Sermon 21st August
Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, preaches based on the reading from Acts 10, verses 1-8
Last Sunday Do you remember Adrian managed the marvellous feat of 2 sermons in 1; snapshots from the riots in one, Vanessa throwing the pink fluffy dice, Ben as Aeneas getting healed by Freya’s Peter in the other. But both sermons talked about the way God communicated with people through the miracle of healing, for Aeneas who was able to walk ,and for Tabitha who was raised from the dead.
And Adrian asked us to think about what God had said to us last week through the riots. What had He communicated to us?
Well we’re going to try a little speaking listening and communicating of our own this morning…
Do What The Angel Tells You
Whisper phrase from both sides. Simon will start it and the last ones come and tell Me.
Quietly pass it on to your neighbour, so they can hear it but not so we can all hear it. Let’s see if what Simon says reaches us at the front….
After
Sometimes we can clearly make out what God is trying to communicate with us and do what he asks,
sometimes it gets confused, because we aren’t listening carefully or don’t want to hear what he has to say to us,
or we haven’t realised that was God speaking to us.
God can communicate with us in all sorts of ways.
And fantastically along with miracles, answers to prayer, he sometimes sends angels; as he did with Cornelius in this morning’s passage.
Cornelius, the Roman commander of an Italian Band, not a bunch of musicians, but a troop of Italian soldiers , 600 of them, working for the Roman Empire.
Cornelius is an officer in the Roman Army.
This would have made him hated by many patriotic Jews, since the Roman army was the army of occupation in Israel at that time, and Caesarea where Cornelius is stationed is the headquarters of the Roman Governor of Judea.
So it must have seemed a strange thing that a Roman Officer as powerful as Cornelius would choose to worship the God of the people whose land he and his army were occupying…
I imagine some of the officers he worked alongside might have laughed at him, even disliked him for it.
All the same Cornelius and all his family believe in God. Cornelius loves God and makes sure to do all the things he is supposed to in obedience to God, praying to God always and giving money generously to those in need.
So, following the rules of the Jewish faith at the 9th hour, what we would call 3 o’clock in the afternoon (9 hours after dawn) he and his family and servants are praying.
Now at the 9th hour as Cornelius prays an angel appears to him and tells him what God wants him to do.
The Bible tells us of over 300 times when Angels are sent by God to communicate with people, from Genesis to Revelations and sometimes people hear clearly what God wants them to do ….like in our whispering ….and sometimes they don’t.
Can anyone here think of some of those times when angels appear to people in the Bible?
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Elizabeth, Mary
Well God sent me an angel this week, a lady angel, in fact I think she’s here (…she was at St Sav’s , Simon saw her didn’t you Simon…can you describe her….). Do you think I’ve gone bonkers…can you stand up Lady Angel… yes her name’s Melissa.
I don’t think Melissa is an angel for everyone or even if she will ever be an angel again, but last Wednesday morning she was for me.
I was walking from my house to Herne Hill station to catch a train to work in North London, and when I got to the station who should I see sitting in the waiting room but Melissa.
She looked busy texting or reading something on her mobile so I thought ‘oh I won’t bother her,’
but I then I thought ,’oh go on then there’s a little while till the train goes, go and say hello she can always tell me to clear off…tho you probably wouldn’t would you??
Now unbeknownst to Melissa, as I walked to the train station that morning, I had been praying to God about this morning.
‘Oh God’, I was praying, ‘can you help me out here, I have a sermon to give on Sunday as you know and I can’t hear what you want me to say.
It’s the 41st anniversary of Linus Van Pelt falling in love with Sally Brown in the Peanuts, Charlie Brown cartoons , I like the Peanuts cartoons, they’re fun can I do something about that?
Or what about the riots,should I talk about them?... Oh but Adrian talked about that last Sunday, have we had enough of that?
Or has anything funny happened to me this week…anything funny about Roman soldiers? How about Asterix?
Or how about how Cornelius’ name sounds a bit like corned beef….
No? Oh I don’t know God but it’s Wednesday already and I’ve got loads of other stuff to think about work stuff and home stuff and holiday stuff please can you help, so I don’t waste everyone’s Sunday morning…’.
So that’s what I’d been thinking of on my walk to the station.
So now I saw Melissa, sat down with her and we started chatting….she and Dan the boys had been away on holiday to Jersey to visit family… and they hadn’t seen any news… and then they came back and oh my goodness! Riots!
What’s been going on?? They thought.
Well a train arrived and it turned out Melissa and I were both getting that train and Melissa was only getting off one stop before me, she Kentish Town , me West Hampstead…so quite a lot of stops, and quite a long time to talk….
As it turned out we didn’t talk about Peanuts and Charlie Brown, we didn’t talk about Asterix or even Corned Beef but we did talk about the riots - almost the whole way - and I talked about Adrian’s sermon last week, about ‘what has God been saying to you this week’
and Melissa said, ‘and when are you next talking in church…
ME: ooh this Sunday actually…
MEL: and are you talking about the riots…
ME: no Adrian did that last week
MEL: oh but you can still talk about it…
ME: oh I don’t know…
MEL: well I’d like to hear some more about it….
And then it struck me….
What had I been asking God for help with as I walked to the station?
And who did I start chatting to at the station?
And what did she keep going on at me to talk about?
Now I am not saying that anyone who speaks to you just after you’ve been praying will have a communication for you from God…it might just be the man who’s come to read the gas meter, or it might be the dog lady come to shampoo and blowdry your pooch with the firminator…
But sometimes I believe God may have things to say to us that we may hear from the gas man or the dog lady, or our friends or neighbours, our teachers, workmates or who knows - maybe even the preacher….
So we need to be alert….listening for God.
In this morning’s reading Cornelius is following God as well as he knows how, then the angel comes - an angel comes!! Can you imagine! and tells Cornelius to do something that seems quite odd, to send his servants to find a strange man in another city and do whatever that strange man says…. odd, but Cornelius does what he’s told, is obedient, and the man who comes to his house changes his life forever.
That man is Jesus’ disciple Peter, who tells Cornelius, that Jesus, the son of the God he worships, came to earth and died and came back to life, so that he Cornelius and all people no matter who they are Jews or Romans or whoever, could live with the God forever, be loved by him and have the love and the life God made them to have.
That news changes Cornelius’ life. He now understands that because of Jesus his relationship with the God is no longer that of just an obedient Roman follower of God, but as a child of God, blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit which fills him and all his family as Peter preaches to him., God loves ALL people.
Peter says vv 34-35
GOOD NEWS
‘I now realize that it is true that God treats everyone on the same basis.
Those who worship him and do what is right are acceptable to him no matter what race they belong to.’
NIV
I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism.
But accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.
‘do what is right– doing good things for God, living the way God wants us to live.
Luke who is thought to have written the book of Acts’s , emphasizes that a life of faith in God needs to be a strongly ethical one, where we think about all we do in terms of whether our behavior pleases God.
It’s interesting that the time Cornelius is praying when the angel comes to him is the same time in (Acts 3:1) that Peter and John had been praying at the Beautiful gate when Peter healed the lame man in Jesus’ name.
As a result of that doing good, that healing and Peter’s preaching afterwards about 5000 people come to believe in Jesus; and even though it means Peter and John are arrested, once they are released they and all those believers in Christ with them are filled with the Holy Spirit as Acts Ch 4 verses 34-35 says:
. GOOD NEWS
With great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God poured rich blessings on them all. There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale and hand it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed to each one according to his need.
NIV
With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them and brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
In the community of Christian believers Peter and John are a part of no one is ever short of the things they need everything is shared out according to what a person needs.
Luke says Jesus’ Good news is Good news for the poor.
And we see healing and preaching and doing good happening all through Acts.
I wonder how God is communicating with us, to tell us how we can change people’s lives in this country today?
How are we doing good?
Just as Cornelius life was changed forever because he did what God told him and Peter did what God told him.
When we reflect on the riots and what happens next in our community and our country, how can we share what we know about living as Christians?
- that we believe there is more to life than getting stuff, trainers, clothes, games, tv’s ,music players.
- How can we encourage our brothers and sisters to be part of the fun that were the clean up posses in Clapham,
- the fun of handing out cupcakes like Ms Cupcake did in Brixton,
- the we love Peckham post it notes people; writing the reasons why they love Peckham on post it notes stuck to a boarded up shop.
How do we all stop thinking about getting stuff and start thinking about doing stuff?
Luke thought to have written the book of Acts was also thought to have been a doctor:
So Dr Luke as Adrian as calls him, is, as we might expect , a great believer in healing, in doing stuff to make our world more like God’s kingdom.
Perhaps we can all pray that when God tries to tell us the things he’d like us to do for him, to change his world to be more like the world he wants for us,
perhaps when he communicates with us, maybe through something we read in our Bibles,
through something someone says to us a bit like Melissa with me on Wednesday,
however it may happen, perhaps if we pray and listen and give God the time, so we can do things for Him and his world, rather than get things for ourselves,
perhaps then we can change the burning buildings and the smashed up streets and all people’s lostness and sadness, into Ms Cupcake kindness, cleanup fun, Peckham love and a world where we are not consumers, buyers and sellers, but a family, brothers and sisters who belong to each other, who care about each other.
Jacques Ellud In his book on money –Jacques Ellud describes money as a loan from God, entrusted to us for the purpose of investing in the kingdom of heaven.
We are to bring in the Kingdom Of Heaven to the world around us through what we do, how we share God’s love, how we use his Loan.
MP’s Bankers Newspapers, Rioters we have seen all sorts of our brothers and sisters all trapped in the desperate need to get more stuff.
As Christians following the example of Jesus we must counter the getting more stuff with the giving of Christ’s love.
It doesn’t mean giving away all your lovely stuff, or never buying another thing, but perhaps we can just pause maybe and question
how we spend your money, on what;
where we give, for what purpose:
how we spend our time,?
Is what we do everyday repaying God’s Loan to us,
is it investing in his kingdom with our time , our love , our money,
Peter heals, an Angel speaks, Cornelius learns that God’s love is for everyone.
Are we hearing God when he speaks to us however it is he communicates?
Is our presence a healing one, is our message a loving one?
Perhaps we can show by example following in Jesus’ footsteps, that there is another way to live.
It’s not about getting more stuff it’s about giving God’s love.
Giving not getting. In God’s strength.
Amen
Last Sunday Do you remember Adrian managed the marvellous feat of 2 sermons in 1; snapshots from the riots in one, Vanessa throwing the pink fluffy dice, Ben as Aeneas getting healed by Freya’s Peter in the other. But both sermons talked about the way God communicated with people through the miracle of healing, for Aeneas who was able to walk ,and for Tabitha who was raised from the dead.
And Adrian asked us to think about what God had said to us last week through the riots. What had He communicated to us?
Well we’re going to try a little speaking listening and communicating of our own this morning…
Do What The Angel Tells You
Whisper phrase from both sides. Simon will start it and the last ones come and tell Me.
Quietly pass it on to your neighbour, so they can hear it but not so we can all hear it. Let’s see if what Simon says reaches us at the front….
After
Sometimes we can clearly make out what God is trying to communicate with us and do what he asks,
sometimes it gets confused, because we aren’t listening carefully or don’t want to hear what he has to say to us,
or we haven’t realised that was God speaking to us.
God can communicate with us in all sorts of ways.
And fantastically along with miracles, answers to prayer, he sometimes sends angels; as he did with Cornelius in this morning’s passage.
Cornelius, the Roman commander of an Italian Band, not a bunch of musicians, but a troop of Italian soldiers , 600 of them, working for the Roman Empire.
Cornelius is an officer in the Roman Army.
This would have made him hated by many patriotic Jews, since the Roman army was the army of occupation in Israel at that time, and Caesarea where Cornelius is stationed is the headquarters of the Roman Governor of Judea.
So it must have seemed a strange thing that a Roman Officer as powerful as Cornelius would choose to worship the God of the people whose land he and his army were occupying…
I imagine some of the officers he worked alongside might have laughed at him, even disliked him for it.
All the same Cornelius and all his family believe in God. Cornelius loves God and makes sure to do all the things he is supposed to in obedience to God, praying to God always and giving money generously to those in need.
So, following the rules of the Jewish faith at the 9th hour, what we would call 3 o’clock in the afternoon (9 hours after dawn) he and his family and servants are praying.
Now at the 9th hour as Cornelius prays an angel appears to him and tells him what God wants him to do.
The Bible tells us of over 300 times when Angels are sent by God to communicate with people, from Genesis to Revelations and sometimes people hear clearly what God wants them to do ….like in our whispering ….and sometimes they don’t.
Can anyone here think of some of those times when angels appear to people in the Bible?
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Elizabeth, Mary
Well God sent me an angel this week, a lady angel, in fact I think she’s here (…she was at St Sav’s , Simon saw her didn’t you Simon…can you describe her….). Do you think I’ve gone bonkers…can you stand up Lady Angel… yes her name’s Melissa.
I don’t think Melissa is an angel for everyone or even if she will ever be an angel again, but last Wednesday morning she was for me.
I was walking from my house to Herne Hill station to catch a train to work in North London, and when I got to the station who should I see sitting in the waiting room but Melissa.
She looked busy texting or reading something on her mobile so I thought ‘oh I won’t bother her,’
but I then I thought ,’oh go on then there’s a little while till the train goes, go and say hello she can always tell me to clear off…tho you probably wouldn’t would you??
Now unbeknownst to Melissa, as I walked to the train station that morning, I had been praying to God about this morning.
‘Oh God’, I was praying, ‘can you help me out here, I have a sermon to give on Sunday as you know and I can’t hear what you want me to say.
It’s the 41st anniversary of Linus Van Pelt falling in love with Sally Brown in the Peanuts, Charlie Brown cartoons , I like the Peanuts cartoons, they’re fun can I do something about that?
Or what about the riots,should I talk about them?... Oh but Adrian talked about that last Sunday, have we had enough of that?
Or has anything funny happened to me this week…anything funny about Roman soldiers? How about Asterix?
Or how about how Cornelius’ name sounds a bit like corned beef….
No? Oh I don’t know God but it’s Wednesday already and I’ve got loads of other stuff to think about work stuff and home stuff and holiday stuff please can you help, so I don’t waste everyone’s Sunday morning…’.
So that’s what I’d been thinking of on my walk to the station.
So now I saw Melissa, sat down with her and we started chatting….she and Dan the boys had been away on holiday to Jersey to visit family… and they hadn’t seen any news… and then they came back and oh my goodness! Riots!
What’s been going on?? They thought.
Well a train arrived and it turned out Melissa and I were both getting that train and Melissa was only getting off one stop before me, she Kentish Town , me West Hampstead…so quite a lot of stops, and quite a long time to talk….
As it turned out we didn’t talk about Peanuts and Charlie Brown, we didn’t talk about Asterix or even Corned Beef but we did talk about the riots - almost the whole way - and I talked about Adrian’s sermon last week, about ‘what has God been saying to you this week’
and Melissa said, ‘and when are you next talking in church…
ME: ooh this Sunday actually…
MEL: and are you talking about the riots…
ME: no Adrian did that last week
MEL: oh but you can still talk about it…
ME: oh I don’t know…
MEL: well I’d like to hear some more about it….
And then it struck me….
What had I been asking God for help with as I walked to the station?
And who did I start chatting to at the station?
And what did she keep going on at me to talk about?
Now I am not saying that anyone who speaks to you just after you’ve been praying will have a communication for you from God…it might just be the man who’s come to read the gas meter, or it might be the dog lady come to shampoo and blowdry your pooch with the firminator…
But sometimes I believe God may have things to say to us that we may hear from the gas man or the dog lady, or our friends or neighbours, our teachers, workmates or who knows - maybe even the preacher….
So we need to be alert….listening for God.
In this morning’s reading Cornelius is following God as well as he knows how, then the angel comes - an angel comes!! Can you imagine! and tells Cornelius to do something that seems quite odd, to send his servants to find a strange man in another city and do whatever that strange man says…. odd, but Cornelius does what he’s told, is obedient, and the man who comes to his house changes his life forever.
That man is Jesus’ disciple Peter, who tells Cornelius, that Jesus, the son of the God he worships, came to earth and died and came back to life, so that he Cornelius and all people no matter who they are Jews or Romans or whoever, could live with the God forever, be loved by him and have the love and the life God made them to have.
That news changes Cornelius’ life. He now understands that because of Jesus his relationship with the God is no longer that of just an obedient Roman follower of God, but as a child of God, blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit which fills him and all his family as Peter preaches to him., God loves ALL people.
Peter says vv 34-35
GOOD NEWS
‘I now realize that it is true that God treats everyone on the same basis.
Those who worship him and do what is right are acceptable to him no matter what race they belong to.’
NIV
I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism.
But accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.
‘do what is right– doing good things for God, living the way God wants us to live.
Luke who is thought to have written the book of Acts’s , emphasizes that a life of faith in God needs to be a strongly ethical one, where we think about all we do in terms of whether our behavior pleases God.
It’s interesting that the time Cornelius is praying when the angel comes to him is the same time in (Acts 3:1) that Peter and John had been praying at the Beautiful gate when Peter healed the lame man in Jesus’ name.
As a result of that doing good, that healing and Peter’s preaching afterwards about 5000 people come to believe in Jesus; and even though it means Peter and John are arrested, once they are released they and all those believers in Christ with them are filled with the Holy Spirit as Acts Ch 4 verses 34-35 says:
. GOOD NEWS
With great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God poured rich blessings on them all. There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale and hand it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed to each one according to his need.
NIV
With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them and brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
In the community of Christian believers Peter and John are a part of no one is ever short of the things they need everything is shared out according to what a person needs.
Luke says Jesus’ Good news is Good news for the poor.
And we see healing and preaching and doing good happening all through Acts.
I wonder how God is communicating with us, to tell us how we can change people’s lives in this country today?
How are we doing good?
Just as Cornelius life was changed forever because he did what God told him and Peter did what God told him.
When we reflect on the riots and what happens next in our community and our country, how can we share what we know about living as Christians?
- that we believe there is more to life than getting stuff, trainers, clothes, games, tv’s ,music players.
- How can we encourage our brothers and sisters to be part of the fun that were the clean up posses in Clapham,
- the fun of handing out cupcakes like Ms Cupcake did in Brixton,
- the we love Peckham post it notes people; writing the reasons why they love Peckham on post it notes stuck to a boarded up shop.
How do we all stop thinking about getting stuff and start thinking about doing stuff?
Luke thought to have written the book of Acts was also thought to have been a doctor:
So Dr Luke as Adrian as calls him, is, as we might expect , a great believer in healing, in doing stuff to make our world more like God’s kingdom.
Perhaps we can all pray that when God tries to tell us the things he’d like us to do for him, to change his world to be more like the world he wants for us,
perhaps when he communicates with us, maybe through something we read in our Bibles,
through something someone says to us a bit like Melissa with me on Wednesday,
however it may happen, perhaps if we pray and listen and give God the time, so we can do things for Him and his world, rather than get things for ourselves,
perhaps then we can change the burning buildings and the smashed up streets and all people’s lostness and sadness, into Ms Cupcake kindness, cleanup fun, Peckham love and a world where we are not consumers, buyers and sellers, but a family, brothers and sisters who belong to each other, who care about each other.
Jacques Ellud In his book on money –Jacques Ellud describes money as a loan from God, entrusted to us for the purpose of investing in the kingdom of heaven.
We are to bring in the Kingdom Of Heaven to the world around us through what we do, how we share God’s love, how we use his Loan.
MP’s Bankers Newspapers, Rioters we have seen all sorts of our brothers and sisters all trapped in the desperate need to get more stuff.
As Christians following the example of Jesus we must counter the getting more stuff with the giving of Christ’s love.
It doesn’t mean giving away all your lovely stuff, or never buying another thing, but perhaps we can just pause maybe and question
how we spend your money, on what;
where we give, for what purpose:
how we spend our time,?
Is what we do everyday repaying God’s Loan to us,
is it investing in his kingdom with our time , our love , our money,
Peter heals, an Angel speaks, Cornelius learns that God’s love is for everyone.
Are we hearing God when he speaks to us however it is he communicates?
Is our presence a healing one, is our message a loving one?
Perhaps we can show by example following in Jesus’ footsteps, that there is another way to live.
It’s not about getting more stuff it’s about giving God’s love.
Giving not getting. In God’s strength.
Amen
posted by Sharren Taylor at 1:48 pm
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