PS: changing the world, one interaction at a time

The beautiful vision of the clean garments for the priest (it’s all about shame) that we looked at yesterday doesn’t end there. It ends with a postscript. This is not the end of the story. A time is coming when this forgiveness and cleansing and taking away of shame will be available to all people everywhere.

‘Listen, High Priest Joshua, you and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch. See, the stone I have set in front of Joshua! There are seven eyes on that one stone, and I will engrave an inscription on it,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.

In that day each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig-tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.  Zechariah 3:8-10

‘Joshua’ is the Hebrew for Jesus. It means ‘God rescues’. He’s done if before for these people; He’s doing it now and He’ll do it again. It’s what God does.

God is sending His servant. Jesus may be God’s son, but He will do everything that the Father asks of him. In the face of betrayal, suffering and death, he asks –

Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done. Luke 22:42

He is the son of God and yet he will come to serve the people he encounters. He will provide and protect; heal and rescue; bring reconciliation – just as his father has been doing since the beginning of time.

God calls this coming servant the Branch. Where God Himself is the tree, Jesus will be the branch, growing out from the tree, rooted in the tree, dependent on the tree for nourishment and nurture. He’ll be a branch from King David’s family tree too, a descendant of King David. That’s important, too.

God describes the coming Jesus as a stone, a precious stone with many facets that face in all directions. Jesus will be reaching out to all people everywhere with his message of love, healing and forgiveness. This message will no longer be exclusively for the Jewish people.

‘And I will remove the sin of this land in a single day.’

Surely this refers to the day on which Jesus dies, that day on which God demonstrated once and for all His love and forgiveness and graphically showed all people everywhere the way back to Him. Whatever you’ve done, wherever you were born, whatever your gender or ethnicity or sexuality or IQ, this is for you.

So why are Joshua and those gathered together told this? What will be expected of them on that day? Are they needing to prepare a strategy to disseminate this information, spread this good news, ‘convert’ the world?

No. It’s much more simple than that.

‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbour to sit under your vine and fig-tree.’

Simple and yet incredibly hard.

It involves inviting your neighbour onto your property.

It involves sharing with your neighbour that which is yours.

It involves recognising need in your neighbour and meeting it.

It’s about spending time getting to know your neighbour.

It’s about showing compassion and kindness and generosity to your neighbour.

When? In that day. Well, that day has come. This is how we are instructed to live and to share the good news.

Not just by inviting people around us to events at church but by inviting them into our homes.

It’s not just about strategies and coffee mornings and mission, it’s about sharing what we have, all that we have earned and we consider rightfully ours.

It’s not about time spent in meetings, on committees, writing emails, but about actually taking the time to chat and listen and get to know people.

Not just preaching at people, telling them what they’re doing wrong, but connecting with them in compassion and kindness.

And all of this is about reaching out to your neighbour. We (I!) qualify this and make it about everyone I meet in my daily life and it is about that, but it is first and foremost about your neighbour. The people who live either side of you. That’s how this good news should be spreading – out from each one of us like a ripple effect.

A lot of the time, we make this reaching out far less personal. We prefer events at church and committees and preaching at people to actually getting to know them and allowing them to get to know us. Which can feel very scary. As can opening our homes. As can sharing what is ours.

This begins at home. It really does. It begins with one person connecting in a real way with one other person. It begins with becoming a servant to our neighbour, to everyone we meet in our daily lives.

This is how we will change the world, one interaction at a time.