Sermon Ash Wednesday 18th February 2015

This Ash Wednesday, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley preaches. 

Celebration of discipline

The book that as a Parish we have committed ourselves to learn from this Lent, is called “Celebration of Discipline,” by Richard Foster.  The title sounds very familiar but here is a small confession. I have had one on my bookshelves for the best part of 30 years but I am pretty sure I have not actually read it before!

I sincerely hope to remedy that this year…

Hmmm….I am not at all sure we always think of discipline as something to celebrate. Necessary perhaps, but something to throw your hands up in the air about, as you would if you had just scored a goal in the Premier League?  Something to smile broadly about as you would if you had just got good exam results or heard some good news from the hospital?  Something to have a party about as you would if it was a birthday or an anniversary? Hmmm….to celebrate discipline??

What do you think of when you hear the word discipline? Do you think of school and the rules about uniform and lots of homework and never talking back to teachers? Or do you think maybe even about being beaten in some way for doing wrong as used to happen a lot at one time, whether by teachers or even parents? Or do you think perhaps of the nun in her cell rising at 4.30 every morning, day after day to meditate and to pray for the world?

Or maybe in our modern multi-cultural society do you think of the Moslems at your place of work who go to the prayer room 5 times every day, align themselves with Mecca and bow to the ground to pray and who then fast throughout daylight hours every year during the entire season of Ramadan? At the very least they earn respect who do that…

Or do you think of the magistrate handing out fines and imprisonments to the shoplifters and the fighters and the drunks?

I don’t know about you but, for me, although I think I would probably celebrate if there was more discipline in society generally, I am really not so sure about myself. Discipline for me sounds a bit too much like punishment, or something painful.  It sounds like something to be endured, as if the pain of itself is the good thing. “You need more discipline!”…. You need to be sterner, harder, learn to love going without….

Or, as another example:

“Yes, we have decided he needs to be disciplined!”

“Aaghh what have I gone and done now??”

So when the church suggests I should be happy about discipline and celebrate, is that not just one of the reasons people no longer instinctively think about God in their lives? Is it too much associated with telling us what we have done wrong and tying us down, limiting our hard earned freedoms?

Is it all in fact just a difficult and rather negative idea? Or is there something more at work here?

It seems to me that both the prophet Isaiah and St Paul writing to the church at Corinth are suggesting, shouting at us even, that there is.

For the Jewish people, going without food, fasting, was one of their clear religious disciplines. The Christian West has largely lost this practice but for the Jews, as for modern Moslems in Ramadan, fasting was part of the fabric of their lives, reminding them every time of God. I imagine it was so much part of their lives that on one level they were very, very good at it. But here comes Isaiah, shouting at them at the top of his voice a message directly from God. Don’t give me your superficial fasting practices he says; Give me justice in your society, for the poor and hungry, for your workers and your neighbours.

Discipline yourself to work for these things and then see how my blessings will flow. Just imagine how your societies and communities will flourish if you discipline all your energy and creativity to work for justice and building each other up. It will be like a city that has been destroyed being rebuilt. Safety, security, peace, health.

Then perhaps, he might have concluded, your going without food, your fasting will be in its rightful place in your order of priorities.

Do these things yourselves…..and the vision is one where the discipline of working for justice actually creates the very societies where God’s blessings flow, the kind of societies you wanted all along. Not a negative vision of pain and hardship endured for its own sake because that is what narrow religious people do…

To us for this Lent a message?

And St Paul, many centuries later, living in the certainty of the resurrection of the Messiah and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the people of God. See how he begs the church in Corinth not to let their experience of God’s grace be wasted.

Look at the example I have shown you he seems to me to be saying.

Like me he says, you will have troubles, hardships and difficulties but you need to show how God brings you through these things by showing the discipline of patient endurance.

Like me you might even have to face beating or prison or at the very least being overworked or going without sleep or food. Should you respond with anger or by giving up? No! Respond like I have shown you with the disciplines of purity, of understanding, of patience, of kindness, of righteousness and of truth. Discipline yourselves to live by these things and not the way you might have lived had you not known God’s grace, perhaps with despair, anger, bitterness and revenge.

And the vision here is one of knowing true riches, the things that are most valuable. We may seem poor by worldly standards he says, but in sharing our experience of God’s grace we make many people rich in what really matters. We may seem to have nothing much by worldly standards, but our disciplined lives of patience and kindness, even in the face of suffering, show we really possess everything.

Live this way yourselves. This is the time to do it.

God gives you everything you need to discipline yourselves to live lives of purity, kindness and patience in all circumstances. And the vision here is one of knowing lives that are truly rich lived in the grace of God, again not a negative vision of pain and hardship endured for its own sake because this is what narrow religious people do.

To us, for this Lent, a message?

I don’t know about you but in these passages I can begin to hear, coming closer, the sounds of celebration.

I have been trying to think in the last couple of weeks about how all this might work out in practice in real lives. Why does God ask us to discipline ourselves to do what is right and are there examples of that kind of discipline leading to good things? Well, here are a few that I came across in very different scenarios just listening and thinking about what was going on around me. 

I read about Bradley Wiggins the cycling hero and how he came 4^th in the Tour de France, I think it was 2009, the highest Briton ever, then slumped to 20^th or so the following year after some difficult family circumstances. But when he joined a new team, lost weight and really disciplined himself in his training, his diet and his attention to every tiny detail, then came the first win ever of the Tour de France by a British rider.

I listened to my mother in law, a 13 year old German girl at the end of the Second World War living in the devastation of the destroyed cities of Hamburg then Frankfurt. The Allies were faced with a choice of letting the German nation suffer in poverty for decades as punishment for the previous 10 years. But instead the Allies showed the discipline of investing and rebuilding the German cities and infrastructure, rather than revenge, understanding that this was the way to longer-term peace and security for Europe.

I remembered a visit in the middle of the night from an old friend, not part of this community, in the middle of the devastation of his wife finding out that he had not honoured his wedding vows. And how we agreed then and over the next few days that the only possible way forward would be through the disciplines of faithfulness, of honesty, of wise choices and of the tough choices, for both of them, of forgiveness. There were no guarantees, but only by actually living by what really mattered could he even begin to hope to recover what he actually really wanted for his life.

Discipline not for the sake of narrow hardship but because it leads to where God wants us to go. I don’t know about you but I can begin to hear, coming closer, the sounds of celebration.

And I read in the Times this last week a piece by the journalist Danny Finkelstein recalling the moment on 9 March 1965, in a few days time 50 ago, when Martin Luther King in the town of Selma fell on his knees to pray in the middle of the road at the head of his crowd of protestors, facing the angry police and counter demonstrators and almost certain bloodshed and devastation, then stood up and turned to the crowd and announced that they would go back to their churches. Showing enormous discipline in doing what was right and despite the criticism of many on his own side who said “Look how weak he is!” the journalist said this was probably King’s finest moment and the political turning point as the politicians saw the moral force of his disciplined ideas and within days the key political changes had commenced.

To celebrate discipline?

I think now I will finally read some or all of this book but reminded of the far bigger vision that God has for all of us both for our communities and for ourselves. He wants us to do the right things not to endure pain and hardship for its own sake because that is what narrow religious people do….but because he longs to bless us.

Let us listen out this Lent and see if we can hear, beyond our hard work, our patient endurance….. the sounds of celebration.

Amen

Sermon 15th February 2015

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker,  preaches. The reading is from Isaiah chapter 58.

Picture this scene – as best you can. It’s mid-1983; and the South African sky is growing ever darker with the wings of chickens coming home to roost. We’re in Apartheid’s most desperate days. Across the land smoke rises daily from the segregated black townships where people are being shot, tear-gassed, beaten or arrested by the riot police. In less than 12 months people sat in this room will be conscripted and sent not ‘to the border’ but into those townships. There they will carry out that same oppression, instead of it being done in their name.

Not tonight: tonight about 200 of us are happily singing choruses at the national Christian Evangelical student conference. Of course we’re all white: it would be illegal for any not-white person to be in this room – except as a domestic. And we are staying in the conservative rural Transvaal, after all! The room then goes dark, so we can pray, and listen quietly to what God is saying to us as His student people. After a while, from the back a voice begins to speak: “Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.”

I wasn’t familiar enough with the Bible back then to know that we were hearing Isaiah 58 being read out. But hairs stood up on the back of this student-radical neck, as God’s voice poured condemnation after condemnation on a society that claimed to be His, yet kept behaving quite so appallingly. “Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practised righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God”. I can’t begin to tell you the firestorm which followed that session; but it’s not the point for us in Herne Hill in 2015. What might be the point could rather be read from what has happened in, and to, South Africa in the 30 years since that night, perhaps! And that may just tell us something really important about God’s Word too!

Now to be clear, I’m not saying that God gave these words to Isaiah just so that they could be applied in South Africa so many centuries later! Of course God’s first message was to the people of Isaiah’s time. What God can, and does do, though is to speak into new situations in new ways; through words that He’s spoken through before. Our task, I think, is therefore to be listening out for that; and especially so when it’s all happening in rather more whispered tones than that trumpet sound which was heard in 1983. God is more than capable of moving people in His right directions by steady streams of gentle, but firm communication along the same constant lines. And that’s what we’ve been experiencing in Herne Hill over quite a number of months now, I’d say.

As we’ve worked our way through this Discovery process, so much of our Sunday learning has paved the way for this series that ends today. All those sermons are posted on our website, for any who want to track this journey that began with John’s first letter. Paul’s letter to Christians in ancient Ephesus was followed by all of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount; and then we had lots of Old Testament Minor Prophets. 2014 ended by revisiting the Christian basics, before we spent January with Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. It’s not hard to see from that combination how God’s plan encompasses the whole of His creation; from the beginning of time; or that the practical detail of faith is to be worked out wherever we are; daily; honestly; by those who believe in God; and therefore have experienced what it means to be loved and blessed in ways that we truly don’t deserve.

Now if all this doesn’t turn into an aim “To be a blessing to our neighbourhood by enabling and supporting activity to build community and to meet needs in partnership with others; and to create a sustainable mind-set and momentum in the parish which will continue to attract volunteers and resources to show and share God’s love” then I don’t what ever would! That was, and is, of course the concluding recommendation made by the Discovery working party. It was adopted wholeheartedly by the PCC, on behalf of both churches; believing that this is what God has been saying to us over a number of years; and wanting to be obedient to Him.

To say it again, it’s a Report that’s well worth reading in its entirety, if you haven’t already. It’s on our website as well as being in printed form in both churches. It has a line which says that what this will take to make it a reality is a new mindset. So we need to generate and sustain enthusiasm for community action among the congregations – and that is very much what this series is aiming at: to change our mind-set. Today’s passage from Isaiah has at least two important parts to play in this on-going process, I think. The 1^st is to challenge where the limits of our faith are; and the 2^nd is to challenge how widely we look to show and share God’s love.

No Bible passage ever sits in isolation of course. I’ve been taught – and believe – that in order to understand what God’s saying through it today, we need to know what it meant to its original hearers. So it’s time to pause, and put Isaiah into some sort of context, then; if only briefly! It’s a big book; in every sense of word; and it raises big issues; and questions! The key headline is that Isaiah covers three eras of Old Testament history. At the start, once-united kingdom had been split in two. Part 1 of Isaiah deals with events when the Assyrians were the dominant local power. It was they who destroyed the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and did serious damage to the Southern one, Judah, at the end of 7^th Century BC. God had much to say about the meaning, and message from these events, not least through the prophet, Isaiah.

In Part 2 we find God addressing issues experienced by His people more than century later! Here they are in Exile – yes, in Babylon, early in the 5^th Century BC! As we heard last week, God was also at work through Jeremiah in those days; and there was much needing saying. The aim was for God’s people to be ready to try again, to live as His people in His land when this Exile ended, after God’s promised 70 years. And that’s the time – after their return home – which God addresses through Isaiah in Part 3 of this book. Chapter 58 is solidly in that final part – when God’s people are back home, and are trying to work and live out what they need to; albeit not doing it so well, this passage suggests!

There’s so much more that could be said; but the only thing to add is the parallel that most commentators draw. They point out the sense in which the situation of post-Exile Israel is most similar to now. God has done part of what He promised; but we’re still waiting for the rest of it. Then He’d brought them home from Exile; but the Messiah was nowhere in sight. Now, Jesus has brought in God’s kingdom on earth; but he’s not come back to complete it. And, as we’re waiting, things aren’t quite working out as we expected or hoped; and that’s making for all sorts of struggles, and problems; where we’re not getting it right; and, if we’re being honest, we know that. So does God: far better than we do, actually; but we still try to fool Him, sometimes at least; and He’s not having it; as this passage in particular makes very clear. God has said what He expects; and anything less won’t do; and it doesn’t fool Him.

It’s in that context, then, that this part of Isaiah has at least 2 important parts to play in this on-going mind-set-changing process. As I said, the first is to challenge where the limits of our faith are; and the second is to challenge how widely we look to show, and share God’s love. Something else that’s written in the Discovery report is that, “Most of all, the Community Action (Steering) Group will need the congregations’ time and energy.” You see, if we are to do anything that’s worthwhile, lasting and has a significant impact in this place in God’s name, then it’s going to take lots of person-power! And it can’t – and shouldn’t – ‘just’ be the same small number of people trying to do more and more.

Everyone, says God through Isaiah, everyone is to live out their faith. It’s not something that for just a few people; it’s for all who claim to be His people. And there aren’t any no-go areas with God either: heart; mind; money; time; work; family; sex; words; actions; we’re to let Him into the lot! Or that’s the theory, anyway; but it’s one that we’re meant to be working towards day by day as we are reshaped, into the likeness of God’s Son, Jesus. And He knows the difference between us saying it and meaning it, these words remind us! Part of the proof is in the doing of it, of course; and there will be opportunities aplenty for that, promise. But 1^st we’ll each have to want to do it – not to try and fool God; but as an outworking of our faith; and a change of mind-set is indeed what is often needed!

Part of the changed mind-set that’s needed, I think, is how widely we look to show, and share God’s love. We may not live in 5^th Century Israel, or in Apartheid South Africa; but there are plenty of people not too far from here who need to know, and share God’s love. The 1^st phase of the Discovery focus has been on the Milkwood area deliberately for that reason, and very rightly so. Yes, there are other people and places, both near and far, that need to know and share God’s love. But this is the place where God has put us to be His church; so it’s here that we are starting; by being His blessing to this community. Who knows where it might go from here; or what impact it may have over the next 2; 5; 10; 20; or 30 years; if we each live out faith here!

The series is over (and so is this sermon, very nearly.) But, in one sense, it’s only that the next phase of this journey is just beginning. Next, in Lent we’ll have a chance to think about how the classic spiritual disciplines can keep our journey on track. Beyond that, we’ll be journeying onwards with Jesus, to help us to learn how to live for, and in, him. The challenges will keep on coming; no doubt including about the (lack of) limits of faith; and how widely we look to show, and share God’s love. Hopefully those challenges will both change mind-sets in all the ways that is needed; and spur more and more of us on to loving Godly action. You see, this is a journey that can only continue if all of us push on with it together; as God’s people; working at being His blessing; showing and sharing His love to this community. And so now let’s ask for God’s grace and strength to do just that: in His name; for His glory …

Sermon 8th February 2015

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, preaches. The reading is from Jeremiah 29: 4-7

One of the jobs I do is as a member of the audition panel at RADA

" ruining the hopes and dreams of the young people"

I like to call it..and an often performed Shakespeare speech comes from Romeo And Juliet. The friar has just told Romeo that he is being sent into exile or banished and Romeo is furious, heartbroken and hopeless

because he can no longer stay in Verona and Juliet.

He says

"There is no world without Veronas walls, But purgatory, torture, hell itself. Hence-banished is banish'd from the world, And world's exile is death: then banished, Is death mis-term'd:

Exile equals death

be near his beloved"

Nothing like the over reaction of a teenager in love we might think and yet people of all ages feel the deep distress that exile brings.

I don't know if that was how it felt to my 26 year old dad, but he fled into exile from Ghana in 1958.

A journalist on the Daily Graphic national newspaper, dad was critical of the restrictions on freedom of speech placed upon the people of his newly independent homeland, by the government.

He came home from work one evening and his father told him he had to leave that night and not tell them where he was going for the safety of the family. So he booked a third class passage on a boat that took 10 days to arrive in England, the once mother country... and said farewell to his home to his family and friends and to his career as a journalist.

My brother and I were the children of exile. We grew up knowing that England was only a temporary situation and as soon as it was safe we would be going home... And the years past and our roots here grew deeper and this became home and Ghana the distant dream.

It wasn't until 46 years later in 2004 that Dad finally built the home he had spoken of all through our childhood.

And a life made in exile may not be a distant story for some of you sitting here today, it may not just be something that happened to the Israelites in days gone by, captured and sent into exile in Babylon in Jeremiah's day. Through the ages since those early Biblical times it has remained a terrible, heartbreaking thing to be sent into exile.

And Home Where is home

As an exile we might feel - I don't want to be here, these are not the circumstances I want to live in

In his own country Martin Luther King may have felt that

In his own country Nelson Mandela may have felt that

And in this country So may the 19th century working poor so may the suffragettes.

They all used that strength of feeling to change the circumstances they found themselves in.

Exiled from the life they would have chosen, they chose to make a life where they were,

Committing to the lives of those around them and committing to those circumstances they found themselves in, with extraordinary, world changing effects.

So did the captive people of Israel.

We may not feel that as Christians we are a minority here in Herne Hill, and we may not feel that we are in exile. After all in the 2011 Census, Christianity was the largest religion, with 33.2 million people (59.3 per cent of the population).

Yet - Between 2001 and 2011 there was a decrease in people who identify as Christian (from 71.7 per cent to 59.3 per cent) and an

increase in those reporting no religion (from 14.8 per cent to 25.1 per cent).

So if we dig a little deeper and seek out active Christians committing to live with Christ at the heart of their lives, perhaps we are a minority here in a Herne Hill and perhaps like the exiled Israelites yearning for Jerusalem, we yearn for God's Kingdom Come.

In this mornings passage the prophet Jeremiah writes to the Jews exiled to Babylon.

Now in order to placate The victorious King Nebuchadnezzar, the 18 year old Judean King, Jeconiah had surrendered himself, his mother, the queen mother, his royal household and many princes of Judah and Jerusalem to become prisoners, hoping that this would satisfy Nebuchadnezzar and he would leave the rest of the Jews in peace.

But, Nebuchadnezzar was not satisfied, in fact he demanded that all the carpenters and blacksmiths should surrender too, so that there were no skilled workers to re fortify the city, or make weapons.

So they did , hoping this would pacify Nebuchadnezzar.

But this simply made him more demanding - he came back to the conquered country with his army and also took away elders, priests, prophets and anyone his soldiers could easily lay their hands upon, as he decreed.

These captives, taken into exile, looked back at those of their countrymen and women who had been allowed to remain behind, and then looked at themselves and wondered just what they had done that was so wrong that they were being especially punished by God like this. .

They received words of reassurance from other prophets, taken into captivity with them, and back in Jerusalem, telling them that God would soon free them, that their captors would be defeated and they would all go home, within two years some said.

And yet here came Jeremiah writing to them from back in Jerusalem himself, telling them something quite different.

Where was the comfort in Jeremiah's prophesy, the story of revenge over the heathens and the imminent triumphant return home?

And yet inspired by God, Jeremiah writes a letter to them, that really is to comfort them, but in an unexpected way , assuring them that they had no reason either to despair of hope for themselves or to envy their fellow Jews left behind

Jeremiah begins this letter in verse 4 in the King James version

‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon ...’ (v. 4)

What's interesting is the phrase Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel. In Hebrew this reads as

Yahweh Sabaoth

Yahweh, God of Israel, the name used in the covenant between the Jews fleeing Egypt, Gods chosen people, and The Lord who fed and guided them those forty years across the desert

and the term Sabaoth, ‘hosts', coming from the word for warfare, reinforcing the image of God not here as a liberating God, but a God of irresistible strength and will.

The Chosen people are in exile because God has willed it.

How often do we find ourselves in hard places , in difficult situations and wonder how God could have let this happen to us.

Aren't we faithful people, committed to following Him?

How can this be?

Has God abandoned us?

It feels like a mystery, and we are mystified and uncertain.

These were some of the feelings of the exiled Jews Yet here comes the letter from Jeremiah

Don't despair of your situation, commit to it.

Don't reject the circumstances you find yourself in, engage with them, actively, get stuck in

What fruit trees can you grow from this situation, what relationships and homes can you make in these circumstances,

What seeds can you plant, what roots can you establish in this community?

African Americans, the ancestors of captured people brought from Africa, often identified with the oppressed and exiled Israelites.

Indeed the spiritual songs they have sung over centuries often reflected that identification.

In Dr Martin Luther King Junior's I have a dream speech he ends with a hope of liberation, not from the circumstances of his people's exile, but a hope for a liberation for all those in the land of his exile and beyond.

He does as Jeremiah tells the exiles God requires of them

V7

GN

Work for the good of the cities where I have made you go as prisoners. Pray to me on their behalf, because if they are prosperous, you will be prosperous too.

NIV

Also , seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Dr King says

"When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

As Christians we pray for the freedom that living in God's Kingdom of justice and love brings

We pray the prayer that Jesus taught us

Thy Kingdom come

Thy Will Be done on Earth as it is in Heaven

We pray for that heavenly kingdom on earth

For God's rule

For justice and love to be the fundamentals of our world our country our city our parish our street our home our friends our family our hearts Yahweh Sabaoth

The Lord of Hosts, God of Israel, a The faithful God of the Covenant, God of irresistible strength and will.

Who comes to us as a tiny, vulnerable poor baby, put to death on a cross on a day we remember as Good because it set us free at last.

In difficult, circumstances, we are to pray for the prosperity of our community

And to prayer we are to add action.

Perhaps we are the minority in Herne Hill in terms of our living faith, but here, we are to set down our roots roll up our sleeves and prosper our Parish.

When we feel like a play group or a lunch club or a drama workshop or the many other small fruit trees we will plant along the way are not enough, we can think on Jeremiah, we are where the God of irresistible strength and will has put us, to be servants to his people.

We are to trust God as verse 11 a little later in the passage tells us

GN

11 I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future you hope for.

NIV

11 For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

That hope meant for the Israelites, calling upon God, praying to God, searching for God, seeking God with all their heart.

In the context of exile in the early 6th century BC, when Jeremiah prophesied, the instructions in these few verses and the understanding of God they implied , represented a sea change in the attitude of the Israelites towards their way of being in the world. They were to live their faith where they were, making God's love visible as they sought to prosper their new community.

through the acceptance of Jeremiah’s instructions, that Jewish exiled community became a fulfilment of the vision that through Abraham, God would bless all people (Gen 12:1-3).

12 The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

The Lord said

2 ‘I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you;

The Lord said

3b 'and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.’[b]

From exile to a universal blessing WE CANT SECOND GUESS GOD!!

What mystifies us may be so clear to Him

God is in the mystery, God is mystery, a mystery we know and don't know.

we don't have all the answers!

We just know Jesus who helps us ask the questions, for We have seen that future hope in Jesus, in his love and his service, his justice and his sacrifice.

So those instructions from Jeremiah are entirely relevant to faith communities like ours in the Parish of Herne Hill, for our lives as minorities in this city today.

We are to be a blessing in Herne Hill,to make Christ's mission, our mission.

Australian Theologian Bill Loader, talks of mission as being Christ Centred, being centred on Jesus and his way.

He writes

It's like when I join hands with him he doesn't drag me away from people to God; he leads me with God to people; he leads me to love the way he did, to walk with him.

Jeremiah says

GN

7 Work for the good of the cities where I have made you go as prisoners.

NIV

7 Also , seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.

Work for the good of

Seek the peace and prosperity of

In this way circumstances seen with human understanding as dreadful, difficult, unwanted,

under God's hand, with his vision become transformed.

Out of the exile of the Jews in a foreign land came new Jewish communities spreading the faith and love of God to new places in a way that may not have happened had they remained in Israel.

Hand in Hand with Jesus, God is still requiring us down the ages to Work for the good of, to

Seek the peace and prosperity of, the communities in which we find ourselves,

in fact to tie our prosperity and happiness to theirs, so that there is no 'them', only us.

And many in this parish are already doing so with great love, generosity and joy.

The Discovery journey and now the work of the CASG is another way to act as God requires, to continue that work of mission as a church family who have put down roots in this Herne Hill community,

We have the opportunity to join the work of the long ago exiles, to join hands with Jesus who is and was and ever shall be,

to bring in Gods Kingdom of Justice and Love, right here.

When we serve Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are bringing

God’s Kingdom of heaven to earth.

As John Ortberg writes in his book - God is closer than you think:

‘Every time you are in conflict with someone, want to hurt them, gossip about them or avoid them, but instead, go to them and seek reconciliation and forgiveness –

‘The Kingdom of God is breaking into this world.

‘Every time you have a chunk of money and decide to give sacrificially to somebody who is hungry or homeless or poor –

‘The Kingdom of God is breaking into the world.

‘Every time you love, every time you include someone who’s lonely, encourage someone who’s defeated, every time you challenge somebody who’s wandering off the path, every time you serve the under-resourced –

‘It is a sign that the kingdom is once more breaking into the world.’

So my prayer for us here this morning is that we live in Jesus centred mission, so that we are no longer in exile from Gods Kingdom, no longer far from where we want to be,

so that there is no them, only us.

So that We are day by day in faith and love, bringing others with us, coming home to God.

Free at last.

Amen