Sermon 16th November 2014

From now until Advent, adults will ask, and discover answers to, questions on the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our Alpha study.

Why and how to tell others?

The reading is from Matthew 28: 16-20

What’s happening on Thursday 7 May 2015? The next general election. And in the run-up to the election the political parties are all going to be urging us to vote for them. Leaflets will pour through our letter boxes and canvassers will knock on our doors, urging us to vote for their party. When it comes to election time, political parties are not backwards in coming forward.  They have a message that they want people to listen to.

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel is known as “The Great Commission”. While politicians are not usually reluctant to tell us what they think and what they believe, a lot of Christians today are reticent when it comes to telling people about their faith – indeed our faith. A lot of people think that faith – or lack of faith – is something personal. It’s being pushy and interfering to try to convert people.

And some examples of evangelism are off-putting. There are some tele-evangelists who seem more interested in money and power than in humility and servanthood. A person standing on a street corner shouting at passers-by through a loud speaker seems an improbable way of telling people about God’s love. Yet it’s difficult to get away from the fact that in the Bible Jesus does tell his followers to go and tell people the Good News. “Go and make disciples,” he urges us.

Apart from Jesus’ words to us, a second reason is our love for others. If we’re in a desert, parched with thirst, and we come across water, it would be very selfish to say, “Great, we’ve found water!” but not want to tell other thirsty people about it. We live in a world where people struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives, where people battle with guilt, fear, anxiety and other issues. If we believe that we have something that can help them, why stay silent? We have good news that we can share.

Now that’s all very easy to say. Yes, there may well be a lot of spiritual hunger in the world, but people in 21^st Century London aren’t generally falling over themselves to hear the Christian message. When faced by indifference, it can be discouraging. I remember a few years ago at an office Christmas party a colleague staring at me in disbelief when I said I believed in the Resurrection – that Jesus did actually rise from the dead.

So where do we start when it comes to telling others? Now, as a parish we do a lot to bring Jesus to the heart of our community – the playgroups at both churches and the monthly lunches for the elderly that are starting shortly, just to mention a couple of our activities. We’re already doing a lot of good things, but there’s always more that we can do.

 As part of preparing this talk, I’ve been reading a book called “Fruitfulness on the Frontline”. It’s a book about how to live for God in our everyday settings and places (our “frontline”). It asks us, “Where is your ‘frontline’?  Where do you spend significant time through the week in contact with non-Christians?”

Whether we work at home caring for children, or whether we are students, or work in a factory, hospital, shop or office, or whether we are retired, God can use us in many different ways. We don't need a high position, a university degree, or lots of money to be able to make an impact for God. What if the people God wants us to love and serve are the people we meet day-to-day?

As some of you know, I’m a very keen rugby fan. “Earning the right to go wide” has become a very popular mantra in rugby. This means that a team can’t go straight out on to the field and play entertaining and exciting rugby. A team first of all has to do the donkey work, getting into good positions in the field and wearing down the defence before it can start doing the exciting stuff. More generally, it has come to mean that if you want to say something controversial or suggest something risky, you first of all need to earn the right to be heard.  And I believe that this applies to telling people about our faith.

Now there are examples of one-off encounters where it is right and proper to share your faith. If in the first minute of a rugby match a team gets the opportunity to play some exciting running rugby, it would be foolish to miss the opportunity simply because it hadn’t done the hard work first! You don’t always have to earn the right to go wide.  But as a general rule, you need to establish your credentials before people will take you seriously. So, wherever our frontlines are, how do we earn the right to go wide? Now, the book Fruitfulness on the Frontline has some suggestions – six in all starting with the letter “M”! Now, I’m not planning to go through all six – but I shall look at some of them.

The first is “Modelling godly character”. There’s a famous passage in Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In tough times and easy ones, with difficult people and delightful people, how do we in our lives show the fruit of the Spirit? Which of the fruits are struggles for us? Do we pray that we will grow in the Christ-likeness of our responses?

Modelling godly character doesn’t simply mean being Mr Nice Guy. It will often lead to loving actions – and so it should. But Jesus himself could be very forceful. He forced the money-changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem as they were exploiting the poor; he called the Pharisees a brood of vipers and associated with the outcasts of society. Jesus wasn’t always “nice”, but he always showed the fruit of the Spirit, even under the greatest pressure and provocation. What are the pressure points on our frontlines? What are the situations, who are the people where we need God’s Spirit to help us? We won’t be able to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in our lives simply through our own efforts and hard work.  We do need to ask God for help.

The second “M” is “Making good work”. Work is a gift God has given us so we can serve other people. But I want to be clear that when I use the word “work”, I’m not just talking about paid employment, but also include the tasks that we each do on a regular basis, which may include voluntary work, being part of a pensioner’s group, supporting the Carnegie Library, housework, childcare, helping at one of our parish playgroups, and a whole host of other things. Making good work includes both what we do and how we do it. It means doing good work that serves other people, doing good work that contributes to human flourishing. And when we work, we are also doing it for God. And when we work, we can mirror our working God who created beauty and order.

Of course, it’s not only Christians who can do good work, but it’s very much the case that sloppy work done with a poor attitude is unlikely to provide a good platform for talking about our faith.  By contrast, when we serve others well, when we do our bit, our words about Jesus have a better chance of being heard.

And now on to the third, “Ministering grace and love”. There are many ways to do this, not only in practical care and kindness for those who need it, but through the way we respond in difficult and indeed ordinary situations. How do we engage with the check-out person? How do we engage with the new parent at the school gate or the colleague at work who’s going through a hard time?

Grace and love are amongst the hallmarks of Christian discipleship. We tend to water it down to being kind and nice to as many people as possible, but the example we are to follow is Jesus. For him ministering grace and love meant his dying on the cross to offer all of us a way back to God.

And the fourth “M” is “Being a Mouthpiece for truth and justice”. There will be times when being a disciple means speaking up for things that are true, just and good. And it will also mean speaking up against things that are unfair, unhealthy or untruthful. It’s not easy; indeed it takes courage, wisdom and prayer, but it’s part of earning the right to go wide. Being a mouthpiece of truth and justice: it does sound rather overwhelming, perhaps conjuring up pictures of great figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Or brave protestors standing up to the might of authoritarian regimes at great personal risk. It is indeed part of our calling to stand up for truth and justice, and to combat injustice and oppression in the world. But we should also remember that we can find falsehood and injustice in all kinds of places – in school corridors, as well as parliamentary ones, in living rooms as well as boardrooms.

Standing up for truth and justice may involve standing up for a neighbour in dispute with the Council, or blowing the whistle on incompetent work that endangers people’s safety and lives. It may involve challenging an unjust appraisal system at your work, or standing beside a child who is being bullied.

·      Modelling godly character

·      Making good work

·      Ministering grace and love

·      Being a Mouthpiece for truth and justice

These “Ms’ help to earn us the right to go wide, the right to be heard.

And then there’s a final “M”, which very much ties in with the Alpha theme, “Being a Messenger of the gospel”. Even if we do all the other “Ms”, people won’t necessarily know we’re Christians.  So we need to be open about our faith. We’re not going to be able to pressure or argue people into becoming Christians. I once heard a speaker, a highly intelligent man who was able to argue very forcefully. He said that when he went to university he believed he would be able to persuade his friends to become Christians through the logic of his arguments. All that happened, he said, was that they remained non-Christians with bad arguments!

But having said, we also need to have reasons for our faith. We may not be able to argue people into becoming Christians, but we also need to be able to show people that Christianity is not a blind leap of faith; it’s a reasonable step of faith. A lot of people believe faith is irrational, but there are good reasons to believe. So if someone is incredulous that you believe in the Resurrection, you can say, “Well, actually there’s quite a lot evidence that it did happen.” And if somebody says to you, “How can you believe when there’s so much suffering in the world,” you do have something to say. We’ve covered many of the big questions in our sermons. A couple of months again Adrian spoke on, “Did Jesus rise again?” which is available on the parish website, or you can ask us for a hard copy if you want to. We’ve also covered suffering in a number of sermons. The resources to answer these questions exist.

As well as being able to give reasons for our faith, a second thing that we can do is tell our own story. And when friends ask, you can tell your story. And really it’s hard to argue against your story. People can argue about the evidence for the Resurrection or the contradictions in the Bible or suffering and so on, but it’s a lot harder to argue with your story. Once, when Jesus healed a blind man, there were a lot of people who came and questioned the man. The Pharisees cross-examined him and tried to trap him. And he replied, “Look, I don’t know the answers to all your questions. But I can tell you this: once I was blind and now I can see.” There was no answer to that.

We may be hesitant about sharing our faith, but we don’t have to rush out and evangelise the whole world this week. Why not ask God to show us two or three people on our front line that we can pray for? And when the opportunity arises, let’s be ready to give reasons for our faith. And we shouldn’t need to do this on our own. We can ask others, family members or friends to pray for us as well.

Let’s rely on God; let’s have confidence in his timing; let’s build trust and relationships and care for people we meet on our frontlinesf; let’s be willing to share what Jesus has done in our lives and what he offers to everyone.

Let’s pray. Lord, our frontlines are many and varied. Between us there are many people we can reach. Help us on our frontlines to lead lives that are worthy of you, and to tell others about life and freedom in Christ.

Amen.                                           

---

[i] 1 June 2014