventy-two, every one of God’s faithful people can make a difference using the gift the Holy Spirit has given. We can seek to be Christ to others we meet as we go about our daily lives. That simply means getting alongside people who may be lonely, sad, or anxious, or being sympathetic to people caught in abusive relationships. We merely need to reach out to them in love and allow the Holy Spirit to work through us and in them to strengthen, support and perhaps direct them to specialised help where that might be needed.

Also, like the seventy-two, the use of our Spirit given gifts and individual efforts have more of an impact when they are used collectively, co-operatively, and in a coordinated way. So, whilst I may be able to help an individual sleeping on a park bench, I can do so much more by supporting an organisation to raise funds to not only help more of those who sleep rough on the streets but also lobby the secular authorities who have the power to make an even bigger difference.

The parable of the Good Samaritan has one simple yet profound message: that everyone is a neighbour whom we should love and to whom we should be neighbourly. The story emphasises that regardless of who a person might be, they are one of God’s creations. All people are to be loved and treated with dignity and respect.

The parable teaches about assisting people who are in desperate need. However, we will rarely, if ever, come across someone set upon by thieves and left for dead at the side of the road. Are the command and the definition of neighbour as expressed in the parable restricted only to those whom we happen upon, or are there broader implications to loving your neighbour? Does the parable have anything to say to us about what it means to be neighbourly to neighbours we will never meet?

As we read God’s command to love in the light of this parable, what implications and applications are there for us in the twenty-first century? What does it mean to be neighbourly in the different aspects of our lives?

For example, how might the parable help us understand the command to love in our work relationships? As employers, do we see employees as neighbours, as people towards whom we should be neighbourly? As employees, do we regard our employer or manager as a neighbour in the sense Jesus defines the term? How do we love the neighbour who is a customer or client, or receiving a public service? How does loving our neighbour as ourselves impact upon us when we consider people who are hungry, homeless, sick, have to walk miles for water each day, or have no access to education or healthcare? How does being neighbourly influence the way we make a purchase, vote, or even when we write a comment on social media?

Most of us live our lives with a desire for a peaceful co-existence with those who live near to us. Most will help someone in need if they are known to us. As individuals, we can have empathy and compassion for those who find they are beaten up as they travel the journey of life. Most are likely to offer some form of first aid, whether that is to call a paramedic, lend a tool, do some shopping or whatever the emergency requires. We may be moved to donate to the local food bank, give to disaster funds when homes are lost through earthquake or flood. We might provide a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on for those experiencing relationship difficulties or bereavement, or some other kind of emotional or personal trauma. Many make financial contributions to charitable organisations or volunteer time and skills to improve others’ lives in some way.

The Christian life, eternal life, is a life of participation with God. If we do our best to keep the commandments to love God and love our neighbour, God will use us and work through us to make our prayer, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” a reality.

Points for reflection

1. God lives within his faithful people. What are the implications of this for the Christian actions of love we may undertake? Reflect on this question from the point of view of the giver and then the receiver of this action.

2. What specific gift has the Holy Spirit given you to use as a member of the body of Christ? How might you use this gift fruitfully?

3. Has the Holy Spirit given you the gift of prayer?

4. Prayer of Teresa of Avila.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours; no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which he is to bless his people.

Prayer

Loving God, I thank you that you live within me by your Holy Spirit. I thank you for the gift you have given me. Give me opportunities to use this gift in the service of your Kingdom. May your church be full of fishers of men and women seeking to make Christ known in the world through offering themselves as channels of your love and by proclaiming the Gospel. Work through your Church, Christ’s body on earth, so that your will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven enabling individual lives, and the life of our communities, to be transformed and your Kingdom grow in all kinds of unimaginable ways. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

[1] Matthew 6:10

[2] Mark 1:17

[3] Matthew 28:19

[4] Acts 2:1–12

[5] Acts 2:8

[6] Acts 6:1–7

[7] Acts 2: 14–41

[8] 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4:11–13

[9] 1 Corinthians 12:27

[10] Ephesians 4:12

[11] Luke 10: 17

[12] John 14:19–20