Four Horns Four Carpenters and The Carpenter

During this morning's service we shared in the sacrament of baptism as John and Denise brought their son Zach to be baptised.

Baptism is a celebration of the free gift of God's love.  With it comes the prayer that the little one as he grows older will make that love his own until in adulthood he comes to faith in God and in Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour for himself.  As promises are made each of us are prompted to think what we have done about that gift of God's love and ask whether we have made it our own.



The greatest gift

A gift to treasure,
The greatest gift of all.
Love
And greater even than love,
The love of God.
A love that has no strings attached,
A love that forgives and renews
A love that is around and within,
Above and below.
A love that never fails.
That’s the love that reaches out
To each of us
Since before ever we can remember
Is it a love that makes a difference to us?

There was a series on TV a month or so ago called Reverse Missionaries.  The first told the story of a missionary in the early 1800’s who went from Kings Stanley here in Gloucestershire to Jamaica and became one of the leading campaigners for the abolition of slavery.  In Jamaica his memory is honoured to this day and in Kings Stanley it is completely forgotten.  So the TV show brought over the pastor of a church in Jamaica to spend a couple of weeks in Kings Stanley as a missionary.

It was very moving to see the way he sought to come alongside the disaffected youngsters from the village – playing football with them, sharing the Christian faith in the most practical of ways, living out the love of God with them.  How he came alongside someone who was very far from well and had given up all hope for life.

The second episode took us to Blantyre in Scotland and told the story of David Livingstone who had set out from Blantyre to Central Africa as a missionary.  This time they brought someone from Blantyre in Malawi to one of our churches in Blantyre in Scotland.  It was quite striking to see how he was moved to tears coming from a place where most people go to church to find the way most people had abandoned anything to do with church and faith.  It was moving to see how he took a leaf out of David Livingstone’s book who had endeavoured to work with local people getting them to do the work of sharing the Christian faith.  He enlisted the help of young people to reach out to young people.  Again it was moving.

The third story shifted to Belfast and to India.  In 1895, Amy Carmichael, a young woman had gone from a Belfast church to India as a missionary.  The programme brought a young woman back from India.  Again it was clever how they made connections.  Amy Carmichael had worked with young people, especially girls and young women who were treated in an abusive way, virtually as sex slaves.  The young woman from India was seen working with young women across the divide in Belfast Catholic and Protestant and in particular working with them about self-respect.

Again it was moving.

Amy Carmichael’s story had caught my imagination when I first came across it.  It was a powerful and moving story.   Amy Carmichael was like an earlier version of Mother Theresa – doing the same kind of work among the most disadvantaged of people.  She set up a home called the Dohnavur home and that gave rise to a Dohnavur Fellowship.  Too busy with caring and sharing her faith in such practical ways, she was towards the end of her life taken ill.

It was at that point that she turned to writing.  Unable to be so active she shared her thoughts.  In particular she shared notes for prayer and support and encouragement with regular letters to staff and to people who continued the work.

After she died those were collected and edited together into a book of prayers to take you through the year.  Edges of His Ways.

It’s an intriguing title taken from a particular translation of Job 26:24 “These are the edges of his ways;”

A profound sense of the presence of God, Amy Carmichael also was going through very difficult times of ill health – she sensed there was something very real about the presence of God and his strength and power.   We can sense a strength from beyond ourselves – but it is only ever the edges of his ways that we touch.  As if you only hear whispers of the incredible greatness of God’s strength.

One image has always stuck in my mind.

And it’s one that seems appropriate to share today as we are sharing in baptism and baptising Zach.

Having told the story of Zechariah from the New Testament, there is also a Zechariah in the Old Testament.  He was a prophet – who spoke out God’s word to the powers that be.  One of the things about Zechariah is that he had all sorts of quite weird and wonderful visions.

It is one of those visions that Amy Carmichael reflects on.

Most of us have said what Amy Carmichael found herself saying in one of those letters she sent from her sick bed to colleagues still working flat out among those very deprived children and young people.

Most of us have said it at one time or another.

“I see such difficulties, I hardly know how to go on.”

It’s a scary time to be bringing a child into the world.  Lots of uncertainties about the kind of world he will grow up in.  I guess in so many ways it always has been so.

Sometimes it can feel as if the world is against us.  And there are all sorts of destructive forces around in the world.

That’s what Zechariah sees in this vision.  (1:18-21)

I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and behold four horns.”

I saw … four horns.   These are the powers that in Amy Carmichael’s words ‘scatter and shatter and spoil, the cruel powers that blast good work, and discourage souls “so that no one did lift up his head.”.

I saw them.  Is what the prophet said.

We know them all too well from watching the news.  From conversations about what’s going on in the world at the moment.  From things that strike much more closely to home in health and sickness.

They can seem to come from every side, from North and south, east and west, from the front, from behind, from right and from left.

I saw four horns.

But then something happens.

“And the Lord showed me four carpenters”.

For each horn a carpenter.  The horns are the destructive forces.  The carpenters are the ones who put things back together again, the ones who repair and mend and set right. 

Things go wrong in the building – we call on Darryl Mills, whose family is well known to some of Denise and John’s friends and family too.  Someone skilled at setting things right, mending things.  And we are greatly blessed by that kind of work that Darryl, and also John and others do behind the scenes for us – setting things right.

What happens in this is that for all those destructive forces there is a carpenter, in Amy Carmicahel’s words ‘thoes powers that put right what is wrong, that frighten away, terrify the evil powers, and yet they are as truly present as the horns.

That’s a very powerful thought to hold on to.  And it is one that is very precious.

For each and for every force that is destructive there is a power that seeks to put things back together again.

But notice that it’s easy enough to see the horns.  I see them.

But the constructive powers that renew and repair, they are not so easy to see.  In fact Zechariah only sees them when God shows them to him.

As Amy Carmichael says.  “We see the horns ourselves, but until the Lord opens our eyes we do not see they carpenters, and yet they are as truly present as the horns.”  We see the destructive forces ourselves all too readily, but we do not see the restorative powers that put things back together again until God opens our eyes and we see them for ourselves.

How does God open our eyes.

Destructive forces suck you into negative, self-centredness that fuels jealousies, hatreds, nastinesses of all kinds.

It is in Christ that we see the love that counters that.

It’s wonderful to think, suggests Amy Carmichael, that Jesus is the carpenter – who mends and restores and puts things right.

That’s one of the things about our service of baptism today.   Why bring Zach or anyone for that matter to be baptised.  It is because we want them to take into their lives some of those values around love and service of others that are at the heart of the teaching of Jesus.

To take those Christian values that really can make a difference in our lives, in our homes and in our world at large.

But even more than that.  There is in this service a wonderful celebration of the reality of God’s love.  It is as real as the water we pour over Zach.  We cannot see that love.  But it is real.  There is a strength there in God’s presence that is all-powerful.  Our hope is that as Zach grows older – as he comes to see the nasty things there are in the world, he will also be able to see that love of God in front of him, behind him, to one side of him, to the other side of him.   For it is a love that will encircle and uphold him.

Amy Carmichael finishes quoting Jesus and his final parting words to his closest friends, “All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth, … and lo, I am with you always – All the day and all the day long.

Is not this the Carpenter?