SERMON 44 - SUNDAY 27 JULY 2014

Sermon at St. Birinus’s Parish Church, Morgans Vale, Redlynch, Wiltshire – Sunday 27^th July 2014

Romans 8:26-39;  Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

It is good to be with you this morning here at Morgan’s Vale; my first time here leading and preaching.  I must confess to not knowing much about either this church or Saint Birinus before so I thought that I had better do a little research before coming here this morning.  Earlier this week I drove over here to find out where the church was and was greatly rewarded in also finding that you have a lovely pub which does nice meals – and Ringwood best bitter too - so that was my first revelation.  Secondly, I looked up St. Birinus on the Internet to find that he was a Frank (that is not a reference to your Rector mind!), who, having been commissioned in 634 by Pope Honorius I to come to Britain,  became the first Bishop of Dorchester (on Thames) and responsible for converting many Anglo-Saxons in Wessex to the Christian faith. He also became involved in converting the “heathen” of Northumbria and Mercia.  I was delighted to find out that he landed in this country at Hamwic, which is now better known as the St. Mary’s area of Southampton where the football ground is located - so I must acknowledge him to be truly a Saint!

Both of today’s readings emphasise the importance of living our Faith and the need to lead prayerful lives dedicated to following the teachings of Jesus about how we should conduct ourselves in the difficult and dangerous world around us.  Jesus’s various parables – the Mustard Tree, the Leaven Bread, the multiple and peculiar fish, the pearls, the hidden treasure and so on are all told to emphasise the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is actually here if we try to tune into it.  Yet how often do we do that?  Jesus says that this is how it will be at the end of the age.  Yet we are indeed at the end of that age – which was started when God sent his only son, Jesus, down to earth.  That was the first step in establishing the kingdom of heaven here on earth – not converting people so they go to heaven but preaching the gospel, the good news, so that we can see heaven here on earth now.  We as Jesus’s disciples are expected to continue that work. At each service we pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Not, I believe,  at some future time but here and now, today in this place. 

But what a task we have.  Not a day goes by in which we do not read or see in the media of “persecution, famine, nakedness and sword” as Paul writes it in his letter to the Romans – nothing, regrettably, has changed since his time.  Paul wasn’t in jail when he wrote this letter, although he had been there not too long before, and we know would be again. It must have looked to the outsider as though the rulers, the powers and everything else in creation were having their own way and that the purpose of God, entrusted to this little man Paul, had been stopped in its tracks. How often do we, as Christians, followers of Christ feel like that?  We are frustrated that as the world continues to spin on its axis in its orbit around the Sun - as it has done for millennia - wars , famine, greed, selfishness, disrespect, rudeness, ruthlessness, tyranny and so on continue to flourish on its surface.  In fact, with modern day advertising and so on we can continue to grasp for those other gods which we are told will make our life complete.  If only we had the next type of phone, that particular car, that particular house and dare I say it, that particular partner, everything would be so much better than it is at present.  Contentment, as Paul remarks in Philippians, does not require a vast amount of material wealth – contentment is based on a good relationship with God even if we have little else.

Today, unlike in Paul’s time, the advances made in communication technology means that we can so easily be seduced by those things which can separate us from God - so Paul’s words of advice ring true above all this today as much as they did when he wrote them in the first century.   We may not ourselves, here in this beautiful part of England suffer the slings and arrows of the types of persecution Paul speaks about but we must still guard against the subtler things which can seduce us away from God’s love.

Paul’s message, however must give us all the greatest of hope.  It is an optimistic message which he gives to the Church in Rome where they could see, at first hand, the terrible persecution of the Christians being carried out nearly every day.

He acknowledges that sometimes we can find it hard to pray when the pressures of life and, in the case of Paul’s examples, persecution and tyranny are all around us.  This is often brought about by our own human weaknesses.  I have to confess that there have been many occasions in the past where I have been involved in a prayer group and we have included ten minutes of silent prayer.  After the initial splurge of supplications – asking prayers - it slows down and I simply run out of things to pray for. I might even start praying for stupid things like a good ending to Coronation Street this week!  Sometimes I find that I have not taken any time out to pray at all.   Paul in this passage is giving comfort to people like me when we can’t think of things.  He says that if we have truly accepted Jesus into our lives he will intercede on our behalf – our belief will fill us with the Holy Spirit which will do our work for us – as he says “God, who searches the heart knows what is in the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints (that’s us, each and every one of us) according to God’s will. 

In other words, Paul’s theology of Justification by Faith (the washing away of sins by the simple but significant act of belief that Jesus Christ was sent down to earth and died for our sins) overrides everything and it was on the basis of this theology that the Reformation Movement was formed by Martin Luther in the 1500s.  Salvation by simply accepting and loving Jesus Christ as your Saviour and not repeated acts designed to bring about salvation. God knows what is truly in our hearts – as the psalmist puts it in Psalm 139 – “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely … such knowledge is wonderful to me”.

Paul goes on to ask – “If we God’s “Elect”, the “Saints” in the non-beatification sense of the word – the absolute believers in the risen Christ – can be justified by our faith then God, who gave his only Son will not withhold anything from us and we will be atoned for our sins. Not only that, if God does not condemn us then who else has the right to do so?  Again echoed by the writer of Hebrews – “the Lord is My Helper I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” (Heb. 13:6)

Paul describes us as conquerors – and that no power on earth can destroy us – yet repeatedly we can feel destroyed.   - Maybe that job didn’t materialise, that relationship broke down, that person we prayed for didn’t recover their health.  That doesn’t mean that we are poor Christians, that doesn’t mean that we as Christians should expect that nothing should ever go wrong for us – but it does mean that when those things do occur, if we stand steady in our Faith, God will nor desert us and will be with us through those difficult times.  He is always with us and he knows our needs and sufferings.

Paul ends this passage with a reminder that nothing can separate us from the love of God – not death, not life, not rulers, not angels, not powers, not anything in creation provided our love of God is founded in the belief of Jesus as Saviour.

I started this short sermon by a brief description of St. Birinus – a saint I knew very little about.  We have many saints recognised by the Catholic Church and memorialised by the Church of England – we hear of relics and burial places of those beatified saints and we talk about the “communion of saints” in the Creed we shall shortly be saying – meaning those who have gone before us.  But before I end this homily, do look at the person next to you – to the left and to the right – take a good hard look – smile too if you want to! - in truly accepting the Lord Jesus as Saviour and acting as a disciple in carrying out his teachings in the way you act, think and pray - you are looking at the face of a living saint.

 

 

Amen

 

 

MFB/44

SERMON 43 - SUNDAY 13 JULY 2014

Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead – Sunday 13^th July 2014

Genesis 25:19-end; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

The parable of the sower and its explanation are so very well known to all of us – I even recall hearing it all those years ago when I was a schoolboy in Morning Assembly.   Yet, although well known, it marks Jesus at his best in preaching the good news in simple terms - understandable by all – all it seems except the disciples who always seem to need to be taken aside for a further explanation.  It doesn’t matter how many times I might hear this parable, I can always relate some of my own Christian life to some of the seeds which don’t fall on the good fertile ground.  If they did, then I am not so sure I could fully appreciate the feelings and emotions of those for whom the seeds seem to most often to fall in the wrong place.

As we learn from all three of our readings today, each of us can easily fall foul of earthly temptations and desires if we allow ourselves to defocus our sight on God.  Whenever I go to the opticians, I am confronted with a myriad of lenses and tests which often show how easy it is for our vision to become blurred if we wear the wrong lenses.  The optician will deliberately place different lenses in front of our eyes to find out which ones we need to see clearly.  Likewise, it is so easy to wear the wrong lenses in our life and we should never forget that as Christians we need to focus through the cross-shaped lens of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.

In our first reading we read of how Esau, the first born of Isaac sold his birth-right for a pot of stew – he, in effect, disposed of his inheritance – for himself and his heirs  - in order to simply fill his belly with food.  In his letter to the Philippians, Paul warns, quite simply – (3:17) –            “Brothers and Sisters, join in imitating me and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.  For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.  Their end is destruction; their god is the belly and their glory is their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

And so, we are told by Christis the same fate for those who are like the seed that is choked by the weeds – by the trappings and distractions of our earthly desires.  Like weeds, our basic earthly desires can spring up very quickly indeed.  In this hot humid weather I am constantly amazed at how the weeds in my garden can appear almost overnight in substantial size and numbers whereas those plants which I am trying to nuture and care for seem to become choked and grow so slowly by comparison.  So it is with the word of the Lord.  We are meant to grow and nurture our faith but must, at all times, guard against those weeds of distraction which are always there waiting to spring up around us and choke us.  Esau lost the plot too, instead of stopping to think about the consequences of his action for himself and future generations he chose, instead, instant gratification – a full stomach.  How often are we tempted to do likewise – how often do the quick fixes, the quick and easy pleasures of life lead us to regret our actions further down the line.

Jesus spoke in parables because he was more easily able to illustrate his messages in ways in which the people to whom he was speaking would best understand and remember.  It is not a co-incidence, for example, that he would often start a story by talking about shepherds – it would be a bit like starting a parable here in England with the words “There was this Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman….” (“There was this shepherd …”) We expect a jokey punchline although in Jesus’s case the punchline was very often different from that which would have been expected.

Here he is using the idea of a farmer sowing seeds – an everyday occurrence in the Jordan Valley and he uses it to great advantage. 

Everyone would have known of the random way in which the scattered seeds from a peasant farmer might fall – on the path, on rocky ground, amongst the weeds as well as in the fertile ground - and the way in which those seeds would react to the environment they found themselves in – on the open path ready and vulnerable to be picked up by the birds, on the rocky ground – unable to put down proper roots - or fall among the weeds to become entangled and choked with only some eventually finding the fertile ground where they can grow and flourish and be harvested.

You will notice that there are eight verses missing from the Lectionary reading and these are quite important and probably a good lesson for anyone preaching or wanting to disseminate the word of Christ. 

Today’s service is a Service of the Word and I, as a lay minister, am a Minister of the Word. No sacraments at today’s service.  Jesus, as a teacher and a preacher on the road, was always conducting services of the word – gathering people around him to explain his message of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Those missing eight verses, I think, are so important.  I thought about inserting them in the gospel reading earlier but on reflection I think they are better recited on their own here:-

The disciples came to him and asked “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.  This is why I speak in parables:

Though seeing, they do not see;

Though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

You will be ever hearing but never understanding

You will be ever seeing but never perceiving

For this people’s heart has become calloused

They hardly hear with their ears

And they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes

Hear with their ears

Understand with their hearts

And turn, and I would heal them.

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.  For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it and hear what you hear but did not hear it”.

In other words, Jesus is telling the disciples that because they have been following him and have heard him speak and observed his miracles they have been privileged to see the fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah and therefore should have no need for an explanation of the meaning of Jesus’s preaching through parables.  They are deemed to be already learned theologians.  But there are many ordinary folk who have not been so taught and therefore in order to get across the message he must use common language and stories to which his listeners can relate and which can illustrate the message he needs to get across.

Some of the greatest theologians have advocated this approach.  Bonhoeffer, for example, that great German theologian who lost his life standing up to Hitler and the Nazi regime, argued that all priests should spend time working in secular roles to understand the lives and work of ordinary folk and in that way relate more fully with their congregations.  Likewise, I feel extremely privileged to be able to stand here before you this morning leading the worship and preaching to you as the minister; but I also feel equally privileged to be able to slip back into the congregation and everyday world as a lay person or in my chaplaincy role with the under-privileged.  I can preach the word of god equally powerfully whether in the pulpit or amongst the congregations or homeless.  

Jesus did not have the New Testament to preach from – his ministry was based on the Old Jewish Law, the prophesies and of course his own sermons and miracles.  Sacramental ministry did really occur until the night of his betrayal at the Last Supper.  The gospels record only 3 years of his ministry but for 30 years previously he must have been learning life skills and understanding secular ways – probably running his father’s business.

Despite Jesus’s statement that the disciples should fully understand the message he is trying to get across in his parable of the sower he, nevertheless, goes on to explain it in clear terms – the seed on the path represents those who hear the word but allow Satan to snatch it away from them.  The seed which falls on the rocky ground represents the person who receives the word with joy but since no root can grow it lasts for only a short time and as we have seen the seed falling among the weeds represents the person who allows everyday distractions and worries of life to choke their faith – making it unfruitful.   I think we can all think of people in each category, and maybe ourselves occasionally, although, hopefully, most of us hear do have eyes to see and ears to hear.  However, I often feel, in all sorts of different roles in life, we sometimes have to go back to the basics – and this is what Jesus does time and time again in his parables.

The gospel of Matthew is littered with them.  They take us back to some very basic but fundamental elements of our faith and because they relate to everyday things in everyday lives we can apply them to the way we speak, act and think in our daily lives today.

Jesus, in the next few verses of Matthew’s Gospel goes on to explain the parable of the weeds in greater depth.  How the weeds should be allowed to grow up with the good crop and the two harvested at the end – weeds to the fire the wheat to the barn.

I take heart in the fact that although Jesus explains to the disciples that they should already know the meaning of his parable, he does then go on to explain it to them. 

Many of us, as long term Christians, should never be afraid to say that there are aspects of our religion or theology we do not quite understand.  There are many blind spots in the bible which are difficult to follow and not all, like the parable have a clear explanation.  Adrian Plass has even written a book called Blind Spots of the Bible which I have used at House Groups.  Our faith can only grow if we question it from time to time – to ensure that we truly do understand the meaning of sometimes quite complex theology.  Jesus used plain simple words and there is nothing wrong with that.  Let us get back to basics, clear away the weeds, and plant our seed in good fertile ground – there to grew and flourish undisturbed by the distractions of our earthly life.

Amen

 

MFB/43

SERMON 42 - SUNDAY 6 JULY 2014

Sermon at All Saints Church, Whiteparish - Sunday 6 July 2014

Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

What a wonderful hymn our last one is – “Amazing Grace” – so well known and loved by so many – both in church and outside.  But of course, it has a darker origin and reminds us that we still live in a dark world where Satan’s influence can be so strong – and this is the message which comes across loud and clear to us in our two New Testament readings this morning.
 

I am a frequent visitor to the city of Liverpool, where I once lived and studied law, and I am always amazed at the immense number of churches (it has two cathedrals for a start) and other places of worship in the city, which has unfortunately, been stereotyped as a rather  lawless place.  Many of these churches were built by rich merchants and ship-owners seeking salvation for their souls by providing places of worship for the ordinary folk of the city; but historical research often reveals a much darker side to their characters.  I frequently still worship in one of these churches myself – a cavernous church called Christ Church in Toxteth Park which could easily seat 600 or more parishioners in its heyday.  Today, its congregation averages about 40 – 50. Its tall slender spire soars over what, at one time, was one of the wealthier areas of the city – inhabited by merchants and shipowners, shipwrights and chandlers.  Of its 600 seats though, only about 24 were reserved as “free” – for the poor of the parish.  The benefactor was a shipping tycoon himself who exploited the world’s resources and his crews to make a “fast guinea”.

John Newton, who wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace, was himself a native of Liverpool – also a very successful seafaring trader - sailing frequently from Liverpool Docks to the west coast of Africa then across the Atlantic to Antigua where he would unload his human cargo and take on board raw sugar to be refined by Tate & Lyle in their factory back on the banks of the Mersey. 

This regular trip was known as the Triangular Trade – the ship sailed empty to the Ivory Coast (or with cheap trinket bribes for those in Africa), took on board its human cargo of slaves, from there to be transported to the sugar cane plantations of the West Indies – to produce the sugar to be refined for the British tea table in Liverpool.   Newton made this terrible journey many times because it was so lucrative and it became the financial foundation upon which Liverpool grew to become, for a time, the second largest city in Great Britain.  But it was on one of these triangular trips that his ship was caught up in a terrible storm.  It was not unknown, then, for a captain to lighten the load of his ship in a storm by jettisoning his human cargo over the side.  However, on this occasion, he prayed fervently to God that if his ship, cargo and crew would be saved he would leave the slave trade and work towards its abolition.  That dark night was a turning point in Newton’s life.  He became an ardent abolitionist and a Methodist minister – and the hymn is a reflection upon his conversion - “salvation” coming to “a wretch like me”. The hymn is by far his greatest legacy but it is quite extraordinary how many people who sing it don’t realise its origin.  Salvation came to Newton, not by building big churches or preaching the gospel from the pulpit, but by the simple act of genuine repentance for the wrong he knew he was doing by selling people into a lifetime of slavery – all for personal profit and cheap sugar – and by giving his life to Christ.

In our reading from Paul’s letters to the Romans, Paul talks about another form of slavery – the slavery to sin.  His letter is addressed to the Christians of Rome and although, because of its length, it appears in the New Testament as the first of his letters it was, in all probability, one of his later ones – a letter setting out Paul’s life-long theology with its emphasis on the codes of moral conduct  expected of the followers of Christ.  
 

The book is as relevant to us today as when it was written in the 1^st Century.  David Suchet, better known perhaps as Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective in the TV series, was, a few years back, interviewed on Desert Island Discs by Sue Lawley who was intrigued by the strength of his Christian Faith and she asked him how he had become such an ardent follower of Christ. He responded by telling her that his faith had come about because somebody had sent him a letter to read.  Sue asked him about the letter and who had sent it and Suchet responded - “It was a letter which the apostle Paul sent to the Church in Rome”.  For Suchet, it encapsulated all that Christianity was about and brought about his complete conversion – over 1,900 years after it had been written.

In the passage read to us this morning, Paul is reminding us that whilst those of us who are Christians have been baptised into the Faith and have received the Holy Spirit, and we may have the Holy Spirit in our minds,  there can still lurk within all of us or close to us, evil which can influence us and make us do things which we don’t want to do and know are wrong.  He says that “If I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwells within me”.
 

We are all human, yes even us Christians, and whilst we may aim to be Christ-like we never can be completely like Jesus because none of us, I would suggest, is completely free of sin at any time. 

I am a great believer in spiritual warfare.  I have seen it happen on many many occasions when a person becomes close in their relationship with Christ.  Inevitably, Satan will turn up and try and destroy that closeness.  C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful work “The Screwtape Letters” illustrates this in the lessons which the Senior Devil, Screwtape, sends to his young apprentice, Wormwood, to help the younger Devil turn his “patient” away from his Christian faith.  It is interesting that, time and time again, Screwtape tells Wormwood not to try too hard – the patient himself is already doing such a wonderful job himself to achieve Wormwood’s task.  We can all be like the patient.  Screwtape tells Wormwood that he must work ever more diligently on those patients who have a strong faith because those are the people they most want to win over.

We often hear in sermons about the grace and love of the Trinitarian God – and that is wonderful.  That is a grace and love which we should try and emulate at all times – but it is not easy – for often we are not reminded of the way in which Satan can get to us and try and turn us away from our Christian values and prevent us from showing that grace. I know myself that when I have been through difficult times it can be so easy to try and work ourselves up and out of a situation instead of calling upon God to help us – for when we do leave it to God, some wonderful things can actually happen to turn round that difficult problem.  It is only by praying constantly and focussing on Jesus as our Saviour, the one sent to die on the cross for our sins, can we overcome the temptations and distractions which might lead us away.   As Screwtape instructs his apprentice,  preventing the patient from having time to pray is one way of disconnecting him from God.  As Paul says, “evil lies close at hand – who will rescue me?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
 

In our gospel reading we heard Jesus’s famous words of comfort spoken to the people and in particular addressed to the children and youngsters in the crowd – “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”.

Perhaps the most comforting words in the whole of the bible.  Jesus is saying – don’t keep struggling on trying to solve issues and carry burdens yourself.  You will simply burn out and there will be no rest for your soul.  Swap the burden with Jesus.  Be Christ-like – learn from him and the burden will be much lighter.  Remember, evil is always close by and you need to have Christ close by your side – the same Christ who fought off Satan’s temptations in the wilderness so effectively.  He is a past master at dealing with Satan.  Hand it over to him through prayer.

In recent months I have had to deal with some very difficult personal issues and I am still having  to weather a terrific storm which was not forecast.  Life can often throw up these storms and it can be tempting to throw our cargo, human or not, over the side in an attempt to save ourselves.  That cargo can be our faith and I have seen many lose their faith through a false idea that they can carry the burden themselves – that somehow they can weather the storm alone. 

Screwtape knows this in his instructions to let the patient destroy himself, to do the Devil’s work for him.  But just as John Newton did, we can hold on to our faithful cargo and call upon Jesus to give us rest from our struggle. It worked for Newton, it can work for you and for me.  If we seriously and reverently put our trust in God, we can weather any storm and can truly experience his “amazing  grace”.

Amen

SERMON 41 - SUNDAY 1 JUNE 2014

Sermon at All Saints Church, Whiteparish - Sunday 1 June 2014

Ezekiel 36:24-28; Acts 1:6-14; John 17:1-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable to you, O God.  Amen

The passage I’ve just read from John’s gospel is often termed “Jesus’s Priestly Prayer” and as you will have discerned, the first part of it is a prayer up to God the Father asking to be glorified. The glorification of Jesus is a constant theme of John’s throughout his gospel, and is a way of John explaining to his reader Jesus’s divinity – wholly man yet also wholly God and has been the subject of much debate by theologians and indeed has caused the martyrdom of many in previous centuries or executions for heresy. John is seeking to show that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ were tangible signs of his divinity and Jesus’s prayer is that both Jesus will be seen to be God and that God will be seen in Jesus.  John uses the term “the Word” and we can all recall the very first verses in John when he writes that the Word existed before creation – in other words the divinity of Jesus as God is beyond all doubt – echoing the first lines of Genesis itself – “In the beginning God…” no question about it  – perhaps the most unequivocal statement in the whole of the bible – “In the beginning God…” there was nothing before the creation other than God.  God has always existed and by his repeated style in his gospel, John re-affirms “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God”.  John is absolutely sure about this.  Jesus has always existed with his Father.

It was recently explained to me and other Christians rather like this – I think it was Nicky Gumbel as part of the Alpha Course – if we (humans) were God and we had created ants, then it is no good us trying to bring the good news to the ants about their creator from where we are – we simply cannot communicate this to them – being the enormous incomprehensible creatures that we are to them (the ants) – the way to do it would be for us to take the form of an ant and go down to their level and size and be like them and communicate with them – ant to ant – however ants communicate!  This is exactly what God did when he sent Jesus down to Earth to be with us. To be among us, to be fully human just as our “saviour ant” would have to be fully ant-like but still retaining the divinity which sent him.

John is writing his gospel many years after the events he records.  This particular passage this morning is taken from the time between the ending of the last supper and Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus knows what he has to do – suffer, die, be resurrected and then ascend back up to his Father.  Only then will his divinity, his glorification, as John puts it, be complete.  There can be no doubt, that by these actions, Jesus came from God and is returning to God.  The first two parts of the Trinity are clearly set out.

In Roman times, the times of Christ, the Roman Emperors were often declared to be Gods – usually after death but in the notable cases of Augustus and Caligula the declarations were made before.  In order to do this, just as the beatification of Saints by the Roman Catholic Church, there has to have been a miracle associated with them – so it was often the case that reports were made that the Emperor had been seen to ascend to be with the other gods. Jesus’s ascension, then, which we read about in our second reading from Acts, was another tangible sign given that Jesus had been glorified – made or declared divine.

In the second part of the passage/prayer, Jesus is specifically referring to his disciples whom he describes in his prayer as – “those which God had given him” – those who knew and know that Jesus is from God; that Jesus is God. Here we find the most exciting message of all – “All mine are yours and all yours are mine”.  In other words, those disciples – including future ones like ourselves – have been blessed with this wonderful knowledge that Jesus, is the true Messiah, the one sent from God for our salvation – the Mega Ant in our analogy!

The theologian Tom Wright puts it like this – and I cannot think of a clearer way of making this statement of our Faith – “To be a Christian is to be privy to this secret – to indeed have it engraved upon one’s life; because the other side of the secret is the Christian call to suffer.  The transformation of suffering is a further key part to an understanding of the ascension”.

In other words, we as Christians do not have a free pass to avoid suffering. Indeed, as we have seen in history and in our own lives, being a Christian will never prevent suffering from happening to us or the world about us – and Jesus suffered the most terrible trials and death before he ascended and was re-united with God the Father. In reality Christians in the world often suffer the most – not perhaps in our comfortable western world compared to the terrible suffering we see in the Sudan and Nigeria but nevertheless being true to our faith, spreading the gospel and being overt in our beliefs can often be difficult.  At this very moment a woman is facing the death penalty for her Christian Faith – marrying a Christian man.  Such trials, we have been told by Jesus himself, will face us as Christians.

 – but, as Jesus told those original disciples before he left them – “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you, always, to the very end of the age”. This is what is known as “The Great Commission”.  These words once more affirm what Jesus was saying to his disciples after the Last Supper.  But here we see Jesus refer to the third part of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit – and we now find ourselves, in the Church Calendar, in that strange period – and it must have been extremely strange for those first disciples -  between the Ascension – when Jesus physically left this Earth - and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  We are, in effect, in another shorter Advent period. 

Our New Testament reading from Acts is one which is very familiar to us all – the description of Jesus’s ascension and those immortal words from the angels “He will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven”.

These words have been the subject of much debate amongst theologians – does this refer to the second coming or something else? – Perhaps the arrival of the third part of the Trinity – the Holy Spirit.  What we do know is that the disciples must have felt totally alone clinging on to the hope that he would return soon.  Certainly the apostle John fully expected him to return during his lifetime.

In fact the disciples didn’t have to wait too long before Pentecost when they were filled with the Holy Spirit as promised – the third part of the Trinity which makes up the one true and living God.  It is the Holy Spirit which is with us now and which each and every one of us must accept and welcome into our lives to be true followers of Christ. To have Christ with us and in us at all times.

I particularly love that hymn, “There is a Redeemer “with its wonderful refrain:

Thank you now our Father

For giving us your Son

And leaving your Spirit with us

‘Til the work on Earth be done

And so we find ourselves in a mini Advent.  Waiting for the Holy Spirit to come amongst us at Pentecost – to refresh us, to top us up with that glorification which John spoke of.

When the veil of the Temple was torn at the time of Christ’s death on the Cross, direct access to God was granted to all believers.

Recently I preached at the Winterslow Methodist Church where I was introduced as a local lay minister.  I explained that my actual title was Licensed Lay Minister – a real mouthful I know. But I pointed out to the congregation, as I now point out you now, that the title local lay minister is an appropriate one for every one of us.  Being filled with the Holy Spirit we are tasked with spreading the good news to everyone we meet in our daily local lives.  We are all local lay ministers – each and every one of us who has, in Jesus’s words as recorded by John “been given by God”.  Let us go out in the Spirit to preach and teach the word.

Let us pray:

Come Holy Spirit

Fill the hearts of your people

Kindle in us a fire of your love

Renew the face of your creation, Lord

Pouring on us the gifts of your Spirit

Kindle in us a fire of your love

 

Amen

 

     

 

SERMON 40 - SUNDAY 18 MAY 2014

Sermon at Winterslow Methodist Church,  - Sunday 18 May 2014

Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable to you, O God.  Amen

When I was at Secondary School, so many many years ago now, I had a passion for geology and acquired, over a period of time, a massive collection of rocks, stones and precious stones.  Unfortunately, that collection has long since disappeared.  The specimens were carefully labelled and placed in the trays of matchboxes stuck together on a sheet of cardboard.  It never ceased to amaze me how rocks and stones could be so varied and how the geologist and palaeontologist could tell so much about our Earth’s ancient history from a simple examination of rock strata, minerals and fossils.  A fascinating topic which captivated me in my early days.  With the passage of time and erosion, jagged rocks can be smoothed to boulders or pebbles or stones.  They can be used as aggregate in building materials, as building blocks themselves or, as we see in our reading from Acts, as instruments of death and destruction.

Stephen, in our reading in Acts became the first recorded Christian martyr and like Christ called upon God to forgive his persecutors one of whom, we read, was Saul (later Paul). The passage we heard read comes at the very end of a long sermon preached by Stephen to the High Priest and Elders in Jerusalem. Stephen had, up until this point not appeared to be an accomplished preacher but a church administrator - which only goes to show that God can often call any one of us to do something which we feel unprepared for. It is God who prepares us, not we ourselves. In that sermon Stephen points out that the long history of the Jewish faith, as taught in the synagogues, culminated in the coming of Jesus and that the Jews in fact killed their long awaited Messiah and betrayed their own faith by not keeping their own laws.  It is no wonder that he enraged the authorities so much that they felt compelled to execute him by stoning - stones being used as a mode of death and destruction and not for building. Yet, as we read in the scripture from 1 Peter, the very essence of Christ’s church is built upon the living stones of its people and it is this I want to explore in a bit more detail.

Simon Peter, more than any disciple, knew of the importance of the rock/stone analogy.  After all, had his name not been changed by Jesus from Simon the Fisherman to Peter the Disciple to signify the constructive use of rocks? Peter or Petra or Petrus means rock or stone from which we get the word petrify – to turn into stone. It was Peter who when asked by Jesus whom did people think Jesus was who replied “You are the Christ, the son of the living God” .  Peter was then told by Jesus “You are Peter, on this rock I will build my church”.  This must have resonated with Peter all down the years, and he must have deeply regretted his denial of Jesus that morning in the courtyard of the High Priest on Good Friday. He probably even remembered Jesus’s parable about building a house on the rock and not the sand.  Peter must have felt really bad that night when he collapsed just like the house built on sand. But here, many years later, in his first epistle, Peter picks up on this theme again by quoting from Isaiah (28.16) and the Psalms (118.22) when he writes:

“See I am laying in Zion a stone,

a cornerstone chosen and precious;

and whoever believes in him

will not be put to shame”

In other words, Isaiah all those years ago prophesied that the Messiah would be the cornerstone upon which our belief would be based. But, but for those who do not believe in him:

“The stone that the builders rejected

has become the very head of the corner and a stone that makes them stumble and a rock that makes them fall”

In other words, that self-same stone, Jesus Christ, if not believed to be the cornerstone as prophesied will make those unbelievers fall. 

Peter is saying, quite simply, that those elders, scribes and upholders of the law and preachers of the Old Testament have rejected those same teachings from Isaiah and Psalms and not recognised that Jesus is the cornerstone.

Traditionally, every building project, after digging the foundations, begins with the laying of the cornerstone – usually in the north-east corner of the project building.  You often see these cornerstones bearing inscriptions on buildings especially constructed in the Victorian era. There are two famous hymns which take up this theme:

“Christ is our cornerstone

On Him alone we build”

and

“Christ is made the sure foundation,

Christ the head the cornerstone”

The cornerstone marks out the structure and it is from this stone that the remaining building is constructed.  But Peter goes on in his epistle to say more – whilst Jesus might be the cornerstone a building requires further stones to complete the whole. Here Peter describes not Jesus, but you and me – as the living stones which complete the living church.

Peter is describing the church – the community of Christians, as God intends it to be.  In other words this is what God wants you to know how he thinks of his church – a community of believers in the cornerstone who themselves comprise the living stones making up the rest of the church.  Peter is saying – God has built a building and it is as a church on one people.  Look, see how great your calling is – you as individual stones in the wall of the church are still individual and unique yet you belong together.

As the church developed in the first centuries after Christ, the stones often fragmented.

If you go up to Old Sarum you can see the footfall of the old cathedral which is marked by some of the remaining infilled stones and mortar. When Bishop Roger Poore built the new cathedral much of the material was taken down from Old Sarum, and in particular from the old cathedral, to build, not the new cathedral, but the wall around the Close.  If you take a walk around the outside of the Close following the wall you will find, inlaid in the wall, pieces of the old cathedral, part of a pinnacle here, a gargoyle there, a headstone and so on.

As Christianity developed after the First Century AD so denominations sprung up until today there are literally hundreds of different denominations of Christianity.  Even in Winterslow we have four distinct churches with different theologies. Sometimes the living stones detach themselves from the church they attend and go and try to fit themselves into another church’s wall.  Then after a while, they move on to find another wall or maybe even start their own new living wall with others. But Peter is saying, God’s church is for all – this is not your church; but my church.  My stone was rejected by many but it was my stone.  I am the one who builds the church – its not about you and it’s not about me – it’s about Jesus. The church is the bride of Jesus.

Archbishop Temple is credited with having said that the church is the only organisation which exists primarily for those who exist outside it. In other words, it is most un-Christian like to make the church our own members’ club. Each and every one of is part of it for the service of others.  And that means a sense of togetherness.

Archbishop Tutu talks about the South African human spirit of Ubuntu – which can be summarised as meaning “a person is only a person through other persons” and it is this spirit which keeps communities together within African villages.  What is one person’s problem is a problem for all the community.  I think this, more than anything, captures the essence of Peter’s thoughts of the church members being living stones. 

Peter goes on to say that as living stones we are constructed into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.

When the Temple veil was rent in two at the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross so was the barrier destroyed between us, the ordinary believer and God.  We now had direct access to God for the redemption of our sins.  This passage in Peter has been another stone – the stone upon which the Reformation movement of Luther and Calvin was based and followed by more recent theologians such as Bonhoeffer. Note, we are a Royal Priesthood, denoting a power from God himself which, of course, flew in the face of the idea of priestly ontology – the special position of priests.  I am a firm believer that in this piece of scripture, Peter is liberating us from the restraints of ritual and the special position which the priests of Jerusalem held.  That is not to say that we should ignore clergy!  But it is my belief that clergy are, like any other ministers, functional in their occupation.

In the same way, all living stones within the wider church, all its members in all its denominations are themselves ministers – responsible for the pastoral care of each other and those outside. 

We are all a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.  God’s own people called to proclaim God’s mighty acts to evangelise how we were called from darkness into light.  To shine as beacon in the darkest places – to illuminate the world with God’s love and grace. 

Like lighthouses warning of danger and showing the way, we need to be built on the solid rock which is Jesus’s church as understood by Peter and to shine with a bright light into the gloom of our evermore secular and materialistic world where “me” and “I” are often the main considerations.  In the spirit of living stones in the church’s wall, in the spirit of Desmond Tutu’s Ubuntu, let us all act together, in thought word and deed as God’s royal priesthood and proclaim the good news that is Christ Jesus our Lord to all we meet.

Let us pray:

Almighty God,  as the living stones of your church

The royal priesthood of all believers

We ask you to show us today

How we can work together with others

In proclaiming you gospel in the ways we act, speak and think.

When so much time and energy  is given over by many to personal ambitions and desires

Let us be the lighthouses, built on the strong rock of Jesus’s church

Which show the way and warn of the dangers of selfishness, pride and greed.

Through Jesus Christ your only son and saviour

Amen

 

SERMON 39 - SUNDAY 23 MARCH 2014

Sermon at St. Lawrence’s Church, Stratford-sub-Castle – Sunday 23 March 2014

Exodus 17 (1-7); John 4 (5-42)

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be always acceptable to you, O God.  Amen

It is lovely to be with you all this morning and thank you Tessa for letting me have the opportunity to come and preach here in this lovely church.  I had a chance to meet with some of your last week at Joyce and Peter’s re-dedication of their marriage vows (what a wonderful service that was) and again on Wednesday at the Portway, coffee morning.  I hope we’ll have another opportunity for a chat after the service today.

After all the rain and flooding which we have been having during these first weeks of the year, I really hoped that I wouldn’t have to preach on water – something like Noah’s flood would have just been too much! - but it seems that God has chosen the next best thing today – two readings – one from the Old Testament and one from the New about living water.  As we have seen, over the past couple of  months, although water can give life it can also be very destructive too.  However in both of our readings we hear about the way in which water, both actual and allegorical, can save us – body and soul.

Before we look more deeply into the readings, I have to tell you that I can never hear this morning’s Gospel passage without a smile crossing my face as I recall a very humorous incident which I am told is true – I’ll let you be the judge as to whether or not that is so.  The story goes that a young Christian couple, who were organising their own wedding asked a friend, a non-Christian cake decorator, for an inscription to be iced on their cake.  After much searching in the bible they decided upon 1 John 4:18 which reads “There is no fear in Love”.  Somehow, the instructions to the decorator got mis-written down as not 1 John 4:18 but John 4:18 (what we have in fact had read to us today) and the icer, although slightly bemused and assuming there must be some completely incomprehensible (to her) theological reason for so wanting this piece of scripture inscribed “You have had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband” – the cake’s inscription could not have been more wrong!

In fact, today’s reading in John could not be more wrong either.  As Tom Wright describes in his commentary on John, this very long conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman appears to be  all wrong.

First, as a Jew, Jesus should not have been engaging with a Samaritan in the first place – the animosity between the two was worse than that which exists between Portsmouth and Southampton football fans.  In fact, it was well known in those days that Samaritans would ambush pilgrims on their way from Galilee to Jerusalem (as Jesus and his disciples were doing now) and so many Jews (as Jesus did on his final journey before Holy Week) would travel down the Jordan Valley and then up to Jerusalem via Jericho.   For some reason, on this occasion of his encounter with the Samaritan woman, he chose to go right through “bandit country”. 

Secondly, it would be an unacceptable practice for any Jew to approach and talk to a strange woman on her own, particularly a Samaritan woman and

Thirdly, it would appear that because the woman had had five marriages which had all broken up – we assume through divorce – and she was now co-habiting with a sixth man to whom she was not married – she was being shunned by her own kind as nobody would have gone to the well at the middle of the day when the sun was at its peak – except a woman who didn’t want to meet anyone through shame and, of course Jesus. Perhaps I should add mad dogs and Englishmen too!

So, we can assume that in speaking to this woman, Jesus was breaking so many conventions and doing so deliberately.  What he was doing was just plain wrong!

The conversation which ensued reminds me a bit of the sketch with the two Ronnies when the character played by Ronnie Corbett enters the hardware shop of Ronnie Barker asking for four candles/fork handles?  Here we have living water/running water?

Jesus first of all asks the woman to give him some water. She simply cannot understand why on earth he is asking her for this.  He is a Jew, she is a Samaritan – a Jew would never accept anything from a Samaritan – in fact the disciples have gone off to another, presumably non-Samaritan, village to purchase food as they could never accept any from a Samaritan – yet here is Jesus asking this woman for a drink.

Then Jesus turns the conversation around saying that if she knew who he was then she would have asked him for living water!  By this point Jesus is now talking about something entirely different but she still thinks he is talking about the water at the well and she has noticed that he doesn’t have any pots or pans or bucket to collect the water – nor is the water at the well living (or running) water – it is a stagnant pool.  This discourse goes on and on leading to Jesus saying that the water he has to offer is one which will not only quench the thirst of the one who receives it but they will also never go thirsty again.

Clearly the woman still thinks in terms of H2O – the stuff we actually drink.  Jesus then reveals himself to her as a prophet by bringing the woman’s husband into the conversation – knowing that she isn’t married to the man in her life at that moment – so that he can tell her that he knows about her previous marriages.

It is at this point that they get into a more theological discussion – one which resembles the one about which is the better football stadium – Portsmouth’s Fratton Park or Southampton’s Saint Mary’s  – a debate concerning which is the holier mountain – that of Mount Girizim in Samaria or the Temple Mount (Mount Moriah/Zion) in Jerusalem. It was this disagreement between the Jews and the Samarians that had brought about such animosity between the two in the first place.

The next revelation of Jesus’s is the one which is of great importance to us today – “The time is coming when you will worship on neither mountain but will worship in truth and spirit and the spirit is God”.  In other words, Jesus is telling this woman, a Samaritan, and branded as being of bad character, that it will no longer matter where you worship or what denomination you are so long as you worship the one true and living God.

It appears that this Samaritan woman had been educated, for she at last seemed to understand what was being said even if she still didn’t quite get the context - for she responds – “When the Messiah comes he will explain all this to us”.  Jesus, in his first ever clear revelation of who he is says, not to the Jews, the Pharisees or even to the disciples at this stage, but to the woman - “I am he”.

Recently we have looked at readings of Jesus as the good shepherd but I think that the analogy of Jesus being a spring of water in a dry place – just like the water that gushed out for the Jews in the Exodus reading – is a really good one.  Only on Friday I was asked to try and explain the Trinity to one of the clients at the Alabare Drop-In Centre for the homeless where I am chaplain and I remembered once being told that we can think of God the Trinity as water which can take on three distinct physical forms – although the chemical composition of each is the same H2O it can appear as – ice, solid hard and very strong – after all it did sink Titanic,  - liquid – which keeps us alive, quenches our thirst and supports fish which can eat - and steam which we cannot see but which has powered some of the mightiest and varied machines ever invented.  God the Father is represented by Ice, Jesus the son by Water and the Holy Spirit by Steam.

The world has many great rivers which support life and we can think of the identity of many of them quite easily – the Ganges, the Amazon, the Nile, the Thames, and so on.  Our life can be like those rivers – starting as a small fresh clean bubbling spring we grow and grow and grow as we head towards our destination – the mighty eternal ocean.  The river’s banks get crowded with wharfs and buildings and shipping so that we forget that it once started as a pure stream of clear water. So our lives get crowded and polluted by the cares of our everyday life until it gets so choked that we no longer recognise where we came from. So it is good to go back and remember that just like those mighty rivers our lives started with the clean living water that is Jesus Christ – the source of all that is good in life before so many things choked us.

As with the Samaritan woman, an unlikely person for Jesus to have this wonderful discussion with, so we too can sometimes think that we are not the right person or are not in the right place for a renewal with the source of our life. Just like the cake, how wrong we are.  Jesus will come to us and engage with us whenever and wherever we are if we are prepared to listen to him. He knows the right time and place for each and every one of us.  He will step into the bandit country of our busy lives, just as he stepped into Samaria, and cleanse us and quench us with his clean living water of eternal life. That is the root, the source of our Faith.

Let us pray:

Dear Lord,

The source of that special living water
Come today and quench our thirst.
As you promised the Samaritan woman at the well
Give us that eternal living water
So that we may never again thirst
And so go on to enjoy eternal life

Amen