What are you waiting for?

Holy Trinity Church, Huddersfield, Sunday 2 June 2019

An interesting walk to church today. I was walking alone as I was playing in the worship band at the contemporary service, my wife, the Lovely Linda would follow later, I had rehearsal and sound check to do. The unusual occurrence was about wildlife. Beat in mind that I was well inside one mile from the town centre in a definitely urban environment apart from a nearby park. Something caught my eye, the undulating motion of something small and grey was crossing the road ahead. It was a squirrel. It looked left and right, saw an approaching car, made a u-turn and returned to the relative safety of the pavement. Seeing me it then runs for a small kerbside tree and disappears from view; I imagine it has climbed the far side of the tree as a startled wood pigeon then suddenly leaves the tree and flies across the road towards the park, veering upwards as it goes to avoid another approaching car. Wild life, it has no road sense. Ironically as a child I was taught road safety by a TV squirrel. Tufty, you should have been teaching squirrels.

The service itself was on the  5 marks of mission. The last part was on Treasure, completing a full set of subject starting with T. The band I was in was now reduced from the quintet of Friday’s rehearsal to a trio through sickness, so there was more improvisation going on than usual, with my percussion playing fills where I would have been laying back to provide room for other instruments.

There were two focuses to the service. The other one was to pray for our church’s mission week, starting next Sunday to celebrate having been here 200 years, and for the week of prayer for that week of mission starting today. The details are on the Holy Trinity website, and #HT200 is being used on social media to promote it.

What Are you waiting for? That was Curate Steve’s question at the beginning of the sermon. Creation is waiting for you, he said, For you God’s children to be revealed.

If God’s Spirit testifies in us that we belong to Jesus. The Holy Spirit in us means that we should be flourishing. The Holy Spirit in us refashions us into what we are meant to be, but itis not here yet. We are to be partners with God in creation.

Treasure.

We are to treasure this world that God has made. The Bible says creation is good, God made it. Matter matters. Lists of things you should and should not do, such as eating heavily processed foods like chicken nuggets You should and shouldn’t do things is moralism and moralism not good news. Jesus is good news.

It is a privileged or us to care for the world under God. God still wants humans to move creation forward.

Creation is groaning in labour pains. There is a lot of groaning mentioned in the passage the sermon is based on, Romans 8:18-25. Creation is groaning for people who are groaning to be people we are meant to be. We need to pray for the Spirit to equip us.

When God said, “make humans in our image,” he is talking about all of us. The reason that we do not need to make images of God on Earth is that God has already made it, humans, the pinnacle of creation contain the image of God, all of us. Humans are Gods viceroys, rulers on the rulers behalf. We are to rule in the place of God.

Protecting the planet, caring for creation is part of God’s mission, our mission, in the world.

Sorry, my sermon notes are short this week, I was distracted by a squirrel and a wood pigeon.