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)]