Sermon 25th June 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, preaches. The reading is from Acts 13:13-15, 42-52.

When I was in the third year at secondary school - that’s year 9 in new money, I remember sitting in a geography lesson around this time of year and Mr Griffiths, our geography teacher, thick with hay fever as he always was by late June, bringing in a visitor to whom he gave a tour of the class as he told him what we were studying and introduced him to the pupil who had earned the highest mark following recent exams...
I readied myself to make polite conversation as top 3rd year geographer....and...watched as Mr Griffiths turned to my best friend Ruth Excell... what?!....I got 72%, she 71.5%.... an easy mistake to make....but the injustice burned deep... clearly still burning some 42 years later... and I instantly lost interest in studying geography and never returned to it in my school life... Hence today my tenuous grip on world geog...and therefore my need for and love of a good map!
Before the advent of the internet and google maps and satnav it’s how we navigated new places and a good map is still what I need, to grasp journeys and have a sense of where I am in the world. so I have been studying a map of that first mission journey Paul and Barnabas undertook. They certainly got about! Paul and Barnabas’ first mission journey map would have taken them to an infinite variety of Jews and Gentiles. It would have shown them starting at Antioch in Syria then travelling south west across the mediterranean sea to Cyprus, to the cities there

of Salamis and Paphos. Then heading north across the mediterranean to the coastal town of Perga in what we now call Turkey, then further north inland, over mountains to another city of Antioch but this one in Pisisdia then in the Roman province of Galatia, now also in modern day Turkey.
Then as per this mornings reading being chased out of Pisidian Antioch by jealous religious leaders, Paul and Barnabas headed further west into the Galatian towns of Iconium and Derbe before retracing their journey, revisiting the new churches they had encouraged astray returned to Perga and then sailed directly from that coastal town back east across the mediterranean sea to Antioch in Syria, where they had begun. Phew!
Last Sunday Ade introduced us to journeying under the guise of a series Snapshots - or as I keep hearing it in my head as Postcards from the Edge.
Actually that was the title of an autobiography written by Carrie ‘Princess Leia’ Fischer, about her and her mother Debbie Reynolds - a weep fest for any mother and daughter...but
I digress...Postcards from the Edge - well yes I would imagine these first missionary journey’s would have been extremely ‘edgy’ for Paul and Barnabas.

An edgy mission fuelled by faith in Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. In each town they visited the apostles Paul and Barnabas would begin their work by seeking out the local synagogue as we hear in this morning’s reading
Antioch in Pisidia is found high up in Central Turkey.
At the time it was a Roman city with a strong Hellenistic Greek and Jewish culture.
The writer John Drane suggests it was there, in heart of multi cultural cities such as Pisidian Antioch, that the Apostles were likely to meet the kind of Gentile ’God-Fearers’ who might be most open to their message.
Drane writes that through his own conversion Paul had come to understand that this new relationship he had with Jesus opened the way for him as an educated observant Jew for the first time in his life, to build new relationships with non Jews. The sort of people whom in the past he may have looked down on. Paul realised that in our infinite variety, in Christ, we are one. As we say in Communion at the Lords table, though we are many, we are one body because we all share in one bread - in God’s kingdom we are all equal before God
As we heard from Ade, many of those holding authority in religious circles felt threatened by the challenge of this new message of the resurrected life everlasting in Jesus Christ, but many of those who heard the message believed and inspite of

the challenges, we read at verse 52 that these travelling evangelists
‘... were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.’
How do we pick up Paul’s baton and run on in the race to bring in the Kingdom of God ?
It’s the age old question and yet the question we need to ask ourselves on a daily basis.
How have I made real the Kingdom come today?
How have I made God’s Grace available today?
And yet it may not be a question we always want to address... Really? When I may be carrying heavy burdens of my own already?
Can I have a day off?
Do we have to juggle both the burdens and bringing in the kingdom?
It feels like this is the lot of the Christian and always has been, not either or, but always both together - the burdens and the Gospel, for we are to look to Christ to fuel us in both.
The burdens we are to lay at the foot of his cross, and the Hope that cross signifies we are to share with others - so that we can become the living embodiment of that Hope in Christ, in the way we live out our faith.
I worked with a wonderful young Christian actress recently, who was struggling with playing the part of a woman who was

vulnerable and unsure. We spent some time trying to figure out a helpful approach and in the course of our conversations we talked about our faith and she admitted that she wanted so badly to be perfect in order to show Christians in a good light, that she had refused to let the whole truth of who she is be, and so couldn't access the emotions of vulnerability for her character, as she was working so hard to block them in herself. Allowing herself to accept her brokenness, allowed her to access the brokenness of her character which meant perhaps that someone watching her performance might recognise something in themselves and in some way receive some comfort or healing.
Like Paul, as Christ’s hands and feet, we have to journey to strange new places, with our brokenness and the grace of God to forgive and to heal us, both present, and so let the cracks in us, allow God’s light to shine out, so that in the mess of ourselves and in the strength of Christ resurrected in our lives, we may live as an encouragement to others.
We think of the world as we have experienced it in the past few days and weeks -
and the intense need we have as a world for the message of hope and healing in Christ, seems more urgent than ever.

What encouragement if any have we been able to take from this time of uncertainty and fear - perhaps it is simply the empathy to understand that this is how people live in many parts of the world all the time?
What do we learn of Christ that can support us in supporting the establishment of a sense of safety and of healing?
I think of the hundreds of people evacuated from unsafe tower blocks in Camden on Friday night, of Grenfel Tower survivors homeless and grieving.
Of the victims of that fire, many still unknown.
Of those who suffered and died in the Terrorist attacks of Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Finsbury Park
And of the family of murdered MP Jo Cox one year on.
Because we believe in the gospel of a resurrected Christ, one which breaks down the old certainties of dead meaning dead, where Christ triumphs over death, allowing his creation to triumph over sin, death being the ultimate consequence of sin - all bets are now off - old certainties are gone.
God’s new world, through Jesus’ death and return to life, means that as a church, living between the time of His resurrection and the final coming together of all things in

heaven and earth, we are called to live out, to celebrate the reality of God healing his world not abandoning it.
In practice where does that place us in amongst Brexit uncertainty, food banks, murderous tower blocks, hate crimes, terror attacks.
An eye for an eye is old thinking -
There is a rising call for social justice around poverty and the disenfranchised in our country and across the world. Though it may not be recognised as such, there is a growing yearning for the Kingdom Come, for a place of justice and peace, where old thinking and old responses give place to a new world of hope. And we as Christians are to operate in that Kingdom Come, on a godly timeline not an earthly one.
Tom Wright writes of this new message of Hope and the work of Resurrection and Mission in his book Hope in Practice.
‘The mission of the church is nothing more or less than the outworking, in the power of the spirit, of Jesus’ bodily resurrection, and thus the anticipation of the time when God will fill the earth with his glory and transform the old heavens and earth into the new..., mission must urgently recover from its longterm schizophrenia...the split between saving souls and doing good in the world,

- with the promise of Hope renewed, precisely because of the promise of space, time and matter renewed .’
-
Space Time and matter renewed?
If the old certainty of death is dead, then in the resurrected world of Christ, we are to live in God’s space, time and matter, where the old rules do not apply
We are the Kingdom Come people living in a world where space, time and matter means real people in real communities needing us to live out the ‘here and now’ of the Kingdom Come, in love and generosity, whilst we are also living in the world of the Kingdom ‘not yet’, of misery and distress, of the kingdom that needs to come.
We see the Kingdom’s love and generosity in the godly actions of the Imam in Finsbury Park who rather than attack the attacker of his congregation last week, protected him and called on his congregation to do the same until the police arrived.
We see that Kingdom love and generosity in the crowds of Manchester singing out Don't Look Back In Anger in response to the terror attack there just a few weeks ago.
We see it in the selfless courage of the security guard in Borough market who ran back towards the knife attackers trusting in only God to protect him.

We see it in the generosity of blood donors, food donors, clothes donors, of volunteers working for the good of those caught up in the various horrors this country has experienced in recent days and weeks - the Kingdom come here and now.
But we are also living in the world of ‘not yet’, waiting for the Kingdom that needs to come to the world of food banks, murderous tower blocks, hate crimes, international terror attacks, war, famine, despair.
The church of the resurrected Christ, the church of the renewed world, the church of the gospel of hope, our church, must be at the centre of this space, time and matter world of the Kingdom come ‘here and now’ but also of ‘not yet’.
We must work to claim it all as God’s Kingdom, where the message of eternal hope in Christ, powered by the Holy spirit fuels all our interactions with the world.
We are to be the Kingdom people who can go straight from worshipping together in church as Tom Wright puts it,
‘to making a radical difference in the material lives of people down the street,’ and I would add, across the seas, and in our front room.
Our previous vicar, Cameron, has already begun work as a chaplain for Harefield and the Royal Brompton hospitals. Like many of you no doubt, I have been pondering what is the learning and vision we can take from this interregnum, after so

many years, by vicar standards, of having the same shepherd of our flock?
How do we continue to live out our lives as Kingdom people in Herne Hill?
What journey does God have in store for us next?
What is to be that mission map for Herne Hill?
I’m sure many of us are aware of all the wonderful ways in which we are currently living in the Parish as the here and now Kingdom;
from summer schemes, lunch clubs, minstery of food, prison work, credit union support, play groups, to the life business of births, marriages and deaths, support of mission partners’ work overseas, support of local shelters, refugee centres and food banks, fair trade and trade justice - but let’s just pause and look at ourselves individually within the church body.
Like Paul and Barnabas we make the mission journey every day of our lives - we may not be carrying the Kingdom message to the Jews and Gentiles of Southern Asia Minor, but we may be carrying it to a bakery, or a local government office, or a Zumba class, or a squash court, or a lunch club, or a primary school playground ...
When it is seen that the ones who feast at Jesus’ table of a Sunday morning, also work to alleviate hunger, at a food bank or by contributing to famine relief,

when it is seen that the physical home of the church, can also become the physical home of those made homeless, as in the Methodist church which stepped in to become the centre for relief and support for those suffering the trauma of the Grenfell Tower Fire
when we manifest our Kingdom Love in the world in real and practical ways, then as the writer of Acts might have put it
then the church is living out the kingdom of God and the word of God will spread powerfully and do its own work. When we live out the Kingdom and trust in God to give the increase - stuff happens..
For every wickedness and distortion there is a counter narrative waiting for us to embrace it, in God’s strength.
Through the writings of Acts we have a map of the mission journeys taken by Paul and his various companions.
Where will our mission journey take us, who will we encounter, how will we rise to the challenges and joys of the journey, how will the Kingdom light of here and now shine from us into the not yet challenges we will encounter?
How will that Kingdom love nudge a curiosity in others to know what’s going on with us?
What is it we have that fills us and moves forward in that Kingdom way?

How are we letting the curious, the bruised, those longing for more, how are we letting them in on the what’s going on for us, the God going on in us, the resurrection hope of a world renewed in Christ love?
On Sunday 2nd July Vanessa Elston, who is the Mission Support Officer for the Diocese of Southwark, is coming to both churches to facilitate discussions about our parish vision, engaging with the church congregations around the preparation of the Parish Profile in order to begin the process of seeking a new vicar.
The plan is for each church's session to take place immediately after each service, and for each session to last about 45 minutes
Please pray about this and listen for God’s promptings.
Who are we? Where are we going as a Parish, where is God nudging us?
What is our sense of what we need, want from a vicar as we move into our future, in this world of here and now and not yet?
At the end of Romans 5, Paul writes;
‘As sin reigned through death, so grace shall reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus the Messiah, our Lord.’

The world is dying for lack of God’s love, justice and peace. God’s grace is waiting.
It is for us to make it available.
It is for us to continue to bring in God’s Kingdom
We pray for the humility and wisdom, to listen for God’s call to his Kingdom people in this church, in Herne Hill as we move forward in faith.
May we follow in the footsteps of Paul and Barnabas.
the need is no less urgent today, so that in our own God gifted way, in a world of Not Yet we too may be a Kingdom light ‘to bring salvation to the ends of the earth.’
Amen 

Sermon 18th June 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches. The reading is from Acts 12:2 and 13:12

Snapshots from a roadtrip  “Here’s Paul with a magician!” 

1.              I should have been suspicious that something was up.  I should have guessed.  As we sat in our regular Preachers meeting in the late-Winter and considered what we felt that God wanted our churches to be learning in the period though to the summer;  and when the vicar suggested it might be good to look at Paul’s first missionary journey, nothing seemed amiss.  But when he suggested I might develop the themes and, when I later presented those themes to him and he asked me to do the opening, introductory sermon, I should have known something was happening.  And lo it came to pass – Cameron announced shortly after that he and Joc were being led to another role in their ministry.  I should have guessed.

                  So here I am introducing a series of sermons on the roadtrip of Barnabas and Saul that will take us to the start of the summer holidays.  And I have the chance to hint at what we may come to learn together.

2.              The roadtrip is described in just two chapters of the book of Acts – 13 and 14 (albeit that we are starting to set the scene at the end of ch.12 – and we could go into 15 and the visit to Jerusalem to be de-briefed on what had happened).  Just two chapters of adventure.  Reading it through I was struck by the intensity of the action in so short a space of text and of time.  It reminded me of a photograph album.  At this point I feel I need to explain what a photograph album is as I sense that those of us who understand what I am referring to may have lived through a period when technology is killing the concept.  Here are a couple of albums as examples.  Looking though this one (which belonged to our elderly neighbour in Lowden Road) in a few pages  we experience her war-time tour as a Wren –through Egypt and the Middle East.  In just a few pages we see picture that bring back people and places seen over a period of a few months.  Or in this one (one of ours), 50 or so pictures covering the first 18 months or so of our eldest child.  Snapshots that evoke memories – emotions that stretch beyond the immediate picture.  Even looking at Freda’s pictures –of people and places and a time I don’t know – the photographs lead me down all sorts of lines of thought:  who is that?  What was their relationship?  Where are they?  What is like now?  What sort of experience must they be having?

                  So (though not recorded in the What On booklet) the overall title of this series could be something like “Snapshots from a Roadtrip”.  Each reading evokes an image:  today of the magician;  next week of Barnabas and Paul in front of the synagogue; then of the lame man walking;  then the crowd who thought they were gods;  and finally a group shot of their friends in Iconium.  Snapshots that evoke a trail of thought.

3.              Of course, as when we look at someone else’s photos, what we see and where they take us may vary for each of us – as we experienced during last week’s sessions on the Parish weekend.  It is tempting to take Bishop Graham’s approach and to leave you with today’s passage and then collate all of our thoughts without necessarily leading in any one direction.  However, it seemed to me that the passages, the pictures, addressed various contemporary issues for our faith that it would be helpful for us to address.  Because, though the detail of the story may seem very alien to our experience, the underlying themes – both the challenges faced and the source of encouragement experienced – are very close to the experience of Christians living in our place and our time.  Barnabas and Saul went out into a society which was fundamentally very similar to ours:  and of course they went out in the strength of very same spirit of God that fills us as we live our lives.

                  So in the next few weeks we will look at the snaphots as they open up discussions about being Christians in a world where differences between Christians is often emphasised above the things that bring unity;  of believing in a world that seems cold about, uninterested in, belief;  and then a world that is full of different beliefs;  and then finally about being mature Christians in fellowship with one another.  And today we start by seeing in Bar-Jesus, Elymas, the magician the challenge of being a Christian when faced with active opposition.

4.              So let’s turn to today’s snapshot.  Barnabas and Saul have been set aside by God for this journey.  We know from the earlier account that the stoning of Stephen triggered a wave of persecution against the believers in Jesus (in which Saul was a leading activist).  We are told that that this led to a dispersal of the believers away from Jerusalem, north into Syria and Turkey and out to Cyprus (where Barnabas had been born).  The believers spoke of their faith only to the Jewish communities in the towns they went to, but these include converts from around the Eastern Mediterranean who themselves began to talk about Jesus to “Greeks”.  And so, at the same time as Peter was having his great revelation in the household of Cornelius the centurion that the gospel of salvation was for all people, at the same time on the ground, that gospel was spreading.  Barnabas and Saul, by then among the believers in Antioch – a city on the edge of what is now Turkey and the place where the believers had first been called “Christians” -  were going out to care for these new believers both Jewish and Greek.  (I am careful to call them Barnabas and Saul, but you may notice the change that occur:  not only does Saul become Paul in our passage but in the passages that follow we find that they are described as Paul and Barnabas:  perhaps Paul’s willingness to trust to faith and confront the opposition of the magician was a step in his growing assumption of leadership?).

5.              You may recall that Elymas is not the only magician or clairvoyant to dog the work of the apostles?  Philip and Peter had already had to deal with Simon the magician in Samaria – who offered to pay to have the spell that would administer the Holy Spirit;  and later, in Philippi, Paul was to exorcise the spirit of clairvoyance from the young girl and so end up in court for ruining her owner’s livelihood;  and again, this time in Ephesus, there were the seven sons of Sceva who tried to copy Paul’s ministry of exorcism.

                  Each of these incidents are different.  Elymas’ role is possibly the simplest to describe.  He simply wanted to prevent the proconsul coming to believe;  he wanted to dissuade him from following the path of enquiry that would in fact bring him to believe.  Elymas most starkly represents outright opposition to the work of the gospel and so in today’s snapshot he represents the challenge of witnessing to the love of Jesus in a world where we face active opposition.

6.              I was tempted to open today by commenting that: “At the moment religion has a bad name”.  By that I meant to take account of the coverage of the terrorist outrages of the recent weeks in which the radical Islamic faith of the terrorists has been held up, on occasions as if such belief infected not only all Moslems but also all believers.

                  But in truth the coverage has been more sophisticated than that.  Amidst the coverage of the darker side of religion, the light has also been evident.  Evident in the Moslems who came to express their sadness and disgust at the violence, evident in the words and worship at our own cathedral as it reopened last weekend, evident in the members of the Moslem community  handing out roses to commuters on London Bridge.  Then look at the community response to the Grenfell Tower fire – much of it centred around the churches and other faith groups in Kensington.  Did you see the beautiful news interview with the local rabbi, who spoke about the actions of the whole community while standing outside the local Methodist church with Moslem women in the background carrying boxes of food and clothes?  Today is not the snapshot for considering the questions this raises about a muit-faith society:  today I am content to rest in the celebration of a faith-filled community

If you read such things, you will know that committed atheists, people who are positively opposed to the good news, themselves occupy a range of views. 

·       Some, like Richard Dawkins, will argue more or less persuasively that the whole concept of God is a delusion and that the impact of religion on society is largely bad.  If he were Elymas, he would be pleading that Sergius Paulus, excercised his powers of rationality, that he relied on science to provide the answers.  Sergius Paulus might have asked:  answers to which questions?  Creation perhaps but does it explain creation’s beauty, does it explain the sadness of loss, does it describe why I seek a purpose in my life?

·       Other atheists are more like the magicians the apostles met who wanted to ape what they were doing.  So for example , Alain de Botton, while sharing Dawkins views on reason, argues for a society that captures the good bits of religion, from community spirit and tenderness, to art and architecture.  He supports the idea of churches for atheists to provide the opportunity for public teaching and communal singing.  If he were Elymas, he would be saying – you do not need to go this far – we can create a similar society.  Sergius Paulus might have responded:  really? Do you really think we can? 

7.              Of course this is to read more into the scripture than we have.  We do not know how Elymas argued.  We do know the dramatic, even extreme, way in which Paul responded.  Elymas’s blindness echoed Saul’s own experience of blindness before repentance.

                  For us this snapshot speaks of the experience of the apostles mirroring our own:  acting out and proclaiming the good news of salvation to a society which contains some who will actively oppose our message.  The story ends in a confession of faith – not just because of the miracle but also because of “the Lord’s teaching”.

                  So facing what Barnabas and Paul faced we recall that we serve the same Lord and are about the same business filled with the same spirit.

                  [Ends with reference to Victoria Coren Mitchell’s article in todays’s Observer (see https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/18/stop-the-world-i-need-a-break)]

Sermon 4th June 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches. The reading is from John 16: 1-15.

Pentecost

Today is Pentecost, one of the great Christian festival days. Yet this morning we are feeling sombre, anxious and grieving for the victims of last night’s horrendous attacks. We may also be feeling understandable rage and anger at the perpetrators of last night’s atrocity, and maybe a bit scared ourselves.

Today is a difficult day. But it is also a day that we can come before God and reflect on our own response. Of course the security services must do all they can to stop such evil actions, and we must support them. But ultimately the antidote to hate and murder is not hate and retaliation, but God’s love and grace. And the Holy Spirit, whose coming we remember today, can help us minister God’s love and grace to a broken world.

Today is Pentecost, one of the great Christian festival days. So what is Pentecost? The word Pentecost comes from Greek and it means "50th day". Fifty days after Easter Sunday, we celebrate the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the early church, and the beginning of the church’s earthly ministry to bring the Good News of Jesus to the whole world.

Pentecost is also a Jewish holiday, which Jews use to celebrate the end of Passover. Jews celebrate the gift of the law to Moses at Mt. Sinai on this day. And that is why crowds of people from many nations had gathered in Jerusalem on the first Day of Pentecost. The story is told in Acts Chapter 2. The Holy Spirit poured out on Peter and the apostles and they spoke in tongues – people heard the Good News of Jesus in their own language. It was a dramatic day – in some ways the birthday of the church.

So, what is the Holy Spirit? Well, actually, you may be thinking I’ve asked the wrong question, and indeed I have. The right question is: “Who is the Holy Spirit?” The Holy Spirit is a person and indeed one of the three persons in the Holy Trinity. Briefly put, the Holy Trinity is the belief that the one God exists in Three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, Jesus (who became a human being), and God the Holy Spirit. They are all God, yet are also in relationship with each other. The Holy Trinity is in many ways a mystery which we human beings struggle to grasp. But today I’m proceeding on the basis that the Holy Spirit is God, in the same way as God the Father and Jesus are God – Three Persons, one God.

 So, who is the Holy Spirit – And why did he come? To help answer these questions we’re going to look at our reading from John’s Gospel. Our reading forms part of what is sometimes described as the Farewell Discourse given by Jesus to his disciples immediately after the Last Supper in Jerusalem, the night before his crucifixion. And as his final statement to his disciples before the Cross, it’s worth paying close attention to it.

If we look at our reading closely, it’s a bit like one of those “Good News – Bad News” questions.  “Which do you want first, the good news or the bad news?” I think I prefer the bad news, because if you can handle the bad news, it can only get better. And Jesus gives his disciples the bad news first. And the bad news is that there are terrible times ahead. Look at verse 2: “They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.”

And if we look ahead to the book of Acts we see that these times arrived all too quickly. Peter and John were arrested on the Temple steps for talking about Jesus. Stephen became the first Christian martyr when he was stoned to death by the religious leaders. People like Saul of Tarsus (who subsequently became St Paul) went around throwing Christians into prison – or even having them killed. These words would soon become all too real. And sadly for Christians in some parts of the world, they are still all too real. 

“The time is coming…” Not every time and not everywhere. But Coptic Christians in Egypt are facing murderous attacks from so-called Islamic State. There are parts of the world where being a Christian is dangerous. Fortunately for us we live in a country where there is freedom of religion. We don’t run any risk coming to church. But we also live in a society that is increasingly secular, and there are those who are suspicious of religion of whatever type. There are some aggressive atheists who want to marginalise Christianity, along with other religions. From time to time, we do hear concerns expressed about the way things are going; for example there have been legal cases about wearing religious symbols in the workplace. But we’re far removed from what the Egyptian Christians have to face.

The thing that troubles me more is the lack of impact that the church seems to have on society. In Britain the church seems relatively weak, its numbers are waning, and it’s short of the clout it used to have; the country appears to be growing increasingly secular. And so it sometimes seems hard to accept that the church is really God’s cause. But today we’re having a Communion service, and Communion shows us that’s actually the wrong way of looking at things. Communion points us to the Cross, reminding us that Christianity isn’t meant to be a triumphant march where the church sweeps all before it.

In our Gospel passage, Jesus isn’t merely warning us that we may face hostility and persecution; he’s also letting us know this so that we can more than endure. As we see from verse 1, Jesus explains that he is warning his followers about the troubles to come so that they will not fall away. Jesus is about to leave his disciples, but he doesn’t simply say, “I’m off.” In verse 7, Jesus tells them that it’s for their own good that he’s going.

Of course, it’s partly to do with the way that he’s going via the Cross and Resurrection and Ascension to his Father’s house and all that he is going to achieve: death defeated and sins forgiven. But at the heart of what he is saying is the fact that the Advocate is coming. Jesus says to them, in verse 7, “Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” The Advocate is the Holy Spirit and he will transform the disciples.

Shortly after the Last Supper ended, the disciples would flee when Jesus was arrested. Peter, their leader, would deny three times that he knew Jesus. But fast forward to Pentecost when the Holy Spirit has come, the disciples speak fearlessly and are willing to risk imprisonment, savage beatings and even death. The Holy Spirit transformed them. “The Advocate is coming,” said Jesus. Now, the choice of the word “Advocate” to describe the Holy Spirit is interesting. It is in fact a legal term. In England we refer to “barristers” as the lawyers who stand up in court and argue cases. But in some countries, like Scotland and South Africa, they’re called “advocates”. Verses 8-11 speak of the Holy Spirit as an advocate or barrister in a court case and proving that the world is wrong.  The world outside of the church may be sceptical about Jesus, the world may be hostile about Jesus, but ultimately the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong.

As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit is still active in the world. Later on this morning, we’ll be saying the Creed and declaring, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Now, the disciples would have liked Jesus to stay around. But Jesus, as a human being, was limited by place and time. Only a relatively small number of people in the Holy Land could see and speak to him. But there are no limitations to the Holy Spirit. Wherever the church goes, wherever Christians are active, the Holy Spirit goes with them.

The Gospel writer then goes on to provide a summary of the Holy Spirit’s work. He will prove the world wrong about three things: he will prove the world wrong about sin, about righteousness and about judgment. Now, this might sound a bit negative, but actually it isn’t. The Greek word that’s translated as “prove wrong” is difficult to translate; other versions of the Bible use the word “convince”. The work of the Holy Spirit is to prove to the world that it’s wrong about Jesus and to convince it of the truth. 

First, the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong and convince it about sin. Does that mean that as a church we should be moralising and condemnatory? No, definitely not. I think that’s one thing we learnt from our Lent series on Philip Yancey’s book, Vanishing Grace; that our role isn’t to be bleak moralists. Convincing people about sin isn’t about condemnation; it’s about opening people’s eyes to God’s grace. As Philip Yancey wrote; “Grace comes free of charge to people who don’t deserve it, and I am one of those people.”

It is only once we’ve become convinced of our own sin and the sin in the world that we can avail ourselves of God’s grace. Even if we don’t commit adultery, fiddle our tax returns or tell lies, we still sin and need God’s grace. I don’t think any of us can pretend that we never have moments of selfishness, self-centredness, jealousy, greed and apathy. We also live in a world that is obviously far from perfect. Climate change, unfair trading systems, war, violence and corruption mar God’s perfect creation. Sin isn’t simply a question of breaking moral rules; Tom Wright, the former Bishop of Durham and theologian we often quote in our church, points out that it goes much deeper than that. Sin is a symptom of idolatry.

When we turn from worshipping the true God, we surrender the authority God has given us to idols - the powers and principalities of darkness.  This does sound rather mysterious – the powers and principalities of darkness. Tom Wright explains it by referring to Jesus’ clashes with the religious authorities and with the Roman authorities described in the Gospels. Behind these confrontations there was an even bigger confrontation - Jesus’ confrontation with the dark power of evil itself - evil that uses human structures in various ways.  And today evil uses human structures to advance the forces of darkness. Evil can use political structures, economic structures and indeed the internet to further its destructive aims. The Bible makes it clear that evil exists as a powerful force in the world, and that we are in a battle against evil. The Bible refers to Satan, or the Devil, as the source of evil, but whatever language we use to describe it, evil is a potent force in today’s world. We as Christians are part of God’s plan to rescue and restore God’s creation. And in doing so, we need to recognise our own individual sin and need for grace. And we also need to recognise and call out the sin in the structures of this world.

Secondly, the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong and convince it about righteousness. So what is this “righteousness” that the world needs to be convinced about? Well, Tom Wright describes it as “justice”. Jesus was arrested, tried as a criminal and crucified. He was regarded as an evil heretic and dangerous criminal by the people of his time. In today’s world Christians believe that he is the Son of God, but many people, even if not hostile to Jesus, are at best sceptical about his claims to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. He may be a great teacher, but that’s all. But ultimately the Holy Spirit will prove to the world who Jesus really is. He will press home Jesus of Nazareth is not an impostor and a deceiver, or merely a good man, but the Son of God. And the Holy Spirit has now been doing this for just over 2,000 years. A significant chunk of the New Testament was written by Paul who, as I said earlier, was once the sworn enemy of the Church. Yet he became the man who took the Good News of Jesus beyond its Jewish beginnings to the wider world.

And thirdly, the Holy Spirit will prove the world wrong and convince it about judgment. And he will prove the world wrong because, in the words of verse 11, “the prince of this world [that is, Satan] now stands condemned”. Jesus was looking ahead to the Cross – a reminder that the world had got it wrong in its basic spiritual assumptions. It saw the Cross as Jesus’ condemnation, but in fact it was Satan’s. At the cross, Satan’s fate was sealed. He still roams about, there are undoubtedly very powerful forces of evil, but God has already passed judgment on him and the forces of darkness. Many in today’s world regard the Cross as the end, or an irrelevance. The world needs the Spirit’s help if people are going to see what Jesus achieved on the Cross – that he has overcome the forces of darkness and death itself.

Jesus was leaving his disciples, but he wasn’t saying, “I’m off; it’s over to you.” Yes, Jesus did give his followers the commission to spread the Good News to the ends of the earth. But, who is the primary mover in this? It’s the Holy Spirit. Not you or me. But at the same time there’s a challenge. Who will the Spirit use to challenge the world about sin, righteousness and justice, and judgment? It is the church – that is the likes of you and me. It is through the Church that the Holy Spirit will seek to change lives and the world! Are we willing to work with the Holy Spirit?

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for sending us the Holy Spirit. May we be willing to follow him where he leads and to bring the Good News of Jesus to the heart of our community. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Amen.