SERMON 160 - SUNDAY 16 MAY 2021

Sermon at St. Mary’s Church, West Dean, Morning Worship - Sunday 16^th May 2021

Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19

Thank you again for your very warm welcome back here at West Dean again this morning.  It has seemed very strange to have been away for so long but like so many of you, Liz and I have been anxious to ensure that we remain well and take no unnecessary risks during this pandemic.  Last week we both received our second vaccinations and I must admit to feeling much more relaxed now.  It has been wonderful to see so many of you join our online services over the last few months but we hope that we can now return to some further semblance of normality as we move forward through 2021 and return to sharing worship together in person more regularly.  I thank God for so far having come through this pandemic safe and I continue to pray for you and your families likewise.

For me, the Book of Acts is one of the greatest in the whole of the Bible.  Written by Luke, the author of one of the Gospels, it continues the story of Jesus and the works of those who followed afterwards – the Apostles – and their story carries on to be our story today as modern apostles – followers of Christ.  The way in which those original followers acted is, for me, a great source of inspiration as to how we are expected to behave today.  Each of these three readings this morning – Acts, the First Epistle or Letter of John and our Gospel Reading from John – remind us how we should behave in our relationship with God and also with each; particularly as Jesus may no longer be with us here in physical form but the Holy Spirit was left to help and guide us to continue his great work.

So what is going on in our first reading this morning – from Acts. Well the context is well explained, I think, in the reading itself. Following the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, and his subsequent suicide, the disciples are one down in number. So what! you may ask? What was the significance of needing to have twelve?  Tom Wright, that well known biblical scholar, suggests that it was because Jesus had chosen just twelve disciples as being symbolic of the twelve tribes of Israel.  The prophets of the Old Testament had foretold that Israel would be regathered and most of the tribes had simply disappeared after the division of the Kingdom of Israel and the great Exile of Babylon. Therefore, having twelve disciples was important on biblical grounds.  I am not sure that I agree with Tom Wright on this – certainly later on apostles were not replaced as several unpleasant things happened to them, but what is significant is that the manner in which Matthias was chosen is something we can learn today. The eleven prayed! – “Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in his ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside…” As we look to appoint a new Team Vicar and new Team Administrator there can be no better way to make the correct choice than to pray about it.  Here we have the perfect biblical precedent. So, I ask that you continually prayer for God’s chosen to be appointed to those important posts.

In our second reading the apostle John, in his epistle, reminds us that having belief is not simply about paying lip service – just relying, as he puts it, on human testimony – it’s about having a real belief in Jesus as the Son of God, a belief that Christ is the incarnation of God on Earth; an existential belief. As we saw last week, the most important aspect of being a Christian is this fundamental belief – not simply to believe in God the Father, the Creator of all Things etc. etc. but also, as we say in the Creed, in the Son and his death and resurrection being the creation of eternal life for us all who genuinely and honestly believe. There can be no compromise on this belief, it’s a non-negotiable for a Christian. John puts it even stronger “Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. Whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Wow, how powerful is that!

Jesus does not require us to go out on a limb though – going it alone. In our final Gospel reading he connects with his disciples, realising that as he ascends to heaven he is leaving his work for them to continue.  His disciples were very much “of the world” – fishermen, tax collectors, businessmen and so on. Until called they were very much in and of this world scratching a living from their respective professions and indeed, in the case of Matthew, not very honestly at that! Jesus, though, acknowledges that at all times they belonged to his Father – just as each and every one of us does, whatever our original status or integrity - and that they were given to him by his Father to assist him in his earthly ministry and beyond. Jesus acknowledges that they have been transformed – that now they believe and understand why Christ came and that there continues to be work to be done.

Jesus asks that his Father protects them as he leaves them on their own to carry on his ministry. “They are yours, You gave them to me”, he prays, “now I give them back to you into your safekeeping as I leave to join you in Heaven”. He realises that their ministry will not be easy – and as we know many suffered dreadful fates for their faith – that they will be hated and despised – just as Christ was. Their situation is that, unlike Jesus, the disciples/apostles whilst no longer being “of this world” remain “in this world” – a concept we looked at a few weeks ago.  They need protecting just as Jesus needed his Father’s protection until it was time for the ultimate sacrifice to be made.

So what does this mean for us, his modern disciples? Well, we are currently in that strange period in the Church’s calendar between Ascension and Pentecost. During that period we have “Thy Kingdom Come” reflection time to think about what all this means.  After they said farewell to Jesus at the Ascension the disciples were told to go back home and stay inside until the Holy Spirit came. It must have seemed a strange state of affairs for them.  We recently have experienced something similar – “go, stay at home until the vaccination appears”! We now know what it is like to be under a sort of house arrest – hoping and praying for better times.  The disciples were not sure quite what to expect or how it would end. They needed to rely substantially on their Faith and the words of prayer spoken by Christ on their behalf.  First of all they had seen their leader, their rabbi, tortured and executed, then resurrected and now whisked off to Heaven. They must have felt lost and lonely.

But the story doesn’t end there – not for them and certainly not for us. In a few weeks we shall celebrate Pentecost – the day that the Holy Spirit entered the lives of those self-same disciples.  The promise God made to protect and sanctify them arrived and today that promise still exists. The Holy Spirit is there available, free of charge and delivery without the need of Amazon, for all who want it and truly believe in its power. Many people believe that the Holy Spirit and miracles belong in the pages of the Bible – historical or fictional stories.  Not so!  I have seen the workings of the Holy Spirit myself and I am sure many of you too have.  Sometimes we may not recognise it at the time but then, just like when we look at a painting on the wall from a bit of a distance, it becomes clear and obvious.

Just like those early apostles whom Jesus describes as being in the world but not of it, we too should emulate that. We live and work in the world, we interact with people in the world but because of our faith as Christians, our belief in Jesus as the Son of God and not just a good man or prophet, we too are not of the world but ministers of God’s heavenly world here on earth.

Let us end with the famous quote of St. Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, yours are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

 

Amen                                                                                                 MFB/160/14052021

SERMON 159 - SUNDAY 9 MAY 2021

Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Farley, Morning Worship -  –  Sunday 9^th May 2021

Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

Thank you again for your very warm welcome back here at Farley again this morning.  It has seemed very strange to have been away for so long but like so many of you, Liz and I have been anxious to ensure that we remain well and take no unnecessary risks.  On Tuesday I received my second vaccination and I must admit to feeling much more relaxed.  It has been wonderful to see so many of you join our online services over the last few months but we hope that we can now return to some further semblance of normality as we move forward through 2021 and return to sharing worship together in person more regularly.  I thank God for so far having come through this pandemic safe and I continue to pray for you and your families likewise.

For me, the Book of Acts is one of the greatest in the whole of the Bible.  Written by Luke, the author of one of the Gospels, it continues the story of Jesus and the works of those who followed afterwards – the Apostles – and their story carries on to be our story today as modern apostles – followers of Christ.  The way those original followers acted is, for me, a great source of inspiration as to how we are expected to behave today.  Each of these three readings this morning – Acts, the First Epistle or Letter of John and our Gospel Reading from John – remind us how we should behave in our relationship with God and with also with each.

Whenever we read scripture we should always ask ourselves two questions – first, what is the context of the passage? What is going on? Why?  It has been said that knowing the context is so important because if you take the “text” out of “context” all you are left is with a “con”.  So we will first look at each piece of scripture this morning and see it in its context.  Then we need to ask ourselves a second question. What meaning does it have for us today? 

Looking first at Acts, the context is that Peter, that wonderfully impulsive disciple upon whom Jesus was to build his church, had been on a preaching tour. Earlier he had met with a Roman army officer, Cornelius, in the city of Caesarea which was an important outpost of the Roman Empire, and converted him to Christianity.  Inspired by this and encouraged by Cornelius he had then gone on to spread the Gospel amongst the Gentiles – non-Jews in the area. His preaching was principally about Jesus as the Messiah having been prophesised about in the Old Testament and the importance that the forgiveness of sins was no longer simply a matter of asking the Jewish High Priests to make sacrifices in the Temple.  The ultimate sacrifice had been made on the Cross and everybody was now free to intercede with God through the resurrected Christ.

It is clear that he had drawn a large crowd around him, both his own Jewish followers as well as many non-Jews.  At this time, his Jewish followers – the “circumcised” as they are called in our passage – thought the message of Jesus was for them alone and not for the non-Jews as well.  This is why they suddenly became amazed when they realised that the Holy Spirit had also descended on the Gentiles evidenced by the fact that they started talking in other languages and praising God – not some other Gentile God but their very own  Jewish God!    The Gentiles were then baptised just as the whole household of Cornelius had been baptised – accepting the Christian Faith and the God of the Jews for themselves.

This is an amazing passage because it reminds us that nobody, absolutely nobody, is excluded from seeking and receiving the free gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Christianity is an inclusive and not an exclusive faith and that is something we must all remember and keep at the forefront of our thoughts – Jesus came into the world for everybody irrespective or race, creed, colour or sex or indeed whether they were pure or sinners.  Even today we hear of hardened criminals being converted to Christianity in prison and going on to become evangelists themselves not to mention the thousands of Muslims in Africa who are hearing the word of the Gospel and converting.

In our second reading this theme is continued. The three epistles of John, are called “letters” although they are not written, as Paul’s are, in the style of a letter and they are assumed to be John’s work because of the similar style to that of his gospel writing. 1 John appears to have been written essentially to combat some early form of Gnosticism from former church members who now thought themselves possessing superior knowledge of God beyond that of the  traditional Jewish view of God and the world. John in the passage read this morning is emphasising again that EVERYONE, yes EVERYONE who believes that Jesus was Christ, the Messiah has been blessed with this knowledge and that to love one another is to share God’s nature and to be absolutely certain of it. It does not require intense theological study or some special rank or academic award to know God.  Nobody is excluded from God’s love who truly believes.  There is no special knowledge required to be saved other than a certain faith in Jesus as our saviour.

Finally we have Jesus’s own words in John’s Gospel reading. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”; and of course his commandments are to love God and to love one another as he has loved us.

For me, this is one of the most important statements made by Jesus whilst with us on Earth; having a complete and sacrificial love for God and our fellow humans.  Jesus, as we know, went through an agonising time in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to his father that the time of trial could be put aside and that he would not have to sacrifice his life in such a gruesome manner. That is why he says “No greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Jesus went a stage further, he laid it down not just for those who were friendly towards him but also those who hated him too.

Jesus ends his speech to his disciples in this passage by saying “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name”.   

Whether we like the idea or not, we are all here as practising Christians because we were chosen – called. A calling to ministry does not necessarily mean a calling to authorised ministry, to be collared, but a calling to carry out those commandments laid down by Christ. Your ministry may take many varying forms - all equally important in the eyes of God; but it does require us to discharge it for him and for the world he created, not just for ourselves.  A good start is to remember the events described in our Acts reading.  Because we go to church and worship God does not necessarily mean that we are in any way special or different from any one else that God created.  That is verging on the heresy of Gnosticism which John was trying to combat in his epistle. Anyone can benefit from the love of God and his gifts of the Holy Spirit.  We are the conduit through which people of little or no faith can find it – through our varying ministries - be they encouragement, teaching, pastoral care, friendship, listening, our good behaviour, kindness and so on. If others see us loving one another in our Christian communities and also those without them, whatever their current beliefs, race, creed, colour or sex, then we are truly the modern day apostles of Christ – going out into the world to spread the good news of Christ.

It’s an enormous responsibility and when I see so much racism, hatred of those different from others and fear of others unlike ourselves these passages read out today hold a greater and more powerful influence on our Christian values than I can ever remember.

As Jesus said to his disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospels – we are meant to go out into the world and spread the good news but first of all we must love God and love each other before anything else.  Then we are truly his disciples.

 

Amen                                                                                                 MFB/159/05052021

SERMON 158 - SUNDAY 2 MAY 2021

 

Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish, Morning Worship -  –  Sunday 2nd May 2021

Acts 8:28-40

Thank you again for your very warm welcome back here at Whiteparish again this morning.  It has seemed very strange to have been away for so long but like so many of you, Liz and I have been anxious to ensure that we remain well and take no unnecessary risks.  On Tuesday I am, hopefully, receiving my second vaccination and then we can feel much more relaxed.  It has been wonderful to see so many of you join our online services but we hope that we can now return to some further semblance of normality as we move forward through 2021 and share worship together in person.

We had two readings this morning.  I think our Gospel reading is probably more familiar to most of us – and I know I have preached on it quite a few times – I rather like vines and their products – fermented grapes – nothing quite beats a good Claret – but this morning I have decided to concentrate on our other reading from Acts which I have always found quite inspirational for quite a few reasons which I’ll explain as we go on.  So let’s first look at the passage again and for this I am going to use the assistance of “The Message” – the paraphrased version of the bible by Eugene Peterson to see it in its context.

Well, first of all, who was this eunuch and whom did he serve?  We are told that he was in the service of Queen Candace of Ethiopia but there are no historical records of such a person reigning with that name.  The name Candace is actually Kandake and means the mother of the king of Nubia – in other words, she was the “The Queen Mother”. Nubia was a kingdom to the south of Aswan on the Nile. The term “eunuch” could have meant “trusted servant” and he probably had been emasculated meaning he would have been barred from the inner courts of the Temple at Jerusalem.  In fact why the eunuch was in Jerusalem in the first place worshipping there is another mystery but the implication seems to be that he was a Gentile who, nevertheless, worshipped Israel’s God but had not become a fully converted Jew. His reading of Isaiah might be quite significant too as in his writings Isaiah held out the promise that God would grant devout eunuchs heritage “better than sons and daughters (Isaiah 56:3-5) and he may have thought by worshipping the Jewish God he could be made whole.

The importance to us as Christians today, though, is the working of the Holy Spirit upon Philip – bringing together the ministry of the word and the ministry of the Holy Spirit – both leading to the third type of ministry – the ministry of the sacrament with ultimate baptism of the eunuch.

We read that Philip received a heavenly message from God telling him to take himself along the road from Jerusalem to Gaza – the main road anyone taking themselves south from Jerusalem to Egypt and the Nile would have to take across the desert. Obediently Philip does just this not knowing why he is being told to go into the wilderness.  It might have seemed a strange request but as we read it was with a specific reason – to meet up with the eunuch on his travels back to Nubia.

I wonder, have you ever had the experience of Philip?  Have you ever been diverted from where you are or what you are doing in order to tell somebody the Good News?  When I read this passage again it reminded me of an event which occurred only this week.  I took my first ride on a bus into Salisbury last Monday to attend a medical appointment at the medical centre on Fountains Way. I nearly got off outside Marks and Spencer but decided to stay on to Blue Boar Row outside Debenhams instead.  I really don’t know why as I had originally intended to walk up Fisherton Street from the corner of Barclays Bank. My change of plan meant that I would now walk by the library and past the Big Issue seller.  He started to engage me in conversation and having established he obtained his copies of the Big Issue from Alabare Place where I am the chaplain he was anxious to tell me that he was a born again Christian. We ended up praying together for the recovery of the city of Salisbury from its passed problems – Novachoc and Covid and I also prayed for him and his ministry on the streets of the city. He went away, I believe, feeling that his life was worthwhile even if difficult.  That conversation would never have happened if I got off the bus where I originally intended.

I think Philip had a similar experience, and I believe we all can have the experience of the Holy Spirit compelling us to do something different for a purpose.  We should never ignore those feelings and messages otherwise we may miss out and are, effectively, disobeying the Spirit.

The next lesson we are taught from the eunuch’s story is the need to fully study scripture and understand it.  We can easily read our bibles, especially those passages which are so familiar to us – like the gospel reading today – but never really understand what they are saying to us in today’s modern world. The bible Society tells us that when we read the bible we should ask ourselves two questions – what did the passage mean in its original context?; what does this passage mean for my life today?  Understanding the passage in its original context is most important – especially as scripture is, at its youngest, still 2,000 years old. There is a wonderful adage which says if you take “text” out of “context” all you are left with is a “con”.  That is why we must first of all examine what is actually happening in our story, who the eunuch is, where is he from, what is his mission, what is he reading and why?  Then understand how and why Philip is placed in the situation he is.

We learn that the eunuch has been reading the passage from Isaiah which describes and prophesies about Jesus.  The eunuch, whilst understanding the words of the passage is confused as to whom the passage refers.  Philip is on hand to explain that it is about Jesus and is given the opportunity to spread the gospel to this Gentile.  He clearly does a good job as the eunuch immediately wants to be baptised and become a Christian.  What a wonderful piece of witnessing! Like my story about the Big Issue Seller, if Philip had not obeyed the call to witness he would never have met the eunuch.

We read that with Philip having done his ministry, he was then whisked away to do further witnessing all the way to the great port of Caesarea. I wasn’t whisked away after my meeting with the Big Issue Seller but I like to think that I can continue to spread the Good News to others I meet within my sphere of influence.

We don’t know what happened to the eunuch after that but assume he safely returned to the Queen Mother of Nubia and told her all he had experienced. What we do know today is that South Sudan and Ethiopia are very strong areas of Christianity in Africa with the wonderful rock churches of Lalibela, built after a later pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and that the roots of their Orthodox Christianity go back to the time of the Apostles. Perhaps it did indeed all start with our eunuch. The Great Cross of Lalibela (a small replica of which I have here) is said to have great healing powers and is the powerful draw for modern day pilgrims.

So what are we to learn from this piece of scripture for our everyday lives? Well, as said before, to learn to obey God’s call to ministry when we receive it, however we receive it; to read scripture carefully in context and call upon others to help us understand it if and when we struggle with it; and that the three types of ministry – Ministry of the Word, Ministry of the Spirit and Ministry of the Sacrament are all important to each other, that one is not more important than the other and that we need all three in order to be holistic, whole Christians.  Many disputes within and outside the church have majored on the differences and perceived conflicting importance but, like the Trinity, you need all of them - the Three in One.

This is what our eunuch received – the Holy Spirit sending Philip to him; an interpretation of the Holy Word with the help of Philip and finally his Baptism.

I say Amen to that!

 

Amen                                                                                  MFB/158/30042021