Sermon - Advent Carol Service 29th November 2009

This evening, Rev Gill Tayleur preaches based on the reading from Matthew 24:42-51

Let’s pray:
May I speak and may we all hear your truth, and may it change us. Amen.

Do you have a recurring nightmare? A ghastly dream that you’ve had before, that makes you wake up gasping and sweating?
Like many people, I used to have an ‘exam dream’. In this dream, I discover I have to sit an exam just hours or even minutes before it starts. I haven’t prepared for it at all. I haven’t revised, I haven’t read any books on it, sometimes I haven’t even sat the course! But the exam is in say half an hour and I’m rushing to find out something, anything about it and to get there in time... It’s a panic dream.
And I say I used to have the exam dream, because recently it has changed into the preaching dream! Yes I’m told I’m preaching about 5 minutes before the service starts and I don’t even know what Bible passage it’s on... I wake up sweating, and with my heart pounding. Because I’m NOT READY.

ARE YOU READY?
This Advent Sunday evening, the obvious question is, are you ready for Christmas? There are 3 and half weeks to go, and plenty to do. Cards to write, presents to buy, food to bake, get togethers to organise, homes to decorate, and so on. ARE YOU READY for all the Christmas festivities?
I should think the answer is, no you’re not, but that you do know how to get ready for them in time for Christmas Day. Whether you’ll be getting it all done in good time or someone who thrives on last minute activity, you’ll be ready for Christmas.

But what about getting ready spiritually, giving time and thought to the amazing truth we celebrate at Christmas. The familiar Christmas story that most of us have heard many times before, that the Almighty God who created the universe became a vulnerable little baby. Jesus, born to be our Saviour. Born to die for us, 30 years later, so that we can be reconciled with God for now and for ever. What a wonderful truth that we celebrate at Christmas! Getting ready for it spiritually means making time & space to wonder and appreciate and maybe question and respond to the marvellous truth that we celebrate at Christmas time.

Getting ready spiritually might mean spending extra time reading, mulling over and praying over the readings we’ve heard tonight. Or it might mean using 1 of the many books of daily Advent Bible readings and prayers – I’ve a couple here if anyone wants to borrow one, one by Delia Smith, the other by St John’s College Nottingham.
Or if you’re on the internet, the Church of England has a website for Advent called Why are we waiting.com, an online Advent calendar with daily Advent reflections.
I particularly like its slogan: READY, STEADY... SLOW! Now there’s a thought – in the midst of the rush to get everything ready in time for Christmas, how about we go READY, STEADY... SLOW! How about we make moments of SLOW, to think and ponder our response to the Christmas truths about the baby born in a stable...
So, WILL YOU BE READY for Christmas?

But as well as preparing for Jesus’ first coming that we celebrate at Christmas,
on Advent Sunday, another ‘ARE YOU READY?’ question is traditionally asked: ARE YOU READY for Jesus to return?

In the passage we’ve just heard from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus challenges his listeners to be ready for his unexpected return. In fact the whole of chapters 24 and 25 are all about this. You might like to read them through during the week. Although we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, it’s clear that one day God will draw history as we know it to a close, and make a new earth, which will have Jesus centre stage. Jesus will return to judge and rule this new earth.
And the question is, ARE YOU READY? for Jesus’ return?

Let’s look at what Jesus says about all this in the 2 parables of our gospel reading.
The first is about a thief breaking into a house at night. The home owner doesn’t know when the thief is coming, doesn’t keep watch for him, and is caught out. Jesus says his return will be just as much a surprise.
We know that we need to always shut our windows and lock our front door when we go out, or set our burglar alarm if we have one. We know we have to do it every time because we don’t know when a burglar might try and break in.
We can’t see the future. Some things we can predict with accuracy, like the tides, but there are many others we can’t. Will it snow on Christmas Day? Who will win the next world cup?
And so it is with Jesus’ return. When will it happen? We do not know, we cannot know and we don’t need to know. What matters is that it will happen.
And if it doesn’t happen in our lifetime, we’ll meet Jesus as judge and king anyway. None of us knows for sure quite when we’ll face our death; that too could be any day. And living ready for Jesus’ return is the same way as living ready to meet him when we die.

So HOW are we to be ready, how are we to prepare? That’s what the second parable addresses. It’s about someone who goes away, leaving a chief servant in charge of his entire household. That servant might be good, and look after his master’s affairs responsibly and well, in which case the master will be very pleased on his return. Or the chief servant might be bad and irresponsible, getting drunk and beating his fellow servants. If the master returns to find him doing that, he’ll chuck him out and punish him. So the chief servant should carry out his responsibilities just as if his master was going to return at any time.
And as followers of Jesus, that’s what we’re to do. We’re to live in such a way that we wouldn’t have to change a thing if Jesus returned any minute now, as indeed he might.

After the 2 parables we’ve read tonight, Jesus tells another 3 in a row, which make clear what it means to be ready for his return and how we’re to live until then. In the story of the 10 virgins, we are taught that every person is responsible for his or her own spiritual condition. The story of the talents shows the necessity of using well what God has entrusted to us. The parable of the sheep and goats stresses the importance of serving others in need. No one parable by itself completely describes how we’re to live ready. Each one paints one part of the whole picture.

So, I wonder how we do on each of them.
Do we take responsibility for ourselves spiritually? Do we put time and energy and the number one priority into our relationship with God? Or does He get squeezed into Sunday worship only? Or does talking with and listening to him in prayer and reading the Bible get pushed out by other demands?
Do we think God can wait until later? Later may never come!
So do we take responsibility for ourselves spiritually, now?...

From the parable of the talents, we might ask ourselves,
Do we use well what God has entrusted to us?
Our talents, and skills, our personalities, the wonderful ways God has designed each of us to be? Whatever it is that we’re good at – do we use that well, for God?

Do we use well the time God has entrusted to us?
Do we waste too much time on our own pleasure, rather selfishly?
Or maybe the opposite: do we resent how little time we have to ourselves or to relax?
Do we use our time well, for God?

Do we use well the relationships God has entrusted to us?As friends, spouses, parents, grandparents, grown up children?
Are there relationships we take for granted, where we habitually lose our temper, or take advantage, or lack humility or compassion?...

Do we use well the money God has entrusted to us, in how we spend or save or give it away?

Indeed, do we use well ALL that God has entrusted to us? ...

And from the final parable, do we serve others in need?
Looking at you, I know lots of you do, in all sorts of ways. At Christmas there are lots of opportunities to support all sorts of good causes, near and far, with our time, money, other gifts.

These are just a few examples of how we are to live ready.
In my exam dream, I know that the outcome of the exam depends not just on the day, but on the work I’ve (not) done over weeks and months beforehand. That’s why it’s a nightmare, because I’ve not done it! In the same way, not thinking about Jesus’ return and just hoping it’ll be alright on the night won’t work. No, we need to live as Jesus wants, all the time. It’s a long term, every day thing. Just as we can’t become well prepared for an exam in half an hour, so we will only be ready for Jesus to return by living as he wants, living God’s way consistently, day in, day out.

Living as he wants at work. Living as he wants at home.
Living as he wants with our money. Living as he wants with our time...

When we think about Jesus’ surprise return to judge and rule, we need to do so remembering God’s love and forgiveness which is freely on offer. None of us will meet his standard, all of us have times when we fail, times when we don’t live just as we would want him to find us. But that’s why the news of Jesus birth at Christmas, that he was born to die for us, is such wonderful news! It means we can be forgiven and accepted, and given a fresh start.
Being a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean we’ll always get everything right, but that we quickly discover where we’re going wrong and say sorry and turn around to change and live differently, thanks to God’s love and forgiveness .

So, ARE YOU READY?

Let’s get ready. Let’s spend Advent in the READY STEADY SLOW! way, learning to live as Jesus wants, becoming people who live ready for Jesus’ return.

So let’s pray...
Dear God, thank you for the wonderful birth of your Son Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. This Advent, please help us spot the ways we can take moments of SLOW to appreciate this, and learn how to live ready for your return. Thru Christ our Lord, Amen.

Sermon 29th November 2009

Today, our Associate Vicar, John Itumu, preaches based on the reading from Luke 21:25-36

This passage tells us to be ready for a day that will come on all who live on the face of the earth v35. The immediate thing that comes to mind is death – and which really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. But also this; being told to be ready raises all sorts of questions – and a big one is this:
Is there really more to life than this?

Is there really more to this life than being born, going to school, being a young adult/professional, raising a family, pursuing a career, retirement and then waiting to die?
It is true life is all these things and more. Many of us will almost inevitably go through these. I would love to see some of my aspirations met. The question however remains, is that all we should expect from life? What is the meaning of life? What if we don’t exactly fit and live up to the schedule and mould that our families and society designs for us long before we can comprehend what is going on?

What about our unrealised dreams and aspirations – the careers that we never got to pursue? The relationships that didn’t work; the children that never quite made it in life and pursued the ‘right’ career? What about the unanswered questions about suffering and pain, about other religions? Why should I get up on Sunday morning to come to church? These are tough questions and two major answers are available.

There are those who think that organized religion (especially Christianity) is the root cause of this restlessness in human experience. Most of you will have seen the atheist campaign posters on London buses: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." The idea behind the campaign as according to Richard Dawkins was to ‘make people think’ because ‘thinking is anathema to religion.’ Alister McGrath a former atheist and now a leading evangelical scholar has most recently been associated with the Christian response to Dawkins book ‘The God Delusion.’ His opinion is that ‘atheism is indeed a fundamentalist religion in its own right – with its own popes, sacred texts that you are not allowed to challenge.’ He recalls a discussion in which he said:
‘Dawkins does make quite a few mistakes in ‘The God Delusion’. To which a student immediately said:
No, no, that’s wrong. It’s an infallible text. It’s right. You can’t say he’s wrong.
Alister replies: Why not? He is.
The student responds: If you do, my life will fall into pieces because I have built my life on that book!

What have you built your life on?

The other response heightens panic, as we are reminded that the end of the world is nigh – and with precise timings at that. For instance a man called Joseph Rutherford (1869-1942) who refined the Jehova’s Witnesses belief predicted that the patriarchs of ancient Israel would soon be coming back on earth along with Jesus. Before he died he purchased a shiny new automobile and built 10 bedroom mansion beth sarim because Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were expected in southern California where he lived at the time.
And wasn’t the millennium predicted to be the end? Where were you on the millennium’s eve? I now understand that the latest prediction is 12th of December 2012.

Panic and false predictions!

I want to speak briefly about a response which in my opinion is the authentic and most avoided – because it makes one think. Let us begin by setting some context to the passage we have read. At the beginning of the chapter a poor widow puts in two very small copper coins into the temple treasury. Jesus remarks that she has given all that she had to live on (she has given out of her poverty and all others out of their wealth) and therefore has given more than anyone else present. The conversation that ensues is about the temple. Some of his disciples then start to remark on the beauty of the temple. History tells us that this was the second temple, double in size which had been built by king Herod the Great and whose magnificence had turned it into a huge tourist attraction. And then Jesus points to it and says, to everyone’s shock
21:6...the time will come when not one stone will be left on top of the other...

You can imagine the shock and anger they must have felt to hear this. This was the socio-religio-political centre of the Jewish world! But before they can even get over their shock he goes on to talk about another more catastrophic event.
V25
There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive at what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory

Jesus intends to make a point here: The wars, persecutions, the fall of Jerusalem (the temple was actually burnt down about 30 years later in AD 70) and the cosmic signs - all these point toward the arrival of the kingdom and the end of history. Just as there was a beginning of all that we experience and are able to know in this life; there will also be an end.
V31
Heaven and earth will pass away but by words will never pass away.

Everything else is temporal, only the word of the uncreated one, God will stand and endure forever. These are the lens that God has provided for us to perceive and make sense of life with. Therein brothers and sisters lies the Christian hope and this is not a delusion. We catch it and see it through the eyes of faith. Now that requires some thinking! Elsewhere Jesus even warns about false estimations on when these things might be. He is not concerned with the precise discernment of the timings of the end:
Mark 13:32
But about that day or the hour no-one knows, not even the angels in heaven...

We are however called to conduct our lives in the light of an eternity. Yes, an eternity because this is not all. The Christian hope starts now and goes beyond our graves. For those who believe, this life is prelude to the finale with our creator, the living God. The end may delay, but this delay will not be indefinite. We are called to live with a constant vigilance and expectation of the time when all things will come together, when all the questions will be answered, when our tears will be wiped, when we shall see our loved ones who have gone before us.
This is not all friends! There is even cause to rejoice! We used to sing Soon and very soon we are going to see the King with gusto and in expectation of this magnificent end!

God’s answer gives hope and makes life worth living today. We are more valuable than animals and birds (Matt 25:26), we are more valuable than what the world tells us. But we are reminded be on guard and to live like a people with hope. Elsewhere Jesus himself said this:
John 14
Trust in God... I am going to prepare a place for you...and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come back to take you to be with me.

In the meantime however, we are to orientate our lives to an eternity, watch out especially on areas we are likely to fall prey to:
V34
Being weighed down by dissipation, drunkenness
and the anxieties of life
We all know the inclinations which put us most at risk Watch out for those! Watch and pray at all times!

I am aware I stand the risk of sounding like my old primary school head teacher on a Monday morning as she gave a torrent of moral platitudes. But all I want to say is this. Jesus will return and there is an eternity promised to all who believe. I also understand that if you don’t believe this might sound like nonsensical. If you are here and feel like that please allow me to say this: Truth is objective, but people usually aren’t. A perfect argument may often fall on ears deafened by prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding incomprehension or even ideology. These filters largely determine what we often choose to believe. And this is where faith kicks in. Christian belief is based on faith. When faith comes first, then understanding follows. This understanding is in turn largely aided by faith itself. Only faith eyes can allow us to see that God seeks after us and welcomes us just as we are, by his immeasurable amazing grace, to give us a life of hope. That is the deal.

If you honestly are seeking for the truth and you doubt that God exists then on this Advent Sunday I invite you to pray the sceptic’s prayer:
God I don’t know whether you exist. I am a sceptic. I doubt. I hereby declare myself as a seeker of the truth – whatever/ wherever it is. If you are the truth, then show me. If you can dare believe those words and declare them, and because Christianity is true, then God will reveal himself to you. Many have done that and have had their lives turned around. It could be your turn today. That is my prayer this Advent Sunday of 2009. All that God asks for is our honesty to openly admit that we are seekers. Honesty is a choice of the will. God leaves that choice with us. Amen.

Sermon from 15th November 2009

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Romans 8 verses 1 - 11.

There was once a young man who, in his youthful enthusiasm professed a desire to become a great writer.

When asked to define 'great,' he said: “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read; stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level; stuff that will make them scream in disbelief, cry in despair, howl in pain, and vent their anger in ways they've never dreamed of!”

This wasn't the apostle Paul speaking – though (with the exception of that last desire) it could easily have been. Mind you, I don't think that Paul set out to achieve such lofty aims when he wrote this letter to Christians in ancient Rome. All he was trying to do was to pave the way to visit a church that he hadn't founded or ever been to before. But in the process, as we've been seeing here over the past three months, Paul did so much more than that.

Yes, this is a letter that's been read by people all over the world, for centuries. Those people have, like us, reacted to it on a truly emotional level. It has made some scream in disbelief, others cry in despair, and yet others howl in pain. But this is a letter that also has rich veins of hope and joy, freedom, light and life running all the way through it. And so it is that we've come to this most wonderful statement of hope that we end our series with today: 'There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!'

It's quite a place to conclude in – and even more so when we unpack Paul's explanation of how this amazing state of affairs has come about. But before we do, though, I'd best invite you to decide if that nameless young man achieved his own ambitious literary aims. By all accounts, he now works for Microsoft, writing computer error messages!

Be that as it may, in this series we have had the rare privilege of being able to engage with a great writer on top form. Many see Romans as the pinnacle of Paul's writing, and his theology – and we surely can't disagree with them after what we've experienced. It began with that awesome opening statement, which we thought about in terms of being like rocket science. Not only did it launch us into a stellar voyage of adventure and discovery. It also set the lofty agenda for how we'd get to see and understand God's purposes, from before the start of the world until after its ending! Those were bold claims at the time – the validity of which I'll leave you to decide on for yourself as we end.

No less bold was how, from the very start, Paul claimed to be nothing less than a slave of Jesus. That may have been less shocking to us than to his original readers; but that was the only way that Paul could respond to what God had done in Christ. He CHOSE slavery, because of God's gifts to him, of freedom and life. And his joyful obedience to God gave Paul the task of sharing this good news with everyone – no matter what the cost. It was, and is, all about God's Son, Jesus – who he is, and what he's done. So next we saw how Paul explained the problem and the consequences, of sin. Crucially he set out too how Jesus' death in our place was, and is, God's solution to that fundamental human problem.

That meant needing to stare deep into the self-centred and selfish darkness that lies within all of us. It wasn't, and isn't, a pretty sight – but until we admit that we each have got a problem then we can't see the need to accept God's offer of a solution. The language got a bit technical at that point – 'justification' picking up many crucial Old Testament themes and ideas – but, thank God, there was no escaping from the central issue. All of us are subject to God's judgement, however much we may dislike or want to contest that fact. Even so, God has opened the way for us to stop being his enemies, and to be at peace with Him instead; again, all through Jesus' death, as Paul explained. He wrote, even more amazingly, how this had been God's plan since before He made the world!

That then brought us to that magnificent sunrise moment, in chapter 5. Having first explained our problem in full gory detail, and offered God's solution to it, Paul then set out the consequence of God's glorious grace in all its fullness. It's so beyond-words stunning that we can, and must, rejoice even in our human sufferings, Paul said. That's how transcendent, how eternity-transforming, the good news of Jesus is. It makes even the seemingly impossible become possible, by the power of God's Spirit at work in us. But there are other, equally important consequences of the good news too. So Paul then turned to his next technical term – sanctification: in other words, becoming like Jesus.

Again as we heard, it would be easy to warp the message of the gospel along these lines. 'God likes putting us right with him; so let's keep on doing wrong, and so give him plenty more chances to forgive us'. That, of course, is the last thing that Christian are meant to do! What God wants is for us to live in the light of who He is. Our slavery is to Him as Lord, Master; so we are to be set apart to live for Him – or to be holy, as it's known. So Paul urged us, in God's name, to give up our slavery to the old life, of self – to die to it. That way leads only to death, where His way leads to life. We're to put the right fuel in the tank, God's life-giving Spirit, and to live a life of complete, instant, joyful obedience to God.

There is a choice involved – and we all make one, one way or the other. To use the analogy that Adjoa did, you can't be a little bit pregnant: you are, or you aren't! Either we are living God's new life; or we're not. Of course it's not quite as simple as that. Last week John Itumu went on to help us to understand Paul's explanation of at least some of the complexities involved. It may have been quite tongue-twisting, but that's a fair reflection on the tangle that we so easily get ourselves into. We know what God wants us to do; we hopefully want to do it too – but we so often don't! We do instead what we don't want to do – which is what God doesn't want us to do either! As Paul pointed out, it's all a sorry mess, from which we can't extricate ourselves alone.

'Who will rescue me from this body that brings me death?' was Paul's anguished cry as he admitted this problem. He knew the answer of course, as we also heard last week: 'I thank God for saving me through Jesus Christ our Lord!' He knew that sin was still a problem – for him, just as it is for us. But God has dealt with that problem, as Paul said in today's closing passage. On the cross Jesus dealt sin its eternal death-wound – though we know, like Paul did, that it's not dead quite yet! But through the cross the Spirit was fully unleashed, and He now brings God's life instead of this death of sin. It's the realistic possibility of a Godly life in the present, and an eternal one in the future.

In his commentary Tom Wright describes this passage as being like a flower. It starts as a tight bud, but then unfolds to its full beauty – if we're patient enough to wait to see it. Of course it keeps on unfolding past where our series ends today. I'll encourage you to read through the rest of Romans, then – maybe as part of your Advent preparing to celebrate Jesus' birth at Christmas. But there's plenty here to keep us going for some while – far more than I have time to say now. The one thing above all to take away from today, though, is that what happened in the past not only guarantees the future: it also impacts the present.

That may sound like rather a mouthful, but at one level it's quite simple. Jesus died, and rose again, in the past. That has made it possible for people to enter God's kingdom – through Jesus. The eternal way that we do so is in the future, after our human death. But we enter God's kingdom in the present, at that moment when we accept that Jesus died for us personally. It's at THAT point that the Spirit comes to live in us; and God stops seeing us as guilty, or condemned. To give the technical, or theological term for it, this is the doctrine of the atonement.

Paul didn't invent it – but he certainly explained it rather well here! To put it simply, God did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves, even with the help of His Law. In Jesus God became human, just as we are. But where we all fall short of being the people that God made us to be, Jesus did not. More than that, Jesus gave up his own life as an offering for sin – and so destroyed it. We can now be at-one-ment with God because of Jesus – and have his life instead of the eternal death that sin brings. The challenge to us, as we end this series, is how we live that out every day.

The title for today is 'Life through the Spirit' – because that IS what we now have if we are 'in Christ'. We have traded in the old, dead life of sin for this new life in Christ. It's the Spirit who now lives in us, and makes this all possible. So we must, as Paul said here, have our minds controlled, or set on, thinking about those things that the Spirit of God wants us to do. The other option (and we do have to choose one or the other!) is to set our minds on what WE want. It's a no-brainer which is the better option, after hearing all that we have about the one leading to death, and the other to life. But this is the place that Paul has led us to as we end.

I can't tell you what that's going to mean for you – but YOU know! What will it mean for you to set your mind on what God wants: after this service; the rest of today; when you get up tomorrow? How will you choose to spend your time, talents, and energy, throughout this week – and beyond? How will you respond, to good times, and to bad? By living for yourself? Or by choosing to be God's slave, with your mind set on Him, in response to His gifts to you, of His Son and Spirit? Death? Or life? The choice is ours to make. But praise God that we do now have one – all because of Jesus. So let's pray ...

Sermon 8th November 2009

Today, our Associate Vicar, John Itumu, preaches based on the reading from Romans 7:14-25

Inner Conflict

I call this passage the tongue twister passage because in the NIV Paul mentions the word ‘do’ at least 20 times in 8 verses.
Just what is he trying to communicate? It appears he is in knot of some sort. One could almost sense an Aaaargh!!

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...as it is it is no longer I myself who do it, but sin living in me..
I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the eviI I do not want to do this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it...

A young woman was involved in a motor accident which left her paralyzed from the neck down. She was rushed to hospital where her family and friends, including her young nephews had already gathered. As she lay on the trolley waiting to go in for an Xray, she suddenly noticed that the sheet covering her had slipped leaving her bare chest half exposed and her lower body almost totally exposed. In her modesty she wanted to desperately pull the sheet up – she tried - the arms could not obey; not even the legs.
She knew in her mind exactly what she wanted to do, but could not.

This perhaps should help us start to get into grips with the tug of war that Paul describes in this passage. It is being in a situation where you are telling your body what you want done, and the body not doing it.
Have you ever found yourself in such a situation? Paul rightfully recognises that there is a war within, a conflict, a struggle!

A day like today, Remembrance day, and more so at our later service in the evening when we remember our loved ones who have died, we are likely to be bombarded with memories of hurt and failure; the missed opportunities with those who are now gone, but didn’t etc
It might be that we remember sadly 2009 New Year’s resolutions broken before end of February.
Or it might be things you have been procrastinating about – may be you have no more will power to get on with them much as you would like to...
Only You knows your heart and the struggles there in!

But Paul goes even further. It is one thing realizing that our body won’t do what we tell it to, but it’s quite another thing realizing that our body is readily obedient to something else!
This is Paul’s frustration in verse 19
For I do not do the good I want to do, but the eviI I do not want to do this I keep on doing.

But just who was this man, Paul?
Former Pharisee – whose righteousness according to the law, and in his own words was ‘faultless’. He was a hybrid of the religious system of his days. However since his encounter with Jesus Christ his life had been transformed – so great a transformation that he likened his old life to garbage, refuse; KJV goes as far as describing it as dung
That is how stark a difference an encounter with Christ brings about. But this man of high credentials has a submission to make – first for himself and the people of his day - and secondly for us.

Firstly then, the contemporaries of Paul would have been pious Jews living under the authority of the law – The Torah or Mosaic Law. They had inherited and highly refined this law to ensure that they pleased God in all that they did. They took it seriously. eg the Pharisees, the sect to which Paul belonged prior to his conversion had even worked out that a Sabbath day’s journey was 2000 cubits. All done in good faith to ensure God was not offended.
They diligently studied and knew by heart scriptures like:
Psalm 1:2
Blessed are those who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night. They are like streams planted by the streams of water...
Psalm 19:8
The law of the Lord is perfect, refreshing the soul...
The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart...

However the Old Testament bears witness to the inability of their ancestors to keep the law that they so much loved. And due to their disobedience God used various prophets to warn them about the impending disaster of captivity to Babylon and which eventually happened.

But God, recognising this futility in trying to be good made a promise to the prophet Ezekiel while prophesying about Israel’s restoration back to their land:

Ezk 36:26ffd
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you... I will put my Spirit in you...
Something new was to happen to them, their hearts, that would somehow make it less burdensome to be ‘good’. It was called the Spirit. We read from the gospels about Jesus preparing his disciples for this spectacular phenomenon – the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost after his ascension.
Paul writes this letter to the Romans after the promised Spirit has been poured; after Pentecost. And this is what he seems to be saying to them:

Friends, enough is enough – there should be no more of the defeat and humiliation that we suffer by being rigorous about obeying the law to please God. I have walked that road friends – and trust me, a former top Pharisee, it doesn’t get you anywhere.

When we try to live by the law instead of the gospel of grace, the gospel of the risen Christ;
when we try to live by the flesh instead of the spirit, the Spirit that was poured to us on Pentecost;
then we set ourselves to fail.

The law tells us what to be, but it cannot help us to deliver.
Just think for a moment about how many times we contravene the law; think also about the many who constantly re-offend. Knowing the law and the repercussions of breaking it isn’t a sure safeguard against breaking it.

I, Paul, know this very well...
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do...
I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the eviI I do not want to do this I keep on doing.

I wonder if you can identify with any of these statement or similar ones...
I will never have a drink again,
I will never speak that way again to them...
Except that you realise in a short while that – you have done it!
I can’t blame Paul for writing the way he does and repeatedly using the word ‘do’. It is all tangled and messy, a bit like my Christmas tree lights here. There is a war within us...

Paul reminds us that we cannot rely on the law to sort our lives out. What we need to do is exercise some honesty and admit this very typical human trait: that there still exists a twisted and self-centred nature in us that is sinful. This nature brings about a conflict between desire and performance. The law cannot help. Only the power of the Spirit of God can turn things round.

And I think that Paul is reminding us of this:
when our religion is reduced to only a Sunday ritualistic attendance to church;
when our religion is defined by being busy with church matters and being slaves to rules and regulations;
if we fail to embrace and receive the freedom, the liberty and newness of life that Jesus Christ won for us on the cross;
we set ourselves for failure.

We may be alive but still bound hand and foot, a bit like Lazarus when he was brought back to life by Jesus but still tightly bound, hands and feet and mouth. Jesus promises life, and life to the full. John 10:10

But thanks be to God, who delivers us, who rescues us from this wretchedness, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

And that is the deal. Admitting our wretchedness, our inability to sort our hearts out is the start of an adventure with God. God doesn’t intrude forcibly to force us to be his follower and friend. We possess a free will to accept his friendship or reject it.
Jesus himself says, Mark 2:17
It is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners...

Many people do not turn to God because they are in denial about the true condition of their heart
Many people in our generation will not ask for forgiveness from God because they disagree that sin exists in them

But all this boils down to each of us as individuals. We know the battle that rages inside and it is for this that Jesus came; to sort that tangle. He came with an offer to hold the hand of everyone who will dare try him - along life’s journey; to end the strife, the tangle and make life really worth living. He is the prince of peace and He invites all to a life of faith and adventure. When the going gets very tough, he is right there with you. My experience is that God’s presence in our lives makes us tough enough for life.

We accept this invitation by saying; Lord God, I cannot help myself. Please come to my aid and deliver me. Take away my pride, create a clean heart in me, a heart that trusts you and puts you before everything I do. That is the good news I bring to you today. Amen.

Sermon 1st November 2009

Today our newly licenced Lay Reader, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, preaches.

So a middle aged woman goes into an office to collect some items. Having collected them she is just about to leave when a beardy bloke in glasses waves a leaflet at her with the words “don't hit me, have a read of this and tell me what you think”. The woman takes the leaflet,as she leaves, glances through it briefly, raises her eyes skywards and says “ok that's my answer,
banged to rights. What now?”. Well that was four years ago and no prizes for guessing the identity of our main characters there. Middle aged woman, well that'll be me! Beardy bloke?, that'll be our vicar Cameron ,and the one giving the answer, that will be our heavenly Father. And the question? Well it was one that came upon me sometime after my forty first birthday when I started to wonder if this was it, if there might not be something more that God had in mind for me. It only started as an “I wonder”, that flitted in and out of my thoughts, between work and packed lunches and marriage; but as time passed it became much more insistent, until the day that Cameron waved the leaflet on 'Vocational Training', within the Church of England, at me. I didn't disappear off on a ship like Jonah, but my 'banged to rights' was hardly an enthusiastic immediate embracing of the notion of serving God through this 'vocational training'. Yet four years on as you heard in the official Licence and welcome, I'm here with my 'Reader just passed' plates on. What was my concern? I'm not up to this, I won't know enough, I'm not good
enough, are you sure God. All valuable thoughts, but as Psalm 46 says 'Be still and know that I am God'. We're not God, God is. We listen for His guidance, We do what we do in his strength and we leave the impossible to him. It's an enormously comforting thought, but only if we allow God that complete control of our lives... Some of you may remember Simon Guillebaud of the Great Lakes Outreach mission in Burundi who came to talk to us a few months back about his work, and where God has taken him in service. In the book of his experiences and insights 'For What its Worth' Simon writes, “God calls people to all sorts of vocations. He longs to harness the gifts he's given us for use in his service. The crucial factor is that he calls us all to full surrender, the letting go of our will for God's will.” This may seem like a hard thing to imagine doing, let alone actually putting in to practice. Let God make the decisions for my life? All of them?! For some of us who on charitable days may be called “ a bit bossy”, the notion of relinquishing control and giving God that full surrender remains a constant challenge. Perhaps Paul had people like us in mind when he wrote the part of his letter to the Romans we read together
in this mornings passage. If we don't fully follow God's will, surely it will be ok...doesn't Grace
mean he loves us anyway? If we sin, go against his will, we're still able to be forgiven..Chapter 11 verse 6, it's not 'by works' 'by what we do' that we earn God's gracious love and forgiveness, it's by faith, belief in Christ, God's grace in the flesh, who lived died and rose from the dead to life
eternal. Isn't that enough? It's the question Paul puts at verse 15 GN 'What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law but under God's grace?'
NIV
'What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law but under grace?'

The subtitle of Simon's Guillebaud's book is, 'A Call to No Holds Barred Discipleship.' Cast your minds back, well some of us can, to Saturday afternoon wrestling on ITV with likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Although it was all tightly choreographed, there were certain holds or grips
that were not allowed, these holds were 'barred' . Perhaps in our serving God, we want some holds barred: God please don't hold me to that course of action, to that sort of behaviour;
Yet Paul says there is no ambivalent middle course. He answers the question of verse 15.
Either you are enslaved to the ways and morals of the world or you are enslaved to the ways of God. Life is 'no holds barred'. Paul says in Verse 16
GN
“...when you surrender yourselves as slaves to obey someone, you are in
fact slaves of the master you obey”
NIV
“...when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are
slaves to the one whom you obey..”

Whose no holds barred wrestling ring are we in, God's or the world's? The choice is ours.

Yet when Paul speaks of 'slavery' to the ways of God, my immediate understanding is of an enforced action not a choice made. Slavery, I recoil at the word. Is this really what serving God is? Slavery? I have recently been recording an audio book for the RNIB., on the Slave Trade. Called “The Book of Negroes”, it is based on a real document which you can see at Kew, where are listed the names and circumstances of all the Negro slaves who could prove they had served the British in the American war of Independence. As a reward for their service the slaves were offered freedom and free passage to a new life in Nova Scotia, some later travelling further to found the colony of Freetown, now the capital of Sierra Leone, in West Africa. The book is a fictionalised account of a female child, Aminata who watches her village burnt and her parents
murdered before being captured and sold into slavery in the late 1700's.

Disturbingly several years ago I recorded a similar real life account written by a young Sudanese woman who had watched her village burnt down and parents shot before being captured and sold into slavery. She escaped from her owners in Shepherds Bush, only 8 years ago! Slavery is still continues today.
So the idea of choosing slavery as a way to live, is understandably one which can sit uncomfortably with us. In Paul's day the discomfort at the thought of slavery as a position of choice, would I imagine, have been much the same. Paul is writing to the church in Rome , in preparation for a visit he intended to make. The Roman empire was built on conquest and
slavery, so for the first century Romans reading this letter, enslavement would have been an everyday state of affairs. This analogy with slavery is deliberate. Paul wants the listener to 'sit up' and pay attention, then as now, as he explains in verse 19.
GN
'I use everyday language because of the weakness of your natural selves'.
NIV
'I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves.'

Paul wants us all to understand what surrendering ourselves either to God or the world really means. It's a simple but demanding concept and he wants us to 'get it'. But in Paul's notions of slavery we have a choice, since God created us to have free will. Being under the Grace of God means we are offered, as verse 23 says
GN
“.. God's free gift (is) eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord.”
NIV
“the gift of God (is) eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

The free gift? A gift from Grace.

In his book What's so Amazing about Grace Philip Yancey was speaking with his friend Gordon MacDonald who commented, “The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.” In Jesus we see God's grace. All the so called worst people flocked to him, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the despised and unloved , they all came to him and he loved them , forgave them and transformed their lives. Philip Yancey' regards grace as 'the last best word' because he says 'every English usage...retains some of the glory of the original.” The saying of 'grace before a meal, a thankful prayer to God for what we are about to receive. Gratefulness, congratulations , gracious behaviour, leaving a gratuity or
tip for a waiter, receiving something gratis, free. Condemning unacceptable behaviour as a disgrace, being without grace. To live under God's grace or to live under the law of the world are the choices open to us . We surrender ourselves to one or the other.

Paul states unequivocally in Verse16,
GN
“Surely you know that , when you surrender yourselves as slaves to obey
someone, you are in fact the slaves of the master you obey – either of sin
which results in death, or of obedience which results in being put right
with God.”
NIV
“Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him
as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey – whether you are
slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to
righteousness?”

Being put right with God? Righteousness? What is the benefit of being put right with God?

Verse 23 the benefit?
GN
“God's free gift (gratis!) is eternal life in union with Christ Jesus our Lord”
The alternative?
Verse 23 again
“Sin pays its wages – death.”
NIV
“the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

The alternative?
“..the wages of sin is death.”

We'll come back to that, but, what is this 'eternal life' and what does it mean for us? In his commentary on this passage, Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, asks us to consider eternal life in it's translation as 'the life of the age to come'. The Age to Come comes from the Jewish belief in the End Times when the Messiah would return bringing in the beginning of God's Kingdom on earth, the beginning of Gods rule and the end of the world's rule. Jews believe our present age, the world as it is now, to be filled with worldly living and wickedness. As Tom Wright explains, the achievement of Christ the Messiah, has been to bring 'the age to come' into 'the present age' and as Christ's followers we are called to live in the present in the light of that future, that future which has come to meet us in Jesus. And so the life eternal, the life of the age to come, can be ours now as God's kingdom comes to us when we meet with Jesus. And life transformed by this Godly age and no longer bound by the world, is the free gift offered to us.

This is the transformative power of Grace. It's a transformation wonderfully illustrated in the Life of John Newton, the writer of the hymn Amazing Grace. His story really brings together
slavery and grace. For many years Newton was a fantastically successful slave trader, making
vast profits and living a comfortable life on the back of the suffering and misery of Africans captured and sold into slavery. When he wrote 'Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me' he really did understand quite how wretched the life he had been living was. He understood how transformed his life was, when he accepted God's gracious love and forgiveness for the life he had lead. He became a new man. He made a choice to surrender his life fully to God. He never returned to the slave trade but became a minister, proclaiming the Gospel and joining William Wilberforce in the fight to end the Slave Trade.

Paul speaks so clearly of the benefit of being slaves of righteousness, being put right with God, when in Romans, Chapter 8 verses 38/39 he implores us to choose God

GN
“ For I am certain (he writes) that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither the angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below – there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
NIV
“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

How wonderful is that! Paul isn't setting out dusty, severe rules and regulations that we follow or else , it's more than that. He wants us to understand that living under God's Grace is what we are built for. What about that alternative? Death as the wages of sin? The 'wretch' that John Newton wrote of,

GN
those “..slaves to impurity and wickedness for wicked purposes..”
NIV
that “...slavery to impurity and ever increasing wickedness..”
as Paul has it at verse 19, we are those wretched slaves without God.

Perhaps Paul was reflecting not only on the circumstances of his Roman readers, but also on his own past life as a murderous persecutor of Christians. His past was every bit as disgraceful as John Newton's. We may think ,well come on, I have never been a slave trader, I've never
persecuted anyone. I'm pretty decent. I don't recognise the description of myself as a 'slave to impurity and wickedness,' I'm not involved in 'wicked purposes'... but the way the world works there is only one end, death at the end of our lives certainly, but also death of our God given joyful nature, whether through bitterness or disappointment or guilt or fear. When Christ died on the cross and then came back to life, God sent an unarguable message of life beyond death, life beyond the powers of the world. In Christ's rising God gave us an intimation of the power of his Kingdom. When we choose his mastery over the worlds mastery , we choose to live in the power of his Kingdom, we choose to reflect his Kingdom in the way we live. We choose forgiveness over revenge, we choose love over hate, we choose grace over law. We choose to live the life we were created for.

We were on holiday in Mallorca a few years back and having piled into the hire car we pulled into a garage to fill up the tank before driving north to our destination. We did so and map in hand headed up the motorway for Puerta Pollensa. We'd gone about 10 minutes when the car begin to
respond more and more sluggishly,to the point where I got frightened and pulled over. I couldn't work out what was wrong until with a heavy heart I went to check the fuel cap and realised that unthinkingly I had put diesel into what I now saw was a petrol engine. We weren't going any further in that car. And so most of the first day of our holiday was spent waiting for help by the side of a baking hot motorway.
When I think about the choice we make in our lives, God's way or the world's, I think about that holiday. Yancey writes of the author Stephen Brown's comment 'that a veterinarian can learn a lot about a dog owner he has never met just by observing the dog'.

Well my dog Millie digs holes in the lawn and eats everything, so I don't know what that says about me... but Yancey's question is, what does the world learn about God from observing those of us who call ourselves Christians. Is it clear which owner we are following? Are we purring like
the finely tuned engine God created us to be, fuelled by him, or are we struggling to get into second gear fuelled by a world that will eventually cause our engine to seize up and fail? To be in this purring life for God, to be, 'the slaves of righteousness for holy purposes' (holiness) means that we are in God's service, here to follow whatever 'holy purposes' God has in mind for us. Will the world glimpse God in us? Will the world sense God's grace through the way we live our lives?

WE can choose to let God's love into our lives, to let him wipe away our shameful past. We can choose that slave like obedience to his wisdom and guidance, to have that certainty that in all life's joys and struggles there is nothing in all creation that will ever separate us from the love of God which is ours though Christ ...or we can choose to go it alone, knowing the end is simply death. There is no fence sitting. It's like that old cliché about pregnancy you can't be a little bit pregnant, either you are or you're not. Either we choose the no holds barred surrender to a life with engines purring, God's grace manifest in the way we live, as we serve Him with whatever gifts he has given us, or the glory of God in us withers and we become absorbed into a dying world.

Today is all Saints Day and My hope for us this morning, is that we choose the freedom of God's Grace shown to us in the life , death and resurrection of Christ, that we choose to be loved and forgiven by our gracious God, that we choose to be those faithful Saints in Christ, slavishly living in the joy of his service, in the light of His Kingdom here on Earth until he calls us home.

Lets pray
Liturgy prayer
Almighty and everlasting God,
By whose Spirit the whole church is sanctified;
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people
that each in their vocation and ministry
may serve you in holiness and truth
to the glory of your name
through our Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ
Amen