Sunday, 9 May 2021

SERMON 159 - SUNDAY 9 MAY 2021

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

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