Provocation

My twin daughters are incredibly close. It’s not surprising that they should be, after all they once shared a womb together, and they now share a bedroom and a classroom. They know each other very intimately.

What they also know intimately is just exactly how to wind each other up. They are masters at provoking each other.

Recently Anais came to me with an angry and tearful complaint: “Mummy, Layla says that I don’t like rainbow unicorns!!” Now, to you and I this might not seem a problem, but if you know anything about 4-year-old girls, Unicorns and Rainbows are fundamentally important.

Layla quickly denied that she had said anything at all.

Anais eventually calmed herself down and sat back at the table with Layla. As I got on with cooking dinner, I heard Layla quietly singing to herself… “Anais doesn’t like rainbow unicorns….”

Anais was again outraged and when I challenged Layla she said smugly, “I was just singing a song. I was singing about a different Anais!”

Now, hopefully as we are much more mature than the average 4-year-old, I’m sure it takes a lot more than that to provoke a strong reaction from us.

To provoke someone is to stimulate or incite a strong emotion or reaction.

When we think of the word ‘PROVOKE’, we usually think of something negative. In law, provocation can be a mitigating factor when someone is being sentenced. Yes, that person who has committed an assault may have committed a criminal act, but the severity of their punishment might be reduced by the fact they were provoked in a way that could cause the most reasonable person to lose self-control.

And when I looked at today’s scriptures, I was struck by the word “provoke”. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells the church to continue meeting together and to “consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds”.

But before the writer gives this instruction, he spells out exactly what should provoke these new believers. What exactly should stimulate and give rise to a strong emotion that would spur them to loving actions and good deeds?

Well, the writer of Hebrews, explains very clearly what God, in Christ, has done for us.

He points out that Jesus did what was humanly impossible – He took away our sins.

Jesus did what the priests couldn’t do. They offered daily sacrifices and yet this could never take away sins, which is why they had to keep sacrificing again and again.

God is pure, He is good. Sin cannot be in His presence.

And so, our sin separates us from God. It separates us from Good.

Sin causes us to fall. It causes pain and anguish in ourselves and others.

Sin takes away our peace. It stains our conscience.

Sin is ugly and serious. It provokes a strong reaction in God. His hatred of sin and it’s ugliness incited him to do something about it. He was provoked to take drastic action; to send His Son to die for us, to destroy the power of sin and create a new and living way that sinful humans could have access to the presence of God – through Jesus.

This week we heard that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned because of his inaction or inadequate action to reports of abuse against children and young men that spanned decades. He resigned because he had to accept that the ugliness of sin, the irreversible damage done to people who are abused by those in positions of power and trust, should have provoked him to act to put a stop to it and bring the perpetrator to justice.

Seeing the ugliness of this sin of abuse should have caused a stronger reaction in him than his concerns for protecting the church’s reputation. And we see that covering over the sin has had a much bigger negative impact on the victims, the church and its reputation.

According to the writer of Hebrews, when we grasp the true horror of sin and what it does to us and others, how it separates us from the sanctuary of being with a Holy God, how it steals away our inheritance as people that God created to be in His image; when we see the impossibility of our situation, our inability to free ourselves from sin; it should provoke a strong reaction in us.

When we see that God was willing to give such a sacrifice, His only Son, to take away our sins, and to open a way to forgiveness and reconciliation with our Creator, it should provoke strong emotions in us.

We should be provoked to repentance – when we see the true devastating ugliness of sin. We should be provoked to gratitude and humility as we recognise that Jesus did what was humanly impossible to do, create a way for sinful and broken humans to be forgiven and accepted into the presence of a Holy God.

We should be provoked to worship, in awe at the amazing power, love and sacrifice of God who entered into His creation to rescue us.

Reflecting on all this should provoke us to approach God with confidence, trusting that we have Jesus, our High Priest, who enables us to approach Him. We can go to God in honesty, we can confess our sins to Him, and turn away from those things in our lives that would separate us from Him. We can receive His forgiveness.

Our readings from Daniel and Psalms emphasise God as our Deliverer. Daniel describes a vision of terrifying times in the world, a time of anguish in the nations. In our Gospel passage also, Jesus warns the disciples of wars in the future, nations rising against nations, kingdoms against kingdom, earthquakes and famines.

These descriptions maybe don’t sound too dissimilar to the times we are living in today. Political upheavals in many countries; war in the Middle East, Ukraine and Africa; the terrible floods in Valencia; the drought in southern Africa, where crops have failed and 27 million people are at risk of hunger;

We see people being displaced by environmental disasters and war, leading to mass migrations and people making desperate journeys in small boats to seek asylum;

We see the tensions that these huge movements of people provoke in the nations they flee to, gleefully stoked by politicians and populists, as they pit people against each other for the limited resources they make available to those at the bottom of society.

There is a great deal of anguish in the nations today.

But the book of Daniel promises that God will deliver and protect His people, everyone who is found written in the book. Our Psalm reinforces this message. The Psalmist calls out to God, who is his “protector”, his “refuge”

The hope we have in God’s faithfulness, His protection, His love for us and in Jesus’s promised return to earth to deliver His people, should provoke a strong reaction in us.

As we live in these troubled and anguished times, we should be provoked to be wise, to listen to God’s words and be guided by Him. We should be provoked to evangelise, to share this Gospel message of forgiveness from sins, of deliverance and refuge with everyone who hasn’t yet heard it and everyone who hasn’t yet believed it.

The writer to the Hebrew church encourages them, and every church, to continue meeting together. To not be deterred by the times we live in, to not be deterred by the fact that we are in interregnum and currently are waiting for a new vicar. We are encouraged to hold fast to our confession of our hope without wavering, because God is faithful and we can trust Him.

As we meet each week we can consider how we can provoke one another to love and good deeds, building a strong united community within these doors, and equipping each other to share that love outside these doors and amongst our communities.

Let’s be encouraged this morning and be provoked by God’s powerful love and actions towards us, to respond in kind, to love and act as His children in an anguished world desperately in need of rescue.