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
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
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