Sermon 15th October 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches. The reading is from Ephesians 2v1-10.

I would like to complain about…

Les Misérables, most famous today for its musical version, is a story of grace. It begins in 19^th Century France, Jean Valjean, the hero, is being released after 19 years in prison. But his conviction makes it impossible to start over and make a new life; no one wants to give him a chance. In despair, he returns to a life of petty crime.

He is caught by the police after stealing silver from a church, where a bishop had offered him shelter. But when the police bring him back to the church, everything changes. The bishop denies the charges, and insists the silver was a gift. And as Valjean leaves, the bishop says to him, “You forgot I gave these also.  Would you leave the best behind?” And the bishop gives him the most valuable silver candlesticks in the church. Valjean deserves judgment and condemnation, but instead, he receives grace. Not just forgiveness for his sins, but an abundant, over-the-top gift.

The passage from Ephesians that Cyril has read for us is one of the richest passages in the Bible about God’s grace and what it means to be saved. In it Paul says it twice – that it’s by grace that we’re saved.

There is the rather unfortunate picture of a fanatical Christian grabbing an unsuspecting bystander by the lapel and saying, “Are you saved, brother?” But salvation is an important theme throughout the Bible, and not just a hobby horse of Paul. So, what does it mean to say that we are saved? Well, Paul describes what it means in our passage from Ephesians. And his explanation splits into three parts.

Firstly, in verses 1-3, Paul describes the life we're saved from.

Secondly, in verses 8-10, the latter part of the reading, he describes the life we're saved to.

And thirdly, in verses 4-7, he tells us how to get from verses 1-3, our old life, to verses 8-10, our new life.

The first three verses provide a very comprehensive picture of what human beings are like outside of God.  It says very famously that we're dead in transgressions; we're dead in sin. So, what does Paul tell us about what it means to be sinful? The answer is: It means to be “enslaved”. In verse 2 Paul writes, “You followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air...” and in verse 3 he writes of following the desires and thoughts of our flesh.  He writes of following the wrong things.

The word “follow” in English is quite weak. It doesn't really get across the Greek word which means “be mastered” or “be controlled”. If we're in sin, we're mastered or controlled by our sinful nature. We're enslaved. To what are we enslaved? According to Paul, three things.

·      The first is the way of the world, the spirit of the age.

·      The second is the rule of the Kingdom of the Air – the Devil.

·      And the third is gratifying our sinful nature.

The Greek word for “sinful nature” is the flesh. Not your body, but your sinful nature, your self-centred sinful nature. That's the thing that masters us, that's the thing that controls us. The Devil also features in Paul's list, but I'm not going to dwell on him. I believe evil exists as a very real force in the world, but if we look to what Paul said in his letter to Timothy, we can see that it's self-centredness that made the Devil the Devil.

The well-known American preacher, Tim Keller, points out that in 1 Timothy 3 Paul warns about the danger of Christian leaders becoming conceited and falling under the same judgment as the Devil. Arrogance, pride, self-centredness is what made the Devil the Devil. It's basically the same problem that we face – self-centredness. Martin Luther, one of the leaders of the Reformation, gave a very apt diagnosis – the human heart is curved in on itself, seeking to use God and everything else, things and people, for its own ends.

Self-centredness can make you a very cruel person. If we consider all the tyrants of history, the great dictators who slaughtered millions of people – we can say that they were selfish, self-centred and egotistical. We can say the same of serial adulterers and those who abuse young people. Their self-centredness is likewise easy to recognise. But self-centredness can also be much more subtle.

You can be living an outwardly very moral life and still be self-centred. If you are self-centred, a very good way to feel good about yourself is to put other people in your debt. You're a very good person. You're helping the needy, you're a good parent and a loyal friend. But you are helping people not for their sake, but for your own sake. You are helping people, but its self-centred – to make yourself feel good. It's all about you. We're trying to convince ourselves that we're worth something.

CS Lewis, the great 20^th Century Christian writer, tells us in The Screwtape Letters how he saw it:

“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

What's our approach to other people? Do we think, “What can you do for me. How can you enhance my life?” The more we put ourselves first, the further away from God we travel. And eventually we may travel so far away from God there may be no turning back. That’s what we’re saved from – total and utter separation from God.

If that’s the life we’re saved from, what sort of life does God want to save us for, what kind of life does he want to give us? The answer lies towards the end of the passage. Verses 8 and 9 contain two key words, grace and faith; “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God –not by works, so that no one can boast. “

Paul is saying we’re not saved by how good we are, by how moral we are. Salvation is a gift. And once we realise that salvation is a gift, we should see everything as a gift. Faith is not something we have created; it’s something that God has given us. The perspective on life that God encourages is to see everything as a gift. Not to say to ourselves, “We’ve worked hard, so we deserve the things we’ve earned.” But instead to see everything as a gift that we don’t deserve. Including faith.

Faith doesn’t simply mean intellectual belief. It means no less than that, but it means so much more. It means trusting in God, resting in him, and realising it’s all about Jesus. Faith isn’t a matter of ability. If it were, people with faith could be proud and boast. But because faith is a gift of God, there’s no room for any human being to boast, as Paul emphasises. Once we’ve been saved, there’s no room for boasting.  We’re saved not by our good works, but through faith. And faith is a gift of God.

There’s no room for boasting. When we hear the word “boast”, what do we think? We probably think it means “bragging”. But boasting meant something much more profound in Paul’s time. In the great battles of the past, what was going to get a warrior into battle? What was going to get them to risk death? The night before the battle the soldiers would boast, and say things like: “We have great chariots, and they don’t. We have 20,000 soldiers, and they only have 5,000. We have the greatest warrior king, he has the sharpest sword and the longest spear. We are the greatest!”

Yes, they’re boasting. And why? To give them confidence to face something hard. Boasting is saying, “We can do it!” So, why is Paul saying that the great thing about Christian life is that it puts an end to boasting? We don’t need to boast, because we can have confidence in Jesus,

Everybody boasts. Life outside Jesus Christ means that everyone is looking for something to be proud of, to give ourselves confidence to face life. Everybody is trying to find something that gives you a sense of value and strength. When the warriors facing battle boasted of their weapons, their superior numbers, their chariots and their warrior king, they were putting their trust in them. That gave them the confidence to face battle. And in many ways we’re like that. Deep down we’re insecure, we doubt our worth and we boast to boost our identity and self-worth.

Some of us look to our careers for worth. Some of us look to our salaries. Or to moral decency. We look for something to boast about. But this is exhausting. Because if we’re looking for something to boast about, we’re looking for something we must achieve or acquire. And they’re hard to get, and we may well fail. And we will feel we’re not good enough. But if we realise that we’re sinners saved by grace, then we can relax. If we are living a life of faith, we don’t need to boast, because we’ve got confidence in Jesus.

So, how do we get from that old life to the new life? The answer is grace. Paul tells us that twice, in verses 5 and 8, “It is by grace you have been saved.” But let’s have a closer look at the middle verses. Verse 6 is actually remarkable in what it says; “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”

God has seated us with him in the heavenly realms. We believe as Christians that Jesus was raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of God the Father. The people of Paul’s time would have understood the image.  If you had conquered in the battlefield, and you had achieved glory for your people, you were given the most glorious place possible. You were seated at the right hand of the throne. You stood next to the king or emperor. You were given the place of honour, because you had conquered. And so it made sense to Paul’s listeners that when Jesus conquered death, he was taken into heaven and seated next to the Father, the most honourable place, the most honoured seat in the universe. And Paul says we’re there as well. What does this mean?

Paul uses the past tense. “God [has] seated us with [Jesus]…. in the heavenly realms.” We have been seated. It can’t mean we’ve been raised from the dead; it can’t mean we’re literally there – because we’re here. One day we may literally be there, but not yet. It must mean, because we’re not literally there, that we are legally seated there. When we believe in Jesus, all our sins are so hidden, so covered, that we are treated as if we have done everything that Jesus has ever done. And God delights in us and honours us. God accepts us and he rejoices in us, in the way he does over his Son. How could that be? There’s a hint here, in verse 7, “[G]od’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” The word “kindness” in English doesn’t get across the Greek word. The Greek word doesn’t just mean sentiment, it means costly action. It doesn’t mean simply being helpful; it means putting your money where your mouth is. It means doing something costly. And that is what Jesus did.

The first three verses of Ephesians 2 tell us that sin is putting us where God should be = at the centre of our lives.  Only God should be there. Sin is putting ourselves where God should be. What is salvation? It’s God putting himself where we deserve to be. On the Cross. Jesus Christ took our seat, where we deserved to be. It wasn’t just physical death that he went through. He took the wrath of God, the wrath which according to verse 3 we deserved. Jesus was cut off from his Father and he experienced the agony that we would experience if we were cut off from God for all eternity. Jesus sat in our seat, so that we might sit with Jesus on the right hand of God.

Jesus is the antidote to self-centredness. To save us, he did the most radically unself-centred action that’s ever been done. Though he was equal with the Father, he emptied himself of his glory and took the place of a servant. He said, “My life for yours.” And when we realise that, we won’t need to be self-centred, because we’re seated with Jesus.  We’ve got all the honour that we can possibly want.

There’s one boast that will stop all boasting. It’s in Galatians 6 where Paul wrote; “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” Like Paul, let’s look to the cross on which Jesus died for us. Let’s put aside self-centredness and boast only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Lord, we’re so grateful you’ve given us such tremendous salvation. You have saved us, you have rescued us through Jesus. We pray that you will help us to lead lives worthy of your grace, knowing that we find our self-worth in you. Amen.

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[i] 15 October 2017

Sermon 8th October 2017

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, preaches. The reading is from Ephesians 1v 15-23.

According to the news a meteor shower could be visible from the UK this weekend with dozens of shooting stars streaking across the sky. There is a reasonable chance of earth passing through a swarm of debris left in the wake of from the comet21P/Giacobini-Zinner,, which will lead to meteors which appear as bright shooting stars when they enter the atmosphere and burn up.. Anyone see anything last night? Maybe tonight… Meteor showers, shooting stars always make me think of Marlon Brando putting baby superman in his pod and shooting him down to earth to live and grow up and save people and…hang on this sounds vaguely familiar, leaving your father in the heavens to come to earth and.. Ok..this amazing passage from Paul - It’s nipping into a phone box - if you can find one, whipping off the day clothes and revealing pants over tights a big cloak and a t shirt bearing a big C - Christian - supercharged and ready to go! What an amazing passage So when we do step out of that phone box revealing our super selves - it is divine power fuelling our lives, the power that raised Jesus in human form from the dead, given from the God who has all things under his feet, who has all things in his power. Post communion we always pray Almighty God, we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your Son Jesus Christ. Through him we offer you our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice. Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory. We are asking God to fill us with His power, to take us out into the world, by our thoughts and action praising him and manifesting his glory in the world. Glory - its a tricky word - it can have the feel of boastfulness, of triumphalism, showing off, or it can have the sense of the most stunning riot of colour in the autumn leaves around us, a breathtaking sunrise or sunset, an almost inexpressible joy Glory something almost beyond words - when there is nothing better - Glory!! This part of Paul’s letter to the church at Ephasus is all about that heart bursting sensation of God’s power and glory Its like being in love where you can barely speak or breathe you are so full up with excitement and delight just breathing the same air as your beloved Paul seems to to be saying, I am praying that your eyes and hearts and spirits will become opened by God to Oh my Goodness its so amazing I can hardly express to you how mind-blowing it is!! Do you realise what you have signed up for!!!! its incredible - except its not it’s real, its ridiculous except it’s not its true its out of our reach - except its not its offered to us, WE the church, Christ’s church are to be the fullness of the one who fills all in all!!! We are to be fuelled with the fuel of creation, the power of life over death, the vision of eternity being wise, seeing things people can’t normally see, having the eyes of our inmost self opened to God’s light Saul the persecutor of Christians, temporarily blinded on the road to Damascus, transforming from persecutor Saul to enlightener Paul, having his eyes opened to God’s light and sent out into the world in the power of Christ’s spirit to live and work to His praise and glory, letting other people share in that light, in that power, in the unimaginable power of eternal fullness - wowser! Who wouldn’t want a piece of that! in Chapter 3 we hear from Paul just what that fullness looks like Ephesians 3:17b -19 And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Its hard for us at this distance, living in a country where the majority of people with faith will say they are Christians, to try to put our minds into the time of Paul - but imagine, being a coptic christian in Egypt today, or being part of the Church community in Bagdad. The courage in the face of hostility, isolation, death threats, and even death, to continue to believe and profess your faith, to worship publicly…this was the reality for the early church - it was not the state religion anywhere.. in fact it was viewed as some obscure and threatening cult by the state… believers were hounded, imprisoned, used as blood sport in arenas, for gladiators to kill and starved wild animals to hunt down for public entertainment No wonder Paul says 15 For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, 16 I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. How much easier it might have been for the believing community to hide , to walk away from their new faith, how much safer? How powerful, how compelling must that faith have felt to them that they would risk and endure all that horror rather than give up on Jesus, how reflective of His sacrifice for us, was their faith in Him And we know from The Acts of the Apostles chapters 19&20, that the early Ephesian church had a bumpy start. We find Paul there in Ephesus, a city in far western Turkey, on the Aegean Sea directly across from Athens. The result of Paul’s two-year residence there Luke, the writer Acts tells us, is that “all the inhabitants of Asia heard the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10;). Over the first three months Paul preached at the synagogue in Ephesus but while some came to faith, others became more and more opposed to it.The worshippers of Artemis and the silversmith Demetrius and his fellow merchants who sold Artemis merchandise were particularly hostile and turned the crowds against Paul and the new believers. Such was the hostility and near riots on occasion, that It became impossible for Paul to carry on his teaching there. So he moved for the remainder of his two years from teaching at the synagogue to the school house of a believer called Tyrannus. No wonder Paul is praying for the church at Ephesus. Paul wrote this letter from Prison in Rome. In Ephesians chapter 6:20 he calls himself an ambassador in chains. He wrote it to encourage a young church and we can be caught up in the exhilaration, the joy and the excitement it contains, but then we remember where he is now and the painful birth of that church and the word encourage takes on its full meaning - Paul really is sending courage to his fellow believers. It takes courage to have faith but having faith can fill us with courage. Courage to stand up and say this is what I believe and I will commit my life to living and loving out my faith in the world around me; and I will lean on my faith in order to make that happen. As in Ephesus the world is no less precarious today, no less uunpredictable Tropical storms turning into Hurricane Nate in the Gulf of Mexico. Dreadful floods in Sierra Leon, Horrendous conflict in the Middle East The Country music concert shootings in Las Vegas Spain and Catalonia - independence referendum Party conference season - plotters and intrigue The continuing saga that is Brexit and all its fallout Terrorist attacks and the fear of them We may not face death and persecution for our faith in Herne Hill in 2017, but there are many other challenges that do face us and those we love and those we don’t know but care about nonetheless, and in all of these challenges Paul continues to encourage us I keep asking, Paul writes, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit[a] of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. Hope in Christ, trust in his power, the power that raised Him from the dead - how complete the faith of those believers in Ephasus would have needed to be to keep them going! And where do we go for guidance to face our challenges? How do we respond to circumstances that come upon us? Everyone has to deal with the day to day, the wonderful and the dreadful, the surprising and the unexpected, but as believers we have a particular place to go, a place of enlightenment, encouragement and steadfastness - the foot of the cross The place where we lay our burdens down, where we see the ultimate example of sacrificial love, service and forgiveness, a place that leads us to think upon a power beyond anything we can imagine, that power over death itself. If we can trust and hold onto that place of love forgiveness and death defying power then there is nothing we cannot face, endure and overcome with ultimate joy, in the strength of Christ We can live the way of the cross We can share that light in the world, So for us today - what does this light sharing, this complete reliance on divine wisdom, this confidence in this the death defying power of creation, look like in practice? Well I am not expecting to fly over any skyscrapers in my cloak with my pants over my tights, but I do expect to trust in that foundational guidance at all times, out in the world, within the worshipping community and also personally. When my son was still my daughter and mortally distressed, one evening when he was around 14 he at last anxiously told me that he thought he was a boy trapped in a girl’s body. The first thing I did after hugs and reassurances, was run upstairs and cry for his sadness and PRAY. I had that foundational support, that somewhere to take our distress, and our bewilderment, confident that God would guide me. Lord I prayed, I need a sign, a big sign, big as you like and soon as you like, what am I supposed to do, how do I help my baby. and I left it at that. Half an hour later, I kid you not, I was going through things to throw into the recycling and flicked through the free Lambeth magazine Lambeth Life before binning it… On the back page in a column of adds and events were two lines in italics Half term art project for young adults 14-24 with challenges around their Gender Identity and a mobile phone number.. This organisation GI (Gendered Intelligence) saved his life Now people may sneer or guffaw, and of course I checked them out and went along, and have subsequently met several Christian parents there including a street pastor, but the point is Are we alert to God’s guidance, to answered prayer, it may not be the answer we always want, but that’s surely the point of guidance, if we knew all the answers we wouldn’t need to ask the questions because we’d be perfect… and we’re not. Do we believe in the power of answered prayer? Do we believe in a powerful God, a raising corpses from the dead powerful God? Does that question embarrass us? Do we have confidence in our own abilities in Christ to do hard things, to cope with hard things? Because having faith doesn’t mean the hard things don’t come, but when they do, and they always do, we have a light, a wisdom and a power that we can turn to. When I prayed about my son, God didn’t make the distress go away or instantly transform his gender, or take away the difficulties and pain of the situation, but He put in my way people and a process, that could support my son and our family. Paul, the ambassador in chains gives thanks for the church at Ephasus because of their loyalty and faithfulness to God in spite of the obstacles. Do we even remember He's there in every and all circumstances? Do we give thanks to God’s for His loyalty and faithfulness to us? How do we share that gratitude? Are we sharing it? Drawing up the parish profile for our next potential vicar, we see what a lot we do in this parish already to manifest that gratitude in sharing with others, and now we need deep and focused prayer in this interregnum period for guidance on who should lead us as we continue the work of sharing God’s grace with his creation - and there have been and will continue to be opportunities to come together in prayer to do just that… Last Wednesday a community meeting was held here to discuss the possibility of our supporting the homing of a Syrian refugee family here. It’s hard not to think of Damascus, of Syria when we think of Paul’s journeys evangelising in that region, and when we reflect on the state of Syria today it must give us pause, we need prayer and practical action for God’s world. Because whatever our activity, none of it is going anywhere without prayer and a discerning heart. Just at the church at Ephesus needed to remain prayerful so they could remain open to discern God's wisdom and vision, so too we need to open ourselves to Christ continually. What do I mean? Pray about everything, God knows anyway, but when we pray, we say I have faith , I trust that you are present and know what I need to know, and I commit to paying attention to you. Last week I was struck when we sang about God being the great I AM. I am, not I was or I will be, I am, right now, God is, all the time, no past or future but always now, always present, always in the present. As the phrase goes - I think I last wheeled this out about 5 years ago - yesterday is a history tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift, that’s why its called the present. Unlike Kryptonite in Christ we are ultimately unbreakable - even as we wobble and fracture on a daily basis We are to hold our nerve Keep the faith Be utterly present at all times In every moment feeling the work of the almighty I AM Jesus Power, faithfully within and alongside us - Christ powered fullness Faith in Christ cannot be a faith of coercion but a faith of choice, a faith of welcome, but above all a faith of release into the person we were created to be - radical abundance in our unique self - given from ‘the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.’ the divine completeness He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, And without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, And the life was the light of all people. John writes in the opening of his gospel: 1:2-4 In ecstatic spirit, in quiet discernment, in scripture and in prayer - in the sustaining love & encouragement of fellow believers and in the guidance of nature and of silence in Godincidence and in surprises - God speak to us What might God be trying to say to each of us today? As the 19th century religious commentator Matthew Henry puts it ‘God has laid up spiritual blessings for us in his Son the Lord Jesus; but requires us to draw them out and fetch them in by prayer’ Be it thankful prayer, fearful prayer, angry prayer, ok heavenly father I need a sign soon as you like big as you like prayer, just pray. We are to come together in prayer and faith, to encourage one another when the fullness of the all in all is feeling less than full, to turn outwards as a church and share that light of Christ, to make the world light not heavy, light not dark, with this Christ light, this love, as Paul writes, that surpasses knowledge. Today May we Pray, listen, dust off the the big C t shirt and be ready to leap into action, May we see more as we come to know God better, let our innermost self be led by Christ’s light and may we like Paul burst for joy in Christ, ever-present today and every today Amen 11

Sermon 1st October 2017

Today, one our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, preaches. The reading is from 

Colossians 4, 2-18:  

How to behave in Christ 

In case you weren’t here 7 weeks ago (and probably a good number of you weren’t – it was the middle of the summer holidays) we had two very interesting services at St Saviour’s then St Paul’s in which, following the story of God speaking to Moses out of the burning bush, we asked ourselves, “Well, how does God speak to us today?”

And we asked people in the congregation to say, from where they were sitting, what ideas or experiences they had had, in answer to that question. Then one of our young people at both churches [                ] drew a series of images, pictures, of what each person in the congregation had called out.

Here is this congregation’s set of drawings – show the drawings - and I wrote down later that day what each congregation had said and it was:

That God speaks to us, for [St Saviour’s], through prayer, the Bible, the life of Jesus, through dreams, through our conscience and thoughts, through the prophets, the world around us and places we find ourselves in, other people both friends and strangers, on our deathbed, through music, suffering, appearances and visions, through the psalms and through preaching.

[St Paul’s] list was similar, but see if you can spot any differences. It was that God speaks to us through miracles, through other people, both their words and their actions, through suffering, prophecy fulfilled, the kindness of others, music, art, history, the mathematical precision of the universe, as we are dying, through the world and places we find ourselves in, visions, through the animals – the created things – prayer, the Bible, through preaching and as we are gardening and see the beauty that is there.

Then, in the final bit of that learning together session at each church that Sunday, we asked anyone who wanted to, to come to the front and share any actual examples they had of how they felt God had spoken to them before in one of those particular ways. And at each church about three people came up and shared, sometimes deeply personal experiences, of ways in which they felt they had heard God speaking to them. And of course there is no hierarchy, no experience that somehow counts more than another person’s. God just wants us to listen. And, interestingly, after the services more than one person came up to me and said they wished now they had come up to the microphone because they had also had something they would have liked to have said.

And the reasons for sharing that Sunday again today, apart from the fact that you may not have been here to hear what people here had to say, are first to remind ourselves that every time we come together on a Sunday to hear the Bible read and to hear a preacher preach, the question that should be uppermost in our minds is not, if you like, how good the service and the sermon was but rather above all else, to listen for His voice and to ask, “What might God be trying to say to me today as I hear these words spoken and read?”

And, secondly,  I wanted to go back to that idea of how God speaks to us because we are in the middle of a critically important process for the life of the Parish of Herne Hill.  I don't, personally, think there has been a more important time for this parish for many decades. Both churches have grown and changed and become established and have grown together, strongly establishing the parish as a whole. So much has been done and so much is going on and there is so much potential for more to happen but perhaps in different ways with a different way of being led and of people being enabled to take part and to grow.  So we are at that point of asking God to speak to us, to show us who our new vicar should be….and I believe it is a really important time for us and for this area we try to serve and for our children and young people and for the future.

More on some of those thoughts over the next few minutes as we turn to the end section of Paul’s letter, in chapter 4 of the letters to the Colossians, his letter, written from prison, from his being kept in prison in chains, to the new church at Colossae, a city that no longer exists in the modern day but was at the western end of what is now Turkey, about 120 miles inland from the coast.

Paul’s letter up to this final chapter has been rich, rich in his expressions of love for this group of people who will read it; its been rich in its emphasis on Jesus Christ as supreme and at the heart of everything; its been rich in his desire for the best for these people as they struggle with the change from the past that they are experiencing and begin to understand the depth of their new freedoms; but its been rich also in his certainty that this new life they experience in their faith in Jesus Christ must mean that old ways and old habits and old weaknesses are put off and new ways of living, what he calls new clothes, are put on. You may remember the list. It includes patience and kindness and humility and compassion and forgiveness…

And now at the end Paul comes to what you could call a long sign off to his letter and it breaks down, I think, into two parts.

It’s a bit, I think, like the letter a concerned parent might write – or should I say the email or whatsapp message they might send - to a child who has gone away from home for the first time, maybe to work, or to university or to live in a different country.  It’s a bit like “Don't forget to eat at least one good meal a day and don't forget to get plenty of sleep and don’t forget to do your washing!”

It's a bit like that, except maybe a bit more serious. But it has that same sense of concern, of urgency perhaps because Paul seems to me to be saying,  “Look, if you forget some of what I have said before, it was quite deep perhaps, you can come back to it over time, please do not forget these things.”

And the first thing he says is: do not forget to pray…in fact he says please spend a lot of time and effort in your prayers. Devote yourself to prayer. And Paul says keep alert in your prayers, be on the ball in your prayers, be focussed and specific. And Paul says give thanks as you pray. Don't just pray for what is ahead. Give thanks for all God has done in the past in your lives and the lives of those you know and in the life of your church.

So, is anyone hearing God’s voice this morning as we face this enormously important transition in the life of these churches to our new vicar, to what may be a new way of doing things and our future together?

Does anyone feel called or challenged or encouraged to pray? If you do, don't wish you had done so when the opportunity has gone. Take advantage please of the opportunities that there are. There is one this Thursday, 5^th October, 8pm at St Paul’s, specifically to pray about the appointment process for our new vicar and for all the people involved. There will be other opportunities, but if you think God is speaking to you about prayer, please do take part in this one. You do not have to feel brilliant at praying, just to feel that God may be nudging you to pray..

And the second thing Paul says is, “Conduct yourselves wisely towards outsiders, making the most of the time.”

You may not know this if you are not very closely involved with the process, but when a parish in the Church of England is looking for a new vicar, it gets a lot more attention from outsiders than it normally might expect. The Bishop takes a keen interest, because this is his area and he wants to be sure things will go well. The Archdeacon takes a keen interest because she has local overall responsibility and she wants to know she will have someone she can work with. Other people take a keen interest because they have legal responsibilities to help us make our choices and they want to exercise those responsibilities wisely. And, above all perhaps we open ourselves up to potential candidates for the post, to those outsiders we want to come in and join us and we say look here we are, this is us, this is what we do, this is who we are, this is where we might like to go to. Please consider coming inside and leading us forward for the next ten years or more.  Please consider leading us in this part of the world, this part of South London, in increasingly complex and demanding times.

So it is important perhaps for us to realize that we are in fact a bit in the spotlight. People are looking at us. We need to remember that and behave wisely. I don't know but do you hear God speaking to you about that this morning?

And the third thing Paul says is, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Be careful, if you like, not only in what you do but also in what you say.  You should say what you feel strongly about, don't let what you say be tasteless, it should be seasoned with that tang of salt! But be measured and respectful in how you express yourself, aware that people will have different views and things may not always work out exactly as they first appear to you that they should.

You see, at times of major change of direction, changes of personalities, or changes in the way things are done, we do get more opportunities perhaps than normal, to say what we really think about the way our churches should be going and the way they should be led.  So yes,  we should say what we really think and feel strongly about, but say it in a measured and a balance way, respectful of the views of others and aware that out of all this discussion  and debate God will lead us forwards, as He has before.

I don't know, but do you hear God speaking to you about that this morning, about the way you should be speaking to others at this time of change and of new potential?

And finally in this first half of the long sign off to his letter, Paul asks his readers to pray for him that he will have opportunities to declare the mystery of Christ.

I have been enjoying thinking about that phrase this week as I wondered what to say this morning. The mystery of Christ! Does it not in a way sum up all our experience of the Christian life as we engage with this person in the gospels. Is he not full of mystery? Do we not think about so many questions about him? Who is this man? What does his teaching have to say to me and what does it have to say to this world and the way we do things today? And what about this idea that he as both man and the Son of God? What might that mean? And what about the things he did? What do they say about who he was and what might be possible? And what about his death? Why did he have to die? And what does it mean that he died for me? And what about his rising to life? What did that achieve and what does it signify for who he was and for hope beyond suffering? And what about the future? They say he will come again and that everything will one day be perfectly restored…  and so on and so on. Is this not the heart of it all for us who come to these churches? To work out the mysteries about Jesus Christ with all their complexities and challenges and inspiration and hopes? Is this not the heart of the task we want someone else to come and lead and enable us in?

The former premiership footballer with Newcastle, Chelsea and Queens Park rangers, Gavin Peacock who nine years ago gave up a career as a football pundit to move to be the pastor of a church in Canada put it like this in the Independent newspaper a few weeks ago when he wrote that the last nine years had been the hardest part of his life in some ways but “through the difficulty, we’ve grown deeper in our faith in Jesus Christ. It’s been a very testing time but a very fruitful time.”  You can sense I think some of that wrestling with the mystery of Christ. He is back in the UK this month speaking about his life and work if you want to Google him just in case he is near you and you would like to hear him.

So there is the first half of Paul’s sign off. A bit like the parent to the child newly left home. His list of things not to forget. Don't forget to pray. Don’t forget to be careful how you act and in what you say and don’t forget what you are really all about. And don't forget to do your washing! Might God just be speaking to you today about any of these?

And then finally, again like the letter to the child recently left home, Paul signs off with that lovely long list of greetings. A bit like, “Aunty so and so says hello.” And Mrs B next door sends her love and your cousin David, or whoever, he prays for you, you know. And your sister wants to come and visit when you are settled. And if you see the daughter of Mrs so and so round the corner can you pass on a message, you know the one I mean, she was in your brother’s class at school.

So we hear about the faith and the prayers and the encouragement and the hard work and so on of Tychicus and of Onesimus and of Aristarchus and of Mark the cousin of Barnabas, and of Jesus who is usually known as Justus and of Epaphras and of Luke the doctor and of Demas. And Paul says to his readers that that they should give a message to Nympha and tell Archippus not to stop half way through what he has started. He needs help to keep going and do the right thing, that one.

We don't know a huge amount about most of these characters. We can only imagine what they might have looked like. But they were probably, when it comes down to it, people not too different from you and me. People who had heard God speaking to them in some way and wanted to hear more. People who were wrestling one way or another with all those questions about Jesus Christ. People who wanted to grow but people who needed reminding all the time about what is really important and about what their priorities should be.

Churches are not primarily institutions or processes or buildings or names. They are primarily groups of individual people, long lists of people called by the God who longs to speak to them in so many ways and to help them to grow in relationship with Himself and with each other and with the communities they serve. And that might not be a bad thing to have in our minds as we wait and pray and talk about and prepare for the next person who God has to lead us here.

Amen