Sermon 10th October 2010
Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, preaches based on the reading from
Acts 16:11-24
It’s seems to be becoming a pattern that around the time I am down to preach I’m either about to have a press night for a play or have just had one. In one light I could go oh no too much on, like buses all coming at the same time! In another light I could look at the preaching schedule and say hurrah looks like I’ll have a job at that time then…
As anyone self employed here will know ‘looking like there is a job in the offing’ is always a ‘a good thing’!
Perhaps I should put a bid in for more preaching thus improving my likehood of employment…. Or perhaps not. Who knows…
Whatever the Godincidence of this is, as opposed to a coincidence, I am always delighted by this weaving of God through what appears to be my mundane everyday life.
Who knows? For instance did you hear about the beautiful Roman ceremonial helmet in the news this week? It was dug up in a field in Cumbria and was auctioned for £2m. In perfect condition it is known as a Phrygian bonnet.
If we look at verse 6 of Acts 16 our chapter today, we learn that Paul has been travelling through the region of Phrygia on his way to the city of this mornings reading, Philippi.
And the last part of the text of the play I’m doing is set in the Hills of… Phyrgia who would have thought it, when the preaching schedule was drawn up…
From Saul on the road to Damascus…becoming Paul travelling through Phrygia to Philippi, so the Gospel of Christ spreads through Europe and on to us in Herne Hill, and who knows the journeys God’s Gospel will send us on?!
Who knows what’s in store for any of us, employed, self employed, unemployed, home employed, retired, studying, starting school (being baptised like Laurie), becoming Bishop of Southwark like our area Bishop Christopher is about to become.
Who knows what is in store for us. Perhaps the times feel more uncertain than ever at the moment, with our economy, with severe cuts looming in public services, and those benefit cuts, all of whose knock on effects we are not yet fully clear about. It may feel like a worrying time for many of us.
In such times, one of our mission partners Simon Guillebaud from the Great Lakes Outreach in Burundi, whose dvd and book are currently available to buy or to borrow (I have a copies of each), Simon has a thought in one section of that dvd, which may be of interest
Safety, he suggests, is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
I want us to share the encouragement of those words this morning as we continue to follow Paul’s small band of believers who like many, or I would suggest actually ALL of us here, could also say “who knows what is in store for us”.
We have had enough trials and tribulations with our own clergy on the medical front in the past year to know how true that is, And we think of the Windsor family this morning who lost Charles suddenly this weekend after years of faithful mission service in Bolivia. We can trust that God has been a sustaining presence throughout and we pray that in all circumstances his love is felt, even when circumstances seem bewildering and distressing.
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
So let us just remember a little of what Cameron said when introducing this series back in September, since we are now deep into the story of how Paul reached further and wider with the gospel than anyone had dared dream might even be possible.
Cameron spoke about the Gospel writer Luke’s focus in recounting these Acts of Mission, being:
to inspire us in our own Acts of Mission in spreading the Gospel far and wide, individually and as a church;
to help us understand that this mission is all, and only, about Jesus, and it's all the work of His Spirit.
And as Cameron alerted us, Luke cautions us that we are to expect stiff spiritual opposition at every turn!
Inspiration for mission,
all and only about Jesus and the work of His Spirit
expect stiff spiritual opposition
All these aspects we see in this morning’s adventure.
Last week Cameron spoke of ‘keeping on keeping on in faith’, heeding God’s ‘nos’ even when they are frustrating, and trusting in faith, that there will be a divine ‘yes’ ahead, in God’s time not ours.
This week having finally received that divine ‘yes’ in the dream which set Paul, Silas, Timothy and now Luke himself (note how the story is now told as we) on the road to Troas the name now of the ancient city of Troy, now the four set sail deep into Europe, bringing the Gospel to Us!
First the 4 sail to Samothrace, and then on to Neapolis and then on inland to the Macedonian city of Philippi.
Philippi was also a Roman Colony Luke tells us quite deliberately; giving us a context for what is about to happen. Colonies like this one were set up to keep the rule of Rome strong in the region. Often retired Roman soldiers would come to live in cities such as these to maintain a strong Roman presence.
Perhaps Luke tells us Philippi is a colony city to explain why Paul was teaching by the River and not in a synagogue as he had in so many other cities.
We must assume that the Jewish population of Philippi was so small that in this Maecedonian city colonised by the Romans there was no synagogue to attend, and so the alternative venue (as decreed in Jewish law for Sabbath worship), would have been a building or some outdoor space, in this case a River.
So in this European land with no substantial Jewish community of worshippers from which to build upon in his preaching of the Gospel Paul and his Apostles were incredibly vulnerable.
Nevertheless In his first European encounters Paul crosses boundaries of race and gender as he meets two very different women where they are, and the consequences of his being open to respond as directed by God bring results that Paul could not foresee.
When the first of these women, Lydia hears Paul teaching the Gospel of Christ by the river, she opens her heart to Jesus and her home to the preacher of his Gospel. This is a risk in a Roman colony city. Recently, in Rome there had been public disorder involving the Jewish population and many had been thrown out, so in a Roman controlled city like Philippi any Jews would be regarded with suspicion.
Even for Lydia an independent business woman trading in the highly sought after expensive purple cloth and owning her own home, spending time with Jews and adopting this strange new religion they preached was a risk.
And for Paul this risk taken at God’s command would soon mean his arrest and imprisonment.
For not only did he preach of Christ’s healing sacrifice, but in the power of the Holy spirit, as Christ had done , he cast out a demon tormenting a young slave girl. To her benefit undoubtedly but not to the benefit of her owner who was making good money from the powers the tormented girl had for fortune telling. And so the incensed business man has Paul arrested for ruining his business. It puts me in mind of the fury of slave traders confronted by Christian abolitionists in the past and today of the rage of multinantionals forced to restructure unjust business practices frequently due to pressure from contemporary Christian activists.
We may be called on in many different ways to spread the Gospel, and manifest the love and justice of our faith. And like Paul we may not know what path that may lead us along. No doubt Paul is imprisoned for spreading an illegal and dangerous new religion.
Nevertheless extraordinary things come out of this imprisonment as we shall hear next week, and in the meantime a young woman is freed from torment and who knows what her life may have become as a result.
. and an older woman completely at the opposite end of the economic spectrum becomes immersed in her new life in Christ helping to found the strong and longlived church at Philippi so lovingly written to and encouraged by Paul as we know from his letters to the Philippians.
And Who knows the impact ultimately on the slave girl’s owner. Yes he has Paul and Silas imprisoned, but his life may yet be changed forever as a result of Paul’s actions. Would he later review the way he had made his money off another’s suffering and wonder about the way he lived? Would he follow what happens to Paul once in prison and be affected by that?
In all our God inspired interventions we cannot know what God will do as a result, we cannot know how lives may be transformed. We can only respond to the call.
We live in a world that is God’s broken creation, colonised by the importance of our selfish human desires at the expense of the weak, the defenceless, at the expense of living the abundant life God intended for us.
We do not live in a world of all joy and no pain, of all safety and no danger. As Christians we are to live in the world as it is, to listen for God’s call, to be guided by faith and in the power of the Holy spirit to work to restore the world in whichever way God blesses us to do so, with whatever gifts we have.
We will spend eternity in our Father’s kingdom but he made this world and made us to live in it as it is, once perfect and now broken: and in his strength we live to help return our world to that once perfect creation, to bring God’s kingdom to our world.
I’m sure many of us feel overwhelmed by our circumstances at times, by that sense of what next! But since we do not have that God perspective we can only trust as Simon Guillebaud suggests that
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God….
And move around in our piece of the world with that encouragement, using the gifts we have, while being guided by God.
I was listening to a woman called Ingrid Bettancourt on the radio this week. She was kidnapped by Columbian Guerrillas and held captive in the jungle for 6 years, her children grew up without her and away from her, her husband ‘moved on’. Along with other prisoners not only did she have to contend with the many dangers of a vast Columbian jungle but also with the brutality of guards who were replaced every 6 months, never allowing for friendships to develop. After 5 failed attempts at escape she was chained by the neck night and day to a tree.
Eventually government forces staged a daring but successful rescue earlier this year and Ingrid was freed. Asked on the radio about her feelings towards her captors she paused a long while and then said, her main feeling was love. Love, because she knew God’s love was with her all through her ordeal and even now in the aftermath of it all, she felt in her heart that God put her in that Jungle for 6 years for a reason, that His love was to be shared and she is now waiting for his call to know what she is to do with that experience.
In the middle of terrible situations we may not know what’s coming next or how we can even get through the day, nevertheless our heavenly father is always with us, the torments of this world physical and spiritual were suffered by Jesus his son, and by yes Paul whose dangerous adventures in faith we are following and their faithfulness to God’s call has transformed the lives of millions as I’m sure Chalres Widsor’s faithful service has transformed many lives in Bolivia.
We none of us are immune from suffering, but there is also joy. The joy of Paul finally understanding where God wanted him to go next. The joy of Lydia coming to Christ through Paul’s preaching, welcoming Christ into her heart and Paul and the other Apostles in to her home, the joy of the slave girl released from the torment of her fortune telling, the joy of Ingrid Bettancourt released from the Jungle waiting for God’s call, even my joy in getting through a show with so many words, in God’s strength using the gifts he has given me to serve the play I am in and the people I work with.
In God’s strength alone do we carry on and therein lies our comfort and our joy. We all have terror moments in our lives, griefs, a painful work conversation, confronting a loved one’s behaviour, admitting something shameful, supporting someone or something when all around are opposed, witnessing our faith in a hostile environment. Where are you God we cry in distress.
When we open our hearts to God, who knows where he will lead us, Who knows what interventions we will be involved in that may change lives around us forever, may change our life’s journey.
Because we do not know and cannot predict what will happen, what can we hold onto in certainty? The presence of God at all times and in all circumstances in our lives. And what can we do with that certainty? Open our hearts to our knowing God.
Paul by being open to respond as directed by God brought results that he could not foresee. We have only human vision not our heavenly Father’s God vision.
May we open our hearts to God this morning following his call even though we don’t know what will happen next, allowing him to use us to transform his broken world, trusting in God’s vision to be our guide, Christ sacrificial love to be our inspiration and our comfort, and the power of the holy spirit to be our strength in the face of all spiritual opposition.
And one more thing I learnt this week, returning to the Phrygian bonnet, it has always been a symbol of liberty or freedom.
So may we be freed from our worries by leaving them in God’s care, freed to hear his call for our lives, freed to accept his Grace and live in his strength.
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
Amen
Acts 16:11-24
It’s seems to be becoming a pattern that around the time I am down to preach I’m either about to have a press night for a play or have just had one. In one light I could go oh no too much on, like buses all coming at the same time! In another light I could look at the preaching schedule and say hurrah looks like I’ll have a job at that time then…
As anyone self employed here will know ‘looking like there is a job in the offing’ is always a ‘a good thing’!
Perhaps I should put a bid in for more preaching thus improving my likehood of employment…. Or perhaps not. Who knows…
Whatever the Godincidence of this is, as opposed to a coincidence, I am always delighted by this weaving of God through what appears to be my mundane everyday life.
Who knows? For instance did you hear about the beautiful Roman ceremonial helmet in the news this week? It was dug up in a field in Cumbria and was auctioned for £2m. In perfect condition it is known as a Phrygian bonnet.
If we look at verse 6 of Acts 16 our chapter today, we learn that Paul has been travelling through the region of Phrygia on his way to the city of this mornings reading, Philippi.
And the last part of the text of the play I’m doing is set in the Hills of… Phyrgia who would have thought it, when the preaching schedule was drawn up…
From Saul on the road to Damascus…becoming Paul travelling through Phrygia to Philippi, so the Gospel of Christ spreads through Europe and on to us in Herne Hill, and who knows the journeys God’s Gospel will send us on?!
Who knows what’s in store for any of us, employed, self employed, unemployed, home employed, retired, studying, starting school (being baptised like Laurie), becoming Bishop of Southwark like our area Bishop Christopher is about to become.
Who knows what is in store for us. Perhaps the times feel more uncertain than ever at the moment, with our economy, with severe cuts looming in public services, and those benefit cuts, all of whose knock on effects we are not yet fully clear about. It may feel like a worrying time for many of us.
In such times, one of our mission partners Simon Guillebaud from the Great Lakes Outreach in Burundi, whose dvd and book are currently available to buy or to borrow (I have a copies of each), Simon has a thought in one section of that dvd, which may be of interest
Safety, he suggests, is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
I want us to share the encouragement of those words this morning as we continue to follow Paul’s small band of believers who like many, or I would suggest actually ALL of us here, could also say “who knows what is in store for us”.
We have had enough trials and tribulations with our own clergy on the medical front in the past year to know how true that is, And we think of the Windsor family this morning who lost Charles suddenly this weekend after years of faithful mission service in Bolivia. We can trust that God has been a sustaining presence throughout and we pray that in all circumstances his love is felt, even when circumstances seem bewildering and distressing.
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
So let us just remember a little of what Cameron said when introducing this series back in September, since we are now deep into the story of how Paul reached further and wider with the gospel than anyone had dared dream might even be possible.
Cameron spoke about the Gospel writer Luke’s focus in recounting these Acts of Mission, being:
to inspire us in our own Acts of Mission in spreading the Gospel far and wide, individually and as a church;
to help us understand that this mission is all, and only, about Jesus, and it's all the work of His Spirit.
And as Cameron alerted us, Luke cautions us that we are to expect stiff spiritual opposition at every turn!
Inspiration for mission,
all and only about Jesus and the work of His Spirit
expect stiff spiritual opposition
All these aspects we see in this morning’s adventure.
Last week Cameron spoke of ‘keeping on keeping on in faith’, heeding God’s ‘nos’ even when they are frustrating, and trusting in faith, that there will be a divine ‘yes’ ahead, in God’s time not ours.
This week having finally received that divine ‘yes’ in the dream which set Paul, Silas, Timothy and now Luke himself (note how the story is now told as we) on the road to Troas the name now of the ancient city of Troy, now the four set sail deep into Europe, bringing the Gospel to Us!
First the 4 sail to Samothrace, and then on to Neapolis and then on inland to the Macedonian city of Philippi.
Philippi was also a Roman Colony Luke tells us quite deliberately; giving us a context for what is about to happen. Colonies like this one were set up to keep the rule of Rome strong in the region. Often retired Roman soldiers would come to live in cities such as these to maintain a strong Roman presence.
Perhaps Luke tells us Philippi is a colony city to explain why Paul was teaching by the River and not in a synagogue as he had in so many other cities.
We must assume that the Jewish population of Philippi was so small that in this Maecedonian city colonised by the Romans there was no synagogue to attend, and so the alternative venue (as decreed in Jewish law for Sabbath worship), would have been a building or some outdoor space, in this case a River.
So in this European land with no substantial Jewish community of worshippers from which to build upon in his preaching of the Gospel Paul and his Apostles were incredibly vulnerable.
Nevertheless In his first European encounters Paul crosses boundaries of race and gender as he meets two very different women where they are, and the consequences of his being open to respond as directed by God bring results that Paul could not foresee.
When the first of these women, Lydia hears Paul teaching the Gospel of Christ by the river, she opens her heart to Jesus and her home to the preacher of his Gospel. This is a risk in a Roman colony city. Recently, in Rome there had been public disorder involving the Jewish population and many had been thrown out, so in a Roman controlled city like Philippi any Jews would be regarded with suspicion.
Even for Lydia an independent business woman trading in the highly sought after expensive purple cloth and owning her own home, spending time with Jews and adopting this strange new religion they preached was a risk.
And for Paul this risk taken at God’s command would soon mean his arrest and imprisonment.
For not only did he preach of Christ’s healing sacrifice, but in the power of the Holy spirit, as Christ had done , he cast out a demon tormenting a young slave girl. To her benefit undoubtedly but not to the benefit of her owner who was making good money from the powers the tormented girl had for fortune telling. And so the incensed business man has Paul arrested for ruining his business. It puts me in mind of the fury of slave traders confronted by Christian abolitionists in the past and today of the rage of multinantionals forced to restructure unjust business practices frequently due to pressure from contemporary Christian activists.
We may be called on in many different ways to spread the Gospel, and manifest the love and justice of our faith. And like Paul we may not know what path that may lead us along. No doubt Paul is imprisoned for spreading an illegal and dangerous new religion.
Nevertheless extraordinary things come out of this imprisonment as we shall hear next week, and in the meantime a young woman is freed from torment and who knows what her life may have become as a result.
. and an older woman completely at the opposite end of the economic spectrum becomes immersed in her new life in Christ helping to found the strong and longlived church at Philippi so lovingly written to and encouraged by Paul as we know from his letters to the Philippians.
And Who knows the impact ultimately on the slave girl’s owner. Yes he has Paul and Silas imprisoned, but his life may yet be changed forever as a result of Paul’s actions. Would he later review the way he had made his money off another’s suffering and wonder about the way he lived? Would he follow what happens to Paul once in prison and be affected by that?
In all our God inspired interventions we cannot know what God will do as a result, we cannot know how lives may be transformed. We can only respond to the call.
We live in a world that is God’s broken creation, colonised by the importance of our selfish human desires at the expense of the weak, the defenceless, at the expense of living the abundant life God intended for us.
We do not live in a world of all joy and no pain, of all safety and no danger. As Christians we are to live in the world as it is, to listen for God’s call, to be guided by faith and in the power of the Holy spirit to work to restore the world in whichever way God blesses us to do so, with whatever gifts we have.
We will spend eternity in our Father’s kingdom but he made this world and made us to live in it as it is, once perfect and now broken: and in his strength we live to help return our world to that once perfect creation, to bring God’s kingdom to our world.
I’m sure many of us feel overwhelmed by our circumstances at times, by that sense of what next! But since we do not have that God perspective we can only trust as Simon Guillebaud suggests that
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God….
And move around in our piece of the world with that encouragement, using the gifts we have, while being guided by God.
I was listening to a woman called Ingrid Bettancourt on the radio this week. She was kidnapped by Columbian Guerrillas and held captive in the jungle for 6 years, her children grew up without her and away from her, her husband ‘moved on’. Along with other prisoners not only did she have to contend with the many dangers of a vast Columbian jungle but also with the brutality of guards who were replaced every 6 months, never allowing for friendships to develop. After 5 failed attempts at escape she was chained by the neck night and day to a tree.
Eventually government forces staged a daring but successful rescue earlier this year and Ingrid was freed. Asked on the radio about her feelings towards her captors she paused a long while and then said, her main feeling was love. Love, because she knew God’s love was with her all through her ordeal and even now in the aftermath of it all, she felt in her heart that God put her in that Jungle for 6 years for a reason, that His love was to be shared and she is now waiting for his call to know what she is to do with that experience.
In the middle of terrible situations we may not know what’s coming next or how we can even get through the day, nevertheless our heavenly father is always with us, the torments of this world physical and spiritual were suffered by Jesus his son, and by yes Paul whose dangerous adventures in faith we are following and their faithfulness to God’s call has transformed the lives of millions as I’m sure Chalres Widsor’s faithful service has transformed many lives in Bolivia.
We none of us are immune from suffering, but there is also joy. The joy of Paul finally understanding where God wanted him to go next. The joy of Lydia coming to Christ through Paul’s preaching, welcoming Christ into her heart and Paul and the other Apostles in to her home, the joy of the slave girl released from the torment of her fortune telling, the joy of Ingrid Bettancourt released from the Jungle waiting for God’s call, even my joy in getting through a show with so many words, in God’s strength using the gifts he has given me to serve the play I am in and the people I work with.
In God’s strength alone do we carry on and therein lies our comfort and our joy. We all have terror moments in our lives, griefs, a painful work conversation, confronting a loved one’s behaviour, admitting something shameful, supporting someone or something when all around are opposed, witnessing our faith in a hostile environment. Where are you God we cry in distress.
When we open our hearts to God, who knows where he will lead us, Who knows what interventions we will be involved in that may change lives around us forever, may change our life’s journey.
Because we do not know and cannot predict what will happen, what can we hold onto in certainty? The presence of God at all times and in all circumstances in our lives. And what can we do with that certainty? Open our hearts to our knowing God.
Paul by being open to respond as directed by God brought results that he could not foresee. We have only human vision not our heavenly Father’s God vision.
May we open our hearts to God this morning following his call even though we don’t know what will happen next, allowing him to use us to transform his broken world, trusting in God’s vision to be our guide, Christ sacrificial love to be our inspiration and our comfort, and the power of the holy spirit to be our strength in the face of all spiritual opposition.
And one more thing I learnt this week, returning to the Phrygian bonnet, it has always been a symbol of liberty or freedom.
So may we be freed from our worries by leaving them in God’s care, freed to hear his call for our lives, freed to accept his Grace and live in his strength.
Safety is not the absence of danger but the presence of God.
Amen
posted by Parish Administrator at 5:35 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home