Sermon 15th September 2013

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, continues our study of Paul's letter to the Ephesians. The reading is from Ephesians 1:10 - 2:10

Well 2013 has been a big year for Fiftieth anniversaries

I'm sure like me one of the anniversaries you may be most keen to celebrate is....

The birth of the humble cassette tape..

All those mix tapes lovingly made for friends and beloveds...

Pressing Record just as the needle hit the vinyl on the correct track

Taping the top 20 on the radio on Sunday nights

Having to fix the tape with sellotape when it stretched & then snapped

Slotting the pencil through the hole to wind the tape back in when it inevitably got caught in the machine

The thrill perhaps of getting a tape recorder of your own or maybe even a radio cassette player or even ... later ...even a ...Walkman, for your portable listening pleasure 

Happy days

Or perhaps it's my fiftieth anniversary you're thinking of...moving swiftly on....

Or perhaps 

the fiftieth anniversary of the Bristol Bus Boycott where people refused to use Bristol buses for months  until hostile unions and the Bristol Bus Company allowed black & Asian drivers and conductors to be employed on the buses..the effect of that boycott eventually led to the first British Race Relations Act in 1965, but meanwhile back in Bristol in 1963, on the 28th of August the unions and Bus company relented and employees regardless of colour were hired  to work on Bristol Buses.

Perhaps that date - August 28th 1963 sounds familiar - it is also the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington DC led by the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior.

The March was blessed by an Irish American Catholic Archbishop, Patrick O'Boyle, masterminded by a gay black Southern man Bayard Rustin, and entertained by the leading singers of their day, including Bob Dylan, a Jewish man and Joan Baez, a Native American woman,  the United States of America in all her glorious diversity ... not to mention having in attendance Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Sammy Davis Junior and a host of other Hollywood stars, who came out to march in support.

But to return to buses, the great mass of people in attendance, came from right across America on buses.

People who were afraid that for having attended, they might not have a job to go back to or  might get beaten up when they returned to their neighbourhoods, alongside people who had none of those fears but who just knew to deny people their civil rights on the basis of their colour was unjust, and they all marched, on that day among many, to say so.

They all took a pause that day from their daily routines, they took a risk, they took a great leap of faith, to call for justice.

And it took place, confounding all expectations, in an atmosphere of love and peace and inspiration. A pause, a reflection before action.

Now, not 50 years ago but 1953 years ago or thereabouts Paul was experiencing an enforced pause., His period of reflection, of breathing out the stresses of his incarceration in Rome and breathing in what it meant to live in Christ, results perhaps in our study series from Ephesians

In the September edition of our Wickwar Parish Magazine, while at my dad's this week, I read a message from the Vicar David reflecting on the role of the prophets in pointing people in New directions, not just for their own good but for the good of those around them.

In the book of Isaiah God speaks to his people saying in ch 43.19 

' see I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

In the tradition of those prophets, Paul presents us with this new thing, a template for Christian living, a Landscape of Christian Faith as Cameron described it last Sunday.

And in Ephesians that template is expressed in prayer

It is worth noting that Paul prays a prayer of thanks to God for the faith of believers because faith is Christ working in us, rather than something we do.

It is grace, Paul tells us in this passage, that takes us from dead worldly life to living Christ filled life and we'll come back to that.

The Jesuit priest & writer Anthony De Mello was discussing helping people to pray with a colleague.

He writes that his colleague told him

"That he approached a Hindu guru for initiation in the art of prayer. The guru said to him,

'Concentrate on your breathing'

My friend proceeded to do just that for about five minutes, writes de Mello, Then the guru said,

'The air you breathe is God. You are breathing God in and out. Become aware of that, and stay with that awareness.'

For Anthony De Mello's friend & colleague, over many years his prayer life was enriched immensely and he discovered to his amazement that prayer can be as simple as breathing in and out.

Now clearly given that Hinduism didn't exist in AD 60 Paul was unlikely to have had a similar conversation in a Roman jail with any Hindu guru, and perhaps being Paul, not even if it had existed... but one can imagine that a long time of enforced solitude gave Paul the wonderful opportunity to be in extended prayerful communion with God in Christ - listening and thinking deeply about the nature of faith and of life in Christ.

Cameron spoke vividly last Sunday about the elemental quality of the life of the Christian

The notion of Fish who don't worry about swimming in water , 

of birds who don't worry about flying in the air

 and the notion that neither should we worry about living in the world but have the confidence to live fully in the world because we too are sustained by being in our natural element - Christ.

In living and breathing in and out we are filled with the breath of God that gives us life and carries us forward in Christ.

And if we are confident that we are living in our right element, that a right lived righteous life is where God constructed us to be, then we we will be sustained, supported and held up just as surely as the waters of the seas hold up fish and the currents of the air hold up birds.

In the death and resurrection of Christ, in this new element for living that is Christ, God is doing a new thing.

Moreover in this new thing, in this living in Christ that Paul writes of, death is no longer the end -  in Christ the physical reality of death is changed forever. 

 Christ focus us on life, not death; on freedom, not slavery. The motive is love, not oppression, God's compassion. 

Paul writes of love, grace, mercy. This Christian Landscape brings all people together  - to be what they were created to be.

Paul begins by speaking of living people being dead. 

The death in which people live is characterised by being dominated by destructive powers.

To put it at its most fundamental level, If we step back from those destructive powers and patterns of behaviour, and allow Christ to fill up our lives, we will find ourselves in our right element, we will feel better and then we can make our world feel better.

Paul is talking about the reality of God's kingdom here and now in the world we live in.

In Christ, what God wants and what is in the interests of others coincides, because God is love.

 The Kingdom of God which Paul presents in Ephesians  is not one which exploits in the interest of a few, but one which includes and cares in the interest of all. 

It produces ways of being which lead away from conflict and distrust, whereas the world's empires encourage competition and conflict and protect their interests by discounting the needs of others, and treating the poor, the weak, the strangers as expendable.

In Christ we have a chance to enter a new Landscape, to move from death to life, to choose the offer of life.

This is not a transaction of action where the new people, the faithful, the 'In Christers' live a certain way and in return receive God's love.

In this new Christ filled reality it is grace, God's grace - His generosity & goodness in giving  himself in Christ to bring healing and life and power over death - that makes the change in  all our stories.

For in this Grace, this unconditional love Paul wants us to(2:10) understand that We are created for good works, 

not acts of goodness that demonstrate that we are living in Christ - good works' are not to be reduced to a list of 'do's and 'don't's. Throughout the passage 'good' is about God's goodness and generosity. 

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We are made for goodness, we function properly as God's creation when we live our lives from a default place of goodness, of kindness, compassion, generosity and love.

As we read in 2:8-10 God's intention all along has been that people become what they were made to be and the 'earth be filled with the glory of God'. 

God's glory is God's love, God's goodness - a move in a new direction, as Isaiah would have it, from a death way of being to a life way of being - here and now. 

It is that divine vision of God's glory, God's goodness, that fuelled Martin Luther King at the culmination of many months of marching planning and inspiring

It is that vision that shapes our Christian Landscape

It may be said that we saw on the 28th of August 1963 how Christ was working in and through Martin Luther King Junior in Washington DC

MLk jnr had given the 'I have a dream' section of that great speech many times before.

1963 was not like today, where everything is captured & rebroadcast immediately, we were at the of the cassette, never mind the Internet ....

He honed that speech, repeating  it across the country, to churches congregations, at civil rights rallies, but on that day he shocked and inspired people to courage with his vision and his fearlessness.

I have a dream was not even part of his prepared written speech that day

As his prepared speech was coming to a close, the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson who had just sung, called to him

"Tell them about the dream Martin"

A reporter for the American ABC news channel covering the march on Washington recalls that the crowd didn't know that they were going to church that day....

Responding to Mahalia Jackson's call

 part of that speech went as follows

'I have a dream  today  . . . I have  a dream that  one  day every  valley  shall  be  exalted,  every  hill  and mountain shall  be  made  low.  The  rough  places  will be  made  plain, and  the  crooked  places will  be  made  straight.  And  the glory  of  the Lord  shall be  revealed,  and all flesh shall  see it  together. 

This  is  our  hope.  This is the faith that I go back to the South with. 

With this faith we will  be able to hew out of the mountains of despair a stone of hope. 

With this faith we will be  able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. 

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle  together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be  free one day.'

A Christ filled Martin Luther King, who knew of the death threats against him, who knew he might not make it to the promised land, but who was encouraged to live and  work for Gods kingdom of justice and love on earth nevertheless, radiated that Landscape of Christian Faith as he spoke, as he took the nation to church, he communicated God's new thing in Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

And like Paul's letters and prayers, like a Cassette love letter to be played & passed around, Martin Luther King jnr's words inspired by faith that day, continue to inspire us.

Some days life feels unbearably hard, as though there is no possible way out of our predicament, no possible way to imagine that we will ever feel happy again, no possible way we will ever stop worrying about 'what next?' - family, friends, work, health, money, Syria, the world - all those areas we will be praying for this morning.

Some days it feels like if just one more thing happens that we have to carry, we will crumble

Some days just getting out of bed & putting our feet on the floor, the first step of another day, seems like a miracle - and some days it is.

But as the song much sung on civil rights marches called 'Keep your eyes on the prize'.

 We are not carrying our burdens alone, Christ's feet are right alongside ours every morning

We are supported by God's incomparably great power

That power is the mighty strength  20 God exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms,

When we allow ourselves be 'filled up' in Christ, we can respond to the world and reflect on the world from a godly place of goodness, from the harmonious place of God's creation.

When we pray, breathe, contemplate, meditate in Christ, allow God's breath in us to carry every part of our lives; when we are acting in that Christ element then we are encouraged - courage from coeur the French for heart - 

then we come from a place of love, 

love that sustains us when we receive it, 

love that sustains us when we share it

That is the purpose of the building project that is now underway at St Paul's , 

that is the purpose of the Milkwood Working Party and our ministry in the parish of Herne Hill

Our purpose 

We are here for God's grace and mercy and justice and love in Christ, to fill us and to fill our world

And whatever impedes that great love we need to pray over and lay it down at the foot of the cross,

 be it concerns for the world, our communities, our families and friends, work struggles, money struggles, personal struggles 

we are to breathe them out in prayer 

breath in Christ 

and feel ourselves carried and sustained in our right God created element.

It does not mean that we will not experience our hard times 

Paul was in Prison, Peter was crucified upside down, Martin Luther King was assassinated, 

we will not avoid pain by living in Christ, but we will experience the love of God, 

we will grow God"s kingdom on earth 

We will breathe in and breathe out in the breath of Christ

Confident in our right element

 encouraged and encouraging 

 and in the love of Christ we will overwhelm the death living of the world and increase the justice and love of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth 

That is my prayer for us this morning.

Amen

1)And because

We were created and are loved by A great High Priest,

 whose name is Love,

The great unchangeable I am,

And because

Our names are written on His heart;

When we are tempted to despair

 lets look up to The King of glory and of grace

And know we are in our element because our lives are hid with Christ on high,

And so let's sing

Before the Throne of God Above

2)An expression of our confidence at being in our right element in Christ, as a loved, sustained and faithful community in good times and hard times is found in the words of the Creed.

So let's stand now and share those words with one another in love and faith.

Please stand