Sermon 29th April 2012

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, preaches based on the reading from Revelation 21, verses 1-8.

HOPE

At the end of this sermon I am going to draw a link between the new church kitchen over there [St P’s: St Saviours’ new church kitchen] – at least I still thinkof it as new! – our bathroom at home and the theme of Hope which is today’s sermon title. So at least I might keep your attention as you wonder for the next fifteen minutes or so, “How on earth is he going to do that?!”

But how I’d like to start is to ask everyone to close their eyes for a while……..

…and then quietly just imagine that the limits of this building are in fact all we know, so that when you open your eyes when I tell you…in a few moments….what you will be seeing is your entire world.

Keep your eyes shut just now but what will you see when you open them? You’ll look around and see a place of peace and not a little beauty, filled with a lovely mix of people. It’s light; you might even see a glimpse of greenery or blue sky or hints of cloud. There is a small side room where food and drink might come from, the hall [St P: church] has spaces going off it so there is variation. There

is teaching to exercise the mind, music to lift the soul, it can be arranged [St P: there is some space] to allow children to run around and there is plenty of space for people to talk and talk. It’s not a perfect image of course, as we’d have to think about places to sleep and so on but it will do.

So open your eyes now and look up and then around you for a few seconds…..

I wonder if you’d agree with me that it’s not a bad place to be, but it does have its limitations doesn’t it? ……Imagine that in fact this was all we did have…… Where would we cycle or run, how would we travel and see new places and new people, how could we ever stand on a mountain top and see stunning, snow-covered mountains for 60 miles in each direction? If this was all we were told we had, wouldn’t we always have that niggling deep desire that there was something beyond these walls, that there was more to life than this? It’s not a bad place, some of it is pretty good, but surely something more lies beyond?

I wonder whether Hope is a deeply felt desire, tinged with an element of possibility, that the limitations of what we see around us can be broken through and that there is something better beyond what we have and see…

Hope often arises of course in the limitations of suffering. When things are bad, particularly if they involve pain and suffering of any kind, then hope arises that improvements will be made, that things will get better, that pain will be relieved. Suffering is often a fine sharpener of Hope.

Suffering of course can arise on all kinds of levels. From the personal, physical suffering of a long term illness or disability for example, or the deeply personal emotional suffering of a baby lost in childbirth or a relationship broken or the death of a loved one, to - at one other extreme – the national suffering of a country torn apart by genocide or the complex political suffering, for example, of

a city or a country or even a whole landmass so torn apart that it must be divided by a political or even a physical wall. Think Rwanda for genocide or Belfast, Israel/Palestine or the Iron Curtain for the city, country or landmass divided by a physical wall. Think South Africa for the political wall of apartheid. In all of these situations, the personal, the national and the political, people have looked up at the limitations they find themselves in and they have found from somewhere the strength to Hope.

St Paul knew suffering of course and you just may at this point have some words vaguely forming in the back of your mind that we might even be challenged to “rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character produces hope.” Thankyou Paul for breaking it down in that way and helping us to see how Hope can be formed in the crucible of suffering – find the strength to deal with your suffering, to persevere and you might find that actually you grow in your character, that is your maturity and your ability to deal with things and from that seedbed might spring Hope, that deep desire tinged with an element of real

possibility that the limitations caused by your suffering can be broken.

The scoffers of course are the other voices around, those that counsel hopelessness. Give up they might say, accept your limitations. There is nothing that can be done.

Against that, Hope, as they say, springs eternal. St Paul would go on as he does in that Romans’ passage, to say that “Hope does not disappoint us” “because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” We’ll come on to specifically Christian Hope in a moment but everywhere you look you can see this principle at work, that the scoffers are not correct,

that even the bleakest of situations, the most apparently hopeless of limiting circumstances, can be broken through.

At the national and political level, who would ever have imagined that the brutal wall of apartheid could ever so dramatically come crashing down in South Africa or the decades of separation caused by the Iron Curtain in Europe the same?

In a more extreme example, who would imagine that anyone could find Hope after the horrors of genocide in Rwanda but Google “Hope in Rwanda after genocide” and you will see plenty of evidence that there is. I have brought just one example which is an article from something called the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania which states that today, 17 years after

the slaughter, Rwanda is considered one of the safest African countries. I know these issues can be more complex than simple slogans but it would have been very difficult to imagine that seventeen years ago..

On the personal level, until we moved offices recently and no longer had desks of our own – it’s the new thing called “hot desking” if you haven’t come across it - I had a picture on my desk at work of a Frenchman called Philippe Croizon swimming the channel. He did in around 13 hours. Very respectable indeed. But this becomes a story ridden with Hope when you learn that the reason that in the picture you see that he has to breathe all the way across through a facemask and snorkel tube is that he lost both his arms and both his legs in an accident so he swims with specially adapted prosthetic flippers and his little stumps of arms…

I heard a similar story talking to someone on a train on the way to the Olympic Park a few weeks ago.. ..we were talking about the Paralympics. He had been scuba diving, he said, in the Philippines recently and the person who seemed to enjoy the diving most and seemed to get most out of it in fact had cerebral palsy. But he could get into a wetsuit with air tanks and get under the water and under

that water he began to break free from his limitations.

The whole history of Paralympic sport of course is a triumph of Hope over physical limitations.

And what of specifically Christian Hope? Well, no wonder Cameron has planned for at least two sermons on the topic in this series, there is potentially so much to be said, but I just offer these thoughts arising from today’s New Testament reading.

The vision in Revelation is of a completely renewed heaven and earth….note not just a new earth but a completely new heaven and earth. The way I read this is in the context of the passage is that the relationship between heaven and earth is to be so fundamentally changed that both must be completely renewed. The hope is that no longer will we be bound by the limitations caused by the

separation of earth and heaven, if you like the wall or the apartheid that divides mankind on earth from God in heaven. That relationship between God and man will be so restored that “the dwelling of God is going to be with men and he will live with them.” Forgive the male specific language. That language is of course not remotely the full meaning as the writer goes on to say that mankind “will be

God’s people and God himself will be with them and be their God.” Can you sense the limitations of the way we currently relate to the God who we might only catch glimpses of, broken down, and the fullness of that relationship with God restored and as it should be.

And the vision is that this full and limitless relationship will take place within a place, a time and space if you like, that itself is completely restored. Everything will be made new….. “Write this down” the writer is urged specifically by the figure of God in the vision, “for these words can be trusted and are true.” “I am making all things new.” They are being spoken by the one who was there at the beginning and will be there at the end, who is the Alpha and the Omega. Don’t even worry, He seems to me to be saying, about the perfectly respectable scientific predictions that we hear quite often at the moment that one day the entire universe will collapse back in on itself and all stars burn out, whether that is in billions or trillions of years. I will be there. I was there at the beginning and I

will still be there at the End. Even the limitations of the whole of created matter, as we currently perceive it cannot hold me nor ultimately, prevent or destroy my relationship with you.

And within this place, what you might describe in words that would have been full of meaning for first century Jewish Christians as “the new Jerusalem”, (replacing the idea of a city where there is a Temple where before then people might meet with God), what of the suffering that so imposes limitations on our human experience? Well the Christian hope, says the writer, is this: that there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because the old order, the old way of things, the old limitations, the old inevitabilities of this life have passed away. They have been completely replaced and made new. It is done. I invite you now to drink from the water of life, not the water of suffering anddeath.

Pause…

For me there is great power for Hope in these words, and in particular because they themselves are not limited. Inherent in these words, for me anyway, is the idea that hope is not just for this life, hope is not bounded by the limitations of this life with all its imperfections. Is there hope in this life for justice? Well yes, possibly, if you are fortunate enough to be able to bring your cause successfully

before a human court in the time you have available. And if not?

….But bring in the idea of God and you open up the hope for perfect justice.

Is there hope for equality of opportunity and development of human potential? Well yes if you are fortunate enough to live in appropriate prosperity and at an appropriate time (and thank God that there are those passionately committed to ensuring opportunities are available to as many as possible to live fulfilled lives). And if not?

But bring in the idea of a God who fully restores everything and yes, you open up the hope of perfect opportunity for all.

Is there hope for life beyond our sickness and death? Well yes, if you think of a God who has actually broken the power of death.

And how credible are these Christian ideas? And what should our response to them be now and how relevant are they in the modern world?

Well, for me, Christian Hope is not some airy-fairy, silly, fluffy sort of naïve optimism in the face of stark reality. Quite the opposite. It is formed in the sheer, real brutality of first century torture and death by crucifixion and then the experiences and accounts of the many who saw and heard and touched Jesus, free from the limitations even of death itself and appearing to them bodily resurrected from the dead.

In this book “Surprised by Hope” which Cameron gave me 6 months ago when I was licensed as a Reader, Bishop Tom Wright argues that the vision in Revelation of the new heaven and the new earth is not a vision of a place where we might all leave earth to go to as disembodied souls when we die, the sort of account we might often think of as the Christian hope of heaven, but rather it shows how God intends to do for the whole of creation with its entire history what he has done in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that is to make it new.

So what is our response to these ideas of Christian Hope? If God is going to do all that should we not just put our feet up and do anything we like until God eventually sorts the entire mess out. No! I don’t know if you ever read the story of Robinson Crusoe in which he tries to tell Man Friday the Christian story of forgiveness and Man Friday says great, I can do anything I want as God is going to forgive me in the end! No…read again the stark warning about God’s abhorrence of deliberate sinfulness at the end of that Revelation passage this morning and you just know that is not the way it works. For me it is the same with hope. For those whose hearts and minds have seen the enormity of the Hope that Christian faith brings, it seems to me rather we are compelled to try to do what we can to start to bring that sense of hope about here and now. No wonder that Christian people so often feel compelled to compassion…..how can we do anything else with the hope of glory in our hearts?

And finally how relevant might these Christian ideas of hope be in our modern world? There is so much that could be said about this as I hope I have given just hints of but for now I offer just two stories.

The first is from Marcus Brigstocke, the comedian, who wrote recently on the whole topic of religious belief saying essentially that he finds so much of these God ideas difficult but when his close friend died suddenly and relatively young recently he so much wanted to have hope that his friend James had not just gone and a hope that he could pass on to James’ young son.

And the second concerns a man in his forties who was helping us recently to paint our bathroom at home. He’s one of the men who worked on that beautiful new kitchen down at St Saviour’s a few years back. Finishing off our bathroom a few months ago one Saturday, there were just the two of us in the house, me downstairs working or reading and him upstairs working. And he came down

towards the end of his shift to clean his brushes and popped his head in and said “If you don’t mind me asking, you go to church and that don’t you? So why do you think we are all here?” and for twenty minutes or so we had this great, sympathetic conversation. I would love one day to talk to him again. It felt like the kind of conversation that could easily have gone on for a long time. I am almost certain that he does not normally attend a church. And back upstairs he went to finish off. But when he finally came down, ready to leave, he put his head through the door again and said what I thought was one of the most simply profound things I have heard for a long time,

“You’ve got to have Hope, intcha?”

Amen to that!

Sermon 22nd April 2012

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Hebrews 11, verses 1 to 12.

651 million – approximately! If I then tell you that figure took all of 0.15 of a second to arrive at, you’ll think that I have been Googling again. Well, I have indeed been; and that is the number of results for an internet search on the word ‘faith’: 651 million; give or take!

I’d best be honest, in case you try this yourself. The first results pages include links to Faith shoes, guitars, beauty products; or to musicians, albums, songs, or TV channels with that name – for example. So I then did a more specific search, for ‘definitions of faith’. Given the current general UK myth that we are so past faith, you might expect there to be a dramatic reduction in the number of links. And so there is, in fact: the result numbers drop all the way down – to 140, million, again approximately (in .11 of a second this time)!

The initial conclusion that I dare to offer you, then, is that there really is still a great interest ‘out there’ in matters of faith. People want to know about the nature of faith, it would seem: what it is; what it looks like; what difference it makes; what it achieves. And if we think that Christianity has nothing to say to or about that, then we may as well just pack up and go home right now. Not only is it known as ‘the faith’; Christianity has faith at the very core of its essential nature. I’d guess that’s probably why our Bishop has chosen faith as the first of the 3 keys of his Call to Mission.

Yes, as promised earlier in the year, we will be spending some time taking up this Episcopal challenge. So, if you didn’t get a letter about it before Lent – or have lost it – do collect one from the back of church. As you will have seen (or will do), this isn’t a strategy, or a programme, as such. What it is, rather, is an invitation: to respond to God’s call. It’s a chance for us to do that as individuals. It’s also a chance for us to respond together, both as a congregation and as a Diocese. The leaflet suggested that we do this in Lent. In Herne Hill we think that the very best setting to do that in is in this one – of us considering what it means to live as God’s Easter people.

Now of course it would be easy to return to life as it was before Easter. There’s plenty enough to be getting on with: in the world; at work, or home; in church – take your pick, if you have that luxury. Either way, Easter has been; it might have been a good time for you – or not. But now it has gone, and life is carrying on apace. Before we know it, the Diamond Jubilee will be upon us; then it’s the London Olympics (less than 100 days to go now); next the summer break; followed by the whole back-to-school routine; then it’s Christmas; and hello 2013! I’m not wanting to wish your life away here, but off we will go, into another cycle of the same routines and events, albeit with some variations. But. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. I’d go so far as to say it’s meant NOT to be that way; and Easter is God’s biggest shove telling us so!

I was very struck by a common theme in people’s reactions to Good Friday’s service. Having spent 3 hours reflecting on the cross in different ways, there was a real sense of ‘So what am I meant to do now, after all that?’ Well, that’s the best question that we can ever ask, I’d say – not ‘just’ on Good Friday, but any time we consider what God has done. It is especially relevant for us to ask it in the aftermath of Easter. If we did have to pick out the one event that changed all things for all people for all time, Easter weekend would be my best offer. On Good Friday Jesus died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins. On Easter Day God raised him to life, and so broke the power of death itself. Hallelujah! Nothing is, or can be, the same again after that.

Yes, of course life could carry on as it did before. But, in keeping with our focus at the start of 2011, we can choose instead to live on purpose. Specifically, we can choose to live in purposeful response to these wonderful, universe-changing realities that we have just celebrated. Feeling bold, I’d say actually that this is the only right choice that we can make. If we believe what we say we do as Christians, then how can we keep on living the same way as before? Yes, it is hard for us to live every day at Easter-intensity; but God gives us so many chances to renew our commitment to be His people and live as people of faith. The best chance that He offers us for that is Easter; and now here is one way to help us to take it up.

So, faith; hope; love: those fine Christian qualities that Paul extolled to believers in ancient Corinth. They are also “The core values which lie at the heart of our lives as witnesses to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour”. At Bishop Christopher’s invitation we are going to examine each of them in depth. Once is not enough for such major themes, of course; so we’ll do them twice through, in sequence. The plan is to help us to be sufficiently grounded in faith, hope, and love that when Pentecost arrives we’ll be ready to move on to the next stage of this process. You see, as I’ve said, this isn’t just an exercise for our heads (though that is where it starts): this is about living it out; and each of us must take responsibility for doing that.

So, we’ll start at the beginning – with faith. Faith, hope, and love are intimately linked to each other, of course. In their context within Christianity, they are interdependent; not one of them can exist without the other two. But faith is where it all begins, for the simple reason that’s given here by the anonymous writer of this New Testament letter to the Hebrews. As it’s put at the end of verse 6, whoever comes to God must have faith (GNB) / believe (NIV) that God exists, and that He rewards those who seek Him. It sounds obvious, and it is; but it still needs saying: nobody can know that God exists, in the way we know something physical exists. Any relationship with God must then start with an act of faith: that He exists; that He offers hope; and that He is love.

There simply is no better statement about that faith than the one here, in Hebrews 11: “To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. (GNB) / Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (NIV)”. Scholars have argued long and hard whether this is a definition of faith; or a summary of what faith does. We can’t know for sure; but there is something vital to note about faith. I’ve discovered that in the old Authorised Version of the Bible the word ‘faith’ only appears twice in the whole Old Testament! For people in Old Testament times faith wasn’t a noun, just as it wasn’t for the author of John’s gospel. He only ever used verbs, or doing words for faith, just as the Old Testament did. Those verbs are translated into English as words, or actions, like ‘believe’, or ‘trust’, or even ‘hope’ – because that is faith!

Martin Luther expressed it rather well too: “It is a living, creative, active and powerful thing this faith. The three other gospel-authors, and Paul, did write about faith as either a noun or a verb, and they did so rather a lot! Their special contribution to our understanding of what faith is is that faith is ‘into’ or ‘upon’ the person of Jesus. That turns faith into something active too, a doing thing, rather than a possession that we have, or get. In the New Testament faith is all about Jesus, as God’s Son. People are to have faith in him; so we believe in what he did on the cross; we trust in the fact that God has raised him from the dead; and so we hope, in the eternal difference that all this has made, for the whole of God’s creation.

This is the great crescendo that the author of Hebrews is working towards. But faith is a word that appears throughout the New Testament. Even though it is all about Jesus there, the same concept appears throughout the Old Testament too. So there’s mistake that we must not make: to think that faith is a New Testament invention. No, “It was by faith that people of ancient times won God’s approval (GNB) / This is what the ancients were commended for” (NIV). And, in case we might have missed this vital point, “Without faith no one can (GNB) / it is impossible to (NIV) please God”. That applies to everyone – whether we live after Jesus, or before his birth in Bethlehem. In fact it may have taken rather more faith to live before Jesus. Those of us who have lived after him have seen so much more of God’s bigger plan at work. Take this list of the ancients in Hebrews 11; not that we have time even for the shortened version of it. The writer is keen for us to see how each of them lived by faith in such very real – and challenging – ways, though.

Well, “To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see (GNB) / Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see (NIV)”, remember. So here is faith that looks at creation and sees a creator; that looks at death, and sees new life; that hears God’s promise, and builds a whole life on that. How big a challenge to our faith is all of that? The big question for us too is if we will have an active, living faith, and trust God for His promises – even when there is no sign of them being fulfilled. Good job we have time to ponder on this and to look at faith again later in this series, then.

In terms of that pondering, the Bishop’s leaflet has some ideas that we might explore. Not all of them may be for you right now, but do have a look. Feel free to write your own if you need to; but take this Godly time to think about how Christian discipleship is following in the footsteps of Jesus. So for example: what things do you do, or not do, because of faith? What is it about faith that you don’t understand? How can you grow in it? Might you dare to speak to one person about faith? Who? What might you say? And, when we get there, what will you want to write on the enclosed response card? What is your faith-response to the call of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who died on the cross for us, and has been raised to life so that we can too?

We end by praying the prayer of this Call to Mission:

“God of faith, deepen our faith

so we may bear witness to Christ in the world;

God of hope, strengthen our hope

so we may be signposts to your transforming presence;

God of love, kindle our love

so that, in a fragile and divided world,

we may be signs of the faith, hope, love

which we share in Jesus Christ. Amen.”