Herne Hill Parish

Sermon 22nd January 2011

2012-01-23T13:25:00.003Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from Ecclesiastes 121: v1-14

Wisdom

Some very wise and intelligent people have said some things that have turned out to be completely wrong. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the first commercially practical light bulb, once said, “Radio is just a fashion contrivance that will soon die out. It is obvious that there never will be invented a proper receiver!” In 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik, the first Russian satellite to be put into orbit, Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal said, “Space travel is bunk.”

Even the most intelligent and wise people can get things very wrong. Today we’re looking at Wisdom Literature in the Bible, as part of our series on the types of literature. Of course, the wisdom I’ll be talking about today isn’t scientific wisdom; it’s not about whether certain inventions will work in practice or whether space travel is possible. Wisdom Literature is about a very different type of wisdom, and even though it was written between 2,500-3,000 years ago, it addresses some very modern questions. The books from the OT that we’re going to be thinking about today as Wisdom Literature are Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Some commentators include Psalms and the Song of Songs in the list, but Adjoa will be telling us about them in two weeks’ time when she speaks to us about Poetry. So I shall leave them to her, except to say that there are elements of Wisdom Literature in both of them.

One of the commentaries I read said, “Hebrew “wisdom” is readily recognized but difficult to define.” It goes on to say that the wisdom writings have different emphases and are of varied character. The book of Proverbs, unsurprisingly, contains proverbs - basic instructions on how to live. Job and Ecclesiastes contain “contemplative wisdom”; they ponder on the perplexing side of life. But they do have many features in common. They are very interested in the way the world works. They are very interested in the place of humankind in the world. And in particular they are interested in how the world and humankind come under God’s sovereign care. Also, despite the differences between the books, Wisdom Literature also has a number of consistent themes.

One of the main themes in these books is the fear of – or reverence for - the Lord. The fear of the Lord sets the framework for wise living. In the first chapter of Proverbs, these classic words appear: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:7) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And this implies that there are limits to human wisdom. The limits of human wisdom is another recurring theme. There are many questions that human wisdom cannot answer. To be wise, you need to have a good idea of how God has ordered the world and to live in agreement with God’s plans for the world.

Wisdom Literature also reflects on upright people and wicked people in relation to God. This is an ancient problem and a modern one. Some of the proverbs seem to indicate that there is a link between good behaviour and reward and wicked behaviour and punishment. On the other hand, other parts of Wisdom Literature note that the simple link between God rewarding the upright and punishing the wicked does not always seem to hold. And this leads on to the question of justice – one of the deepest mysteries that we face as people of faith. And closely connected to this is the problem of suffering and pain, an issue that the book of Job faces head on.

So let’s have a look at these 3 books, Ecclesiastes, Job and Proverbs. I’ll start with Ecclesiastes. Some scholars think it was written by Solomon, the great King of Israel, in the 10th century BC. Others think it was a later writer. Regardless, the book claims that its wisdom ultimately comes from God.

At first sight, it seems a rather strange book. Much of it seems to be cynical and pessimistic. In this morning’s reading, we heard the words of verse 9 of Chapter 12, a refrain that ring outs out frequently in Ecclesiastes; “’Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Everything is meaningless!’”

“Everything is meaningless and a chasing after wind.” So, who is this Teacher who says everything is meaningless and a chasing after wind? He is very much like a seminar leader. His job, like any good teacher, is not to give us the answers, but to raise questions, to push us to find the answers. Ecclesiastes is not a place where we find answers. The Teacher’s job is to push us to the logical conclusion of our positions. His job is to challenge the foundation of our lives and to challenge the basis of our thoughts.

He asks this question at the beginning of Ecclesiastes, “What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?” (Ecc 1.3) Is there any reason for existence? Does life have any meaning? What do you have to show for all your life under the sun? What difference are you making? The Teacher gives a depressing account of what life without faith is like.

Today some people say that the meaning of life lies in making the world a better place. They hope that when all is said and done, they’ve helped to make the world a better place. They’ve campaigned for human rights; they’ve fought against oppression and racism; they’ve done their best to avoid environmental catastrophe. And if they’ve helped to make the world better, they won’t have lived and died in vain. Now all these things I’ve mentioned are good things to strive for, but if there is no God, what is the point?

Let’s assume that this world is all there is – the only life under the sun. We can’t be sure if there is a God or not, as many modern people argue. So let’s assume that this life is all we’ve got and there’s nothing else. In that case all of human history will simply be a flash in the pan. One day our sun will die and the world will end. Planets come and go. And in that context, if there is no God, then everything, in the words of the Teacher, is meaningless. “Everything is meaningless and a chasing after wind.”

If there is no God who created you, if there is no God who sustains the universe, if there is no life after death, you can’t make a difference. You are a like a footprint in the sand that’s right at the ocean’s edge. The tide will soon come in and wash away the footprint. As the Teacher put it; “There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.” (Ecc 1.11) When this planet eventually dies, even the most famous figures in history, the likes of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, will be forgotten. Without God, everything is meaningless and a chasing after wind. That is the message of Ecclesiastes. Either there is a God, or everything is meaningless.

The Teacher demolishes all the stock answers about the meaning of life. And he concludes by describing true wisdom; “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.” (Ecc 12:13-14)

The only way to find true meaning in life is to recognise that God is there and to keep his commandments. The book of Proverbs gives us a lot of guidance about keeping God’s commandments. As usual, there is a debate amongst the scholars about when it was written, but it does seem that many of the proverbs date from the time of Solomon (1,000 BC), and indeed Solomon probably composed some of the proverbs himself. However, other proverbs are probably of a later date, perhaps as late as 500 BC. But whatever the origin of the proverbs may be, they are very much about “wisdom”. The Hebrew word for “wisdom” means something like “skill in the art of godly living”. Having wisdom means having insight; it means knowing how things really work and how things really are. And it means knowing what we should do about it. But finding wisdom, being wise, isn’t easy. And Proverbs gives some handy tips. It contains hundreds of pithy sayings, setting out principles by which life normally works. Here’s a very brief summary of some of these principles:

• If you work hard, you will prosper
• If you are lazy, you will be poor
• If you live according to moral absolutes, your life will go well
• If you live a wicked life, your life won’t go well
• If you bring a child up in the right way, then she will love you and be a responsible adult.

That sounds good, doesn’t it. But you may well be thinking; “Life isn’t that simple!” We all know people who have lived according to God’s standards and who have suffered terribly. Some people work hard, but stay poor because of oppression. Wisdom Literature recognises this. The problem of suffering is an issue that the Book of Job confronts.

Job was an extremely righteous man who was very prosperous. Then one day all of his possessions were destroyed and his children were killed. Why did this happen?

According to the first two chapters of the book, God and Satan had entered into a contest. Satan had claimed that Job only loved God because God had put a hedge about him, because Job had prospered hugely in material terms. If Job lost his wealth, then he would curse God. So God let Satan go after Job. Job endured these calamities bravely, without blaming God. And so God allowed Satan to attack Job himself physically, as long as he didn’t kill Job. And Job had a dreadful attack of boils.
Three friends of Job then came to comfort him. They went along with the idea that if you live life morally, then life will go well. So they said to Job, “Hmm, life’s not going well for you, Job, you must be sinning; you must be doing something really bad.”

They’re harsh, moralistic and miserable comforters. They knew there was a pattern, but they only saw one end of it. They thought they could understand it all. They knew that there was a pattern, but they didn’t see any exceptions to it. Proverbs says that if you are faithful and don’t commit adultery, life will go well with you. Now, if you are faithful to your spouse, you certainly increase your chances of a happy and long-lasting marriage. But we know that isn’t always the case. And Job confirms that. If we think that if we live good lives, then things will go well us for, then we’re wrong. On the other hand, if we think that means we can do what we like, that there are no moral absolutes, then we are also wrong.

So, back to Job. Job did break his silence and vented his feeling to God. He did have a go at God, crying out in pain, despair and anger. His friends also told him off for this. God then appeared. God rebuked Job’s friends, saying, "I am angry with you....you have not spoken of me what is right." (Job 42:7) They had failed to see the whole picture; they didn’t know true wisdom.

God also spoke to Job. God described the glories of the natural world in an amazing speech. Philip Yancey, a well-known Christian writer, describes God’s message in this way: “Until you know a little more about running the physical universe, Job, don’t tell me how to run the moral universe.” God did not criticise Job for crying out in anger; the only thing he criticised him for was his limited perspective. Job didn’t know the bigger picture – the cosmic battle between God and Satan, the fight between good and evil. The Book of Job doesn’t answer the question of why people suffer, but it tells us that how we respond to suffering matters. Through his faith Job helped God to gain a great victory over the powers of evil.

The Wisdom Literature deals with some big questions. What is the meaning of life? How should we live? Why do good people suffer? The three Wisdom books between them confront these questions. No one of them provides a complete picture. Proverbs sets out a basic pattern for living, and Job gives us some insight into what’s going on when the pattern breaks down. Through them we can learn wisdom; we can learn insight into how the world works and how to live. But is wisdom just something we can learn?

In Proverbs wisdom is pictured as a woman calling. Wisdom isn’t just an abstract concept, a matter of rules; it’s personal. What if the wisdom of God was a person you could know and love? If you could be in a relationship with that person, it would help to make you wise. What if wisdom was a person?

Several New Testament scriptures identify Jesus with the personified wisdom pictured in Proverbs. Indeed, Jesus is wisdom personified. Ultimately wisdom is knowing Jesus. It is in Jesus that we can find true wisdom. Jesus is the wisdom of God to us – the wisdom of God in the form of a person.

Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for making us wise to where wisdom is, in Jesus. Now make us wise in knowing him. Show us a parish how to know and love him, to make us wise. Help us this year to grow more and more into the likeness of Jesus.
Amen.

Sermon 15th January 2012

2012-01-17T14:05:00.002Z

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from Joshua 1: verses 1-9.

It was a dark and stormy night, the brigands and chiefs began to fight. And one said, Antonio, tell us a story. Antonio said, It was a dark and stormy night, the brigands and chiefs began to fight. And one said, Antonio, tell us a story. Antonio said, It was a dark and stormy night...

When our kids were little, Trevor used to tell them that story, as his father had to him.

And of course it was a joke because the story doesn’t go anywhere, just round in circles, rather annoyingly.

We’re thinking about stories this morning. Louie Giglio, a North American Baptist pastor wrote:

Life is the tale of 2 stories, one finite and frail, the other eternal and enduring. The tiny one – the story of us – is as brief as the blink of an eye. Yet somehow our infatuation with our own little story – and our determination to make it as big as we possibly can – blinds us to the massive God-story that is unfolding all around us. We can live our entire life completely oblivious to the grand story of the Creator of the universe that is being played out all around us. It’s the story of God and his marvellous and extraordinary dealings with humankind. It’s The Story of life and love for all time. It’s God’s story, his story, and we can play a part in it! All of his-tory is ultimately His Story, God’s story.

(Thanks to the North American Baptist pastor Louie Giglio for some of that train of thought.)

... ... ...

This morning we’re thinking about God’s story, His-story, in the history books of the Bible. Last week Cameron introduced this series on the Bible, and we looked briefly at the first type of literature it contains, the law or Torah, the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy.

In those books we read about creation, God’s relationship with humankind, how people rebelled against him, and the beginnings of God’s rescue plan to re-establish a relationship with humanity. God made a covenant, the deepest sort of binding promise, between himself and a particular people, the Israelites. They would be his own special people, through which he would reach ALL peoples everywhere.

This week we’re looking at the history chunk of the Bible - that is the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther.

They cover about 1000 years of history, from when the Israelites went into the promised land of Canaan with their leader Joshua, to life there under judges and later kings, the splitting of the nation into 2 rival kingdoms, the downfall and exile in both, and Judah’s return from exile. This history involved many ups and downs, twists and turns – but through it all, it’s the story of God, God’s relationship with his people. It’s a God story, His story, history.

The reading we just heard at the very beginning of the book of Joshua is when God’s people were on the brink. On the brink of entering the land God had promised them, where God’s people would live as he said, in relationship with him as their God, living his ways and obeying his law, with his presence and blessing.

The book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelites taking and settling in the land, starting with the miraculous crossing of the River Jordan and the fall of Jericho.

This isn’t the time to go into it in detail, but I must briefly acknowledge how our modern ears are disturbed by God’s command to destroy the former inhabitants of the land. To us it sounds like ethnic cleansing. But God is not motivated by prejudice. Moses said “the Lord is going to drive these nations out before you because they are evil.” In his holiness, God was provoked by the awful wickedness of the Canaanites, who practiced child sacrifice, idolatry and immorality. He knew that his people would be corrupted by such evil if it was allowed to stay in the land. And that is exactly what eventually happened. The Israelites failed to destroy the Canaanites completely and they were a corrupting influence for many years.

So the book of Joshua tells the story of the Israelites taking the land, and in time it was divided into the 12 tribes of Israel, the descendants of Joseph and his 11 brothers.

The book of Joshua ends on a similar note to the one it started on, that the people needed to live as God’s people, in obedience and relationship to him, in order to know his presence and blessing.

That’s Joshua. Then there’s the book of Judges, which continues the story after Joshua dies. It makes depressing reading, as the people rebelled against God’s rule again and again. They turned from God to worship other gods. God responded by allowing them to be defeated by their enemies. So they cried out to God for help and he raised up a judge, or ruler, to lead the battle, defeat their enemies and restore peace to the land. But it never lasted long. The people turned away from God again and the cycle was repeated, many times over.

There were 12 judges, military leaders, who also made judgements, and some were prophets. You may know the stories of Gideon, Samson and Deborah, and their enemies the Philistines, Canaanites and Mideonites. The judges were a motley lot, some of very dubious character, but God delivered his people through them anyway.

The next history book is Ruth, a short story of a widow whose devotion to her mother in law, her faith in God and integrity in hostile circumstances were recognised and rewarded by God. This happened in the time of Judges. It showed that God’s goodness extended beyond his covenant people the Israelites.

In the book of 1 Samuel, we see that Samuel was the greatest judge to rule Israel. He served God all his life but when he grew old he appointed his wicked sons as judges in his place. The elders of Israel came to him and demanded that he appoint a king to rule them. They said, “like all the other nations”. God was angry because he knew that their motivation was wrong – they wanted a king instead of God rather than a king under God. Despite their bad motivation, God gave them what they asked for and Saul was anointed king. But the people were not blessed during his reign because he persistently disobeyed God. God therefore rejected him as king.

The focus moved on to David, who had already been anointed as King Saul’s successor. That God was with him was seen early on in his life when he defeated Goliath, the mighty Philistine. But there were problems for David. Saul was jealous of him and tried to kill him. David was forced to live as a fugitive until Saul died in battle and then David became king.

2 Samuel

At last Israel had the kind of king God wanted: David was “a man after God’s own heart”. But David was not perfect. His lust led him to adultery with Bathsheba and then to have her husband murdered. But for most of his life David tried to be faithful to God, and so God blessed him and the people through him. At first, only his own tribe of Judah acknowledged David as king, but a few years later all Israel followed. He established Jerusalem as the capital city and there was peace in the land. The Ark of the Covenant, symbolising God’s presence and rule, was brought into the city. David ruled, not independently of God, but under him. Jerusalem was the city of David, but also city of God. Even so, there were prophesies from God of a king far greater than David to come in the future.

In the book of 1 Kings, Solomon succeeded David as king and ruled wisely, bringing more security and prosperity to the land. A temple was built, providing a permanent symbolic dwelling place for God. These were the best times ever for Israel. It looked as if all God’s promises had come true: God’s people were in the promised place, enjoying his rule and blessing. But it didn’t last. Solomon married many foreign wives and began to worship their gods. After King Solomon died civil war broke out and the kingdom began to disintegrate.

In 2 Kings, soon after Solomon’s son Rehoboam came to the throne, the 10 northern and eastern tribes rebelled against him and set up their own kingdom under Jeroboam. Israel had been united for 120 years under Saul, David & Solomon, but then it was divided. The Northern kingdom, confusingly, was called Israel, with the capital Shechem, later Samaria. The Southern kingdom was called Judah, with its capital Jerusalem. There were occasionally good kings in both kingdoms, but the general direction of their history was downwards. The decline in the north was obvious from the very beginning: Jeroboam was concerned that his people would want to go to Jerusalem in the southern kingdom to worship God, so he built 2 alternative shrines, each with a golden calf to worship!

The end came in 722BC, 200 years after the kingdoms divided. Because of the people’s unfaithfulness to God, he allowed the Assyrians to attack Samaria and destroy it. The Northern tribes never again had a separate existence. Their descendants were the Samaritans, despised by Jews in Jesus’ time.

The Southern kingdom did little better. Even though they had the temple in their midst, the people turned to other gods. There were some periods when they were more obedient to God, e.g. under King Josiah, but the change was not deep enough. The people had repeatedly broken their covenant with God by unfaithfulness and so could not be allowed to stay in the promised land. They were invaded by the Babylonians in 597BC and some inhabitants taken away to exile. Ten years later Jerusalem and its temple was destroyed and more exiles were taken to Babylon.

These were sad, sad times, when God’s people were in exile, not enjoying his rule or his blessing.

The books of 1 & 2 Chronicles cover much of the same history as Samuel and Kings, but from a somewhat different viewpoint. And the last history books are Ezra Nehemiah & Esther.

6 decades after the exile had begun, the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed the exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple. Only a small number made it back to their homeland, and they faced great opposition when they did, but eventually a new temple was built under the priest Ezra’s leadership.

Soon afterwards, Nehemiah led a party to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem city. They did so, but it was all nothing like as great as it had been in Solomon’s day. They were still waiting for the prophesied golden days of David’s descendant king to come.

The last history book is Esther, who married a great king. When God’s people were in danger, she was brave and asked the king to help them, so God’s people were saved.

And they are the history books!

They tell the story of God’s dealings with his people. The story of God’s love and faithfulness despite their repeated unfaithfulness and disobedience. Again and again – and again! – the people turned away from God, and only when his presence and blessing was withdrawn from them, did they turn back to him. And he forgave and accepted them, again and again and again, because his love was – and is - never ending.

In the history books of the Bible, we keep reading that God’s blessing was dependent on the people’s obedience. The covenant between God and the Israelites meant that the people were under God’s authority, his care, protection and blessing, and thus owed him their love, trust and obedience.

What is this blessing that’s tied up with obedience? Often it’s portrayed as success, victory or prosperity, as it was in our Joshua reading. But we know from other parts of the Bible, like Job who was faithful to God but suffered terribly, and of course look at Jesus who was the ultimate in obedience and faithfulness to God, and see how he suffered. We know from them that the blessing we are promised isn’t necessarily material prosperity – it’s God’s presence. “I the Lord your God, will be with you wherever you go” God said to Joshua. Jesus spoke of trials and suffering for his followers, even that they had to lose their life and die for him – but promised “I will be with you always to the end of the age”. So the blessing that obedience to God brings, may include material blessing, but ultimately it’s God’s presence, which is after all the best blessing of all and lasts forever!

Cameron said last week that all of the Bible points to Jesus, he’s its real focus. There are several ways in which the history of the Israelites we’ve galloped through this morning points to that ultimate focal point of history, Jesus, but I don’t want to steal the thunder of future preachers looking at prophesy and wisdom, as the history books provide the context for them. All I’ll say for now is that the story of God’s people living under judges and kings, was only a sort of preview or sketch of what was to come in Jesus. David was the best king they had, but he was just a shadow of the one true mighty king to come, Jesus. Jesus didn’t rule that land as a king during his life on earth, but he is the ultimate ruler of all history, including us today. He rules with wisdom, justice, mercy and love, and living under King Jesus brings the greatest blessings of all. When history is wound up at the end of time, everyone will see and bow before his kingship, and live under his kingship for all eternity. Maybe more about that in another future sermon, the one on the apocalypse.

But for now, we need to wake up to God’s story as The Story, and to God’s invitation to us to join him in it.

Louie Giglio again: “We don’t have to. We can spend our days trying to hijack the story of God, turning it into the story of us. Inverting reality, we can live every day as if life is all about me, as if life is my own fleeting one act play.

We all have to make a choice. We can choose to cling to starring roles in the little stories of us, or we can exchange our fleeting moments in the spotlight, for a supporting role in the eternally beautiful epic that is the Story of God. Abandoning our story and embracing God’s story, will allow our little lives to be filled with the wonder of God, as we live for his worship and service. And joining our small stories to his, will give us what we all want most in life anyway – the assurance that our brief moments on earth count for something in a story that never ends.”

Playing our part in God’s story, HIS story, is the most exciting way to live! It’s what we were created for! To make our short, little life story part of God’s story. His love and faithfulness reach out to us, today, as they reached out to the people we read about in [the Bible] here, so that we can say YES to God, to living for His worship service and glory. It’s not about you, or me, it’s all about him.

So, will we recognise God’s story as His story, as THE story of life and take up his invitation to play our part?

Then let’s pray:

God of history, God of all space and time, we acknowledge that you are supreme in all creation! We want to play our part in your story, of the life and love you offer us. We want to surrender our story, our lives, to you, for you to weave into your purposes in history. Show us what that means for each one of us today. In Jesus name, Amen.

Thanks to Louie Giglio’s book “I am not but I know I AM” and Vaughan Roberts’ book “God’s Big Picture”.

Sermon 8th January 2012

2012-01-09T13:10:00.001Z

Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Exodus 20, verses 1-17.

“It’s a big book, full of big stories with big characters. They have big ideas (not least about themselves) and make big mistakes. It’s about God, and greed, and grace; about life, lust, laughter and loneliness. It’s about birth, beginnings, and betrayal; about siblings, squabbles, and sex; about power and prayer and prison and passion. And that’s only Genesis”! Welcome to the Bible, then!

That’s a quote from Tom Wright’s book, Simply Christian. I haven’t done any more than dip into it so far, but can still recommend it as a companion to this series. The former Bishop of Durham wrote it quite recently, to describe what Christianity is about. His intent is to commend the faith to those outside it, and also to explain it those on the inside. That makes it, like the Bible itself, for every one of us. And of course Tom Wright put the Bible at the centre of this book. In the same way, we are putting the Bible at the centre of this new series. We are doing that in order to put Jesus more firmly at the centre of our life, as our parish Aim states that we try to do.

It’s always important to be clear about such things from the outset, I think – not least because God has been! That is what leaps out of this huge, sprawling book: God’s plan isn’t hidden or secret, but is plain for all to see in here, from the beginning. That’s why the 16^th Century Reformers made such a big deal of the Bible being freely available in everybody’s native language. We are meant to read it, explore it, know it for ourselves – and be radically changed by it in the process. This book doesn’t just change us; it also changes communities, and the world even. It has done that often before, and it can do the same afresh in every generation. But again it’s Tom Wright who likens how we so often use the Bible to the way that most of us use a computer: we only access a very limited amount of its vast capabilities!

Now, using the Bible isn’t anything new in this church. We have rightly been known as Evangelical (i.e. Bible-based) for a long time now. We may be at the Open, rather than at the Conservative, end of that spectrum. But we do treat, and teach, the Bible very seriously here. Even so, it struck the preachers’ group last year that we’ve been taking rather a lot for granted. To some extent we’ve made assumptions about what people know, or believe, about the Bible. The start of a new year seems like a good time to pause, then. We think that we need go back to key basics. Hopefully we’ll fill in gaps that likely exist for at least some people. So we’re sure that no-one will mind if we start with the very basic facts – which is part of my task in getting this series going today.

So, we are talking here about one book, split into 2 major, but unequal sections: the Old and the New. They are called Testaments, which is an old-fashioned alternative word for the legal term covenant. They are known as that because each section revolves around a covenant that God made with people. One key message of the Bible is that the new Covenant isn’t, in fact, a new one at all. Rather it’s a renewal of the first, or Old, covenant. It’s key to grasp that this was always God’s plan, from the beginning. It wasn’t that Plan A didn’t work, and so God came up with Plan B. What we know as the New covenant is the one that’s based on Jesus’ death on the cross. That was God’s intention since before He made the world, the Bible says. We can read all about that in the part of the Bible that tells the story of the Old covenant. The classic way of expressing it goes like this: the New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New revealed.

The major ways in which the Old Testament is revealed in the New are in the life and ministry of Jesus, as we might expect. There are 4 of those books that tell that part of the Bible story, and those are known as Gospels. There are many other Old Testament references to be read in the letters that make up almost the rest of New Testament. Those books were written to or about the early church that grew from Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. There are 27 New Testament books in total, compared to 39 books in the Old Testament. But there is much more content in the Old Testament – about 1 000 printed pages, where the New Testament has more like 300. The entire New Testament was written in a relatively very short time-frame – within about 70 years after Jesus’ death. It was written mostly in Greek, whereas the Old Testament was originally compiled in Hebrew, and done over hundreds of years. It’s worth knowing too that the whole of the Old Testament was translated into Greek in 4^th Century BC – and that (the Septuagint) is what the New Testament writers mostly had to refer to.

Don’t worry: there won’t be an exam on all this later in the series! If you do want to refresh your memory, this will be posted on our website, or you can ask for a printed copy. If Tom Wright isn’t for you, try this book by Vaughan Roberts: God’s Big Picture. However you best absorb it, this is the kind of background that we need to have in mind when we read any book, or part, of the Bible. It matters because it’s all part of God’s unfolding story that is still being written today – into which He is calling you! Yes, the canon of Scripture (as the Bible is also known) may be closed, in that there are no new books being added. But the story itself is far from over – again as the Bible makes clear time after time.

I’m sure that we’ll hear much more on that as this series progresses between now and the start of Lent. We’re trying to break the Bible down into more manageable sections in that time. The programme card shows how we’ll do that, by the different types of literature that we find in both the Old and New Testaments. The sharp-eyed will have noticed that there’s nothing planned on Gospels or Epistles though! That’s partly to do with the number of weeks available. But more importantly it reflects the nature of the Bible itself. Even though it is made up of 66 books that fall in 8 basic literary categories, it is one book, with one overarching story, trying to get that across, somehow! And that big story is personified in and through Jesus: he is God’s only Son, who became human so that we can become God’s children.

If you look back at most of our series over the years you’ll see they have overwhelmingly come from the Gospels, or Epistles. That’s quite right too, because to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is the focal point of the universe. We read all this in the Bible: that the universe was created through Jesus; it was made for him; he holds it together today; he’s waiting to bring it all together in the fullness of time; and he will bring all of humanity with it, on the Day of Judgment. That is when everyone who has ever lived will face Jesus, on his throne, for him alone to decide our eternal fate. How can any truly Bible-based series possibly ignore Jesus then? He IS the context of the whole Bible, and so everything in it points either on, or back, to him.

Again I’m sure that this is what will happen week by week: Jesus will be the context of our learning, and growing. So my other task today is to talk – briefly, now – about the 1^st type of Bible literature. It’s traditionally called Law, though that may not be the most helpful translation of the Hebrew word Torah. Certainly not many of our plethora of lawyers would recognise too much of it as law. It’s also known as the Pentateuch, because it’s the first 5 books of the Bible: Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; and Deuteronomy. To drop in another name, they are often known as the books of Moses as well. At one time people thought that Moses had written them all, but scholars now deem that very unlikely. That name has stuck though, because these 5 books pretty much tell the story of Moses, after the key scene-setting recorded in Genesis.

The scene-setting is crucial because it sets out the pattern that the rest of the Bible then follows. It’s the story of God constantly taking the initiative with the people He made, despite their doubt, antagonism and sin. It’s the story of God’s ever-more gracious forgiveness and promise-keeping, no matter how far people run from Him. The better translation of Torah is guidance, because this is essentially what this part of the Bible is. Much of it is in story form, telling the story of God’s dealings with humanity. They are written not to record history so much as to guide God’s people on the nature of the God they are being called into relationship with. Even when the particular stories seem to tell us how to behave, they are more about the reality and the person of God. He is the one who is always ahead of His people; working His purposes out in and through both people and circumstances, good and bad alike.

The highlight of Torah is God’s giving of His Law to His people here in Exodus. Of course it, like all passages, needs a full sermon (or a series, even) to explore it. But that’s not the point this time. Today we are being invited to see God showing Himself to His people, making them His people, by guiding them how to live as His people, based on who He is. “Be holy because I am holy”, God says. In summary, the 10 Commandments guide God’s people on how to relate to Him first and foremost, and then how to relate to others – based on who God is. It’s practical, sensible stuff – which we fail miserably at time after time!

In one sense the function of the Law is to show us who we are and what we are truly like. It reveals the nature and problem of sin: us wanting to live our own way, not God’s. So it points us on, to our need for a Saviour. He, Jesus, didn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfil it for us and then set us free from it – and on the cross paying the great cost of doing that. Here is the huge book that tells this story so far; and invites you to be part of rest of it. Are you ready to join in, and to be part of God’s on-going story? Let’s pray ...

Sermon 4th December 2011

2011-12-05T15:00:00.002Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from Mark 1 verses 1-8.

Get the Road Ready

What day is it in exactly three weeks time? Of course, it’s Christmas Day! I expect that if you asked the person in the street, “What is the most important Christian festival?” the majority would answer Christmas. I don’t propose to answer this question myself. After all without Christmas, the birth of Jesus, we wouldn’t have Easter Sunday, the resurrection of Jesus. But I expect that in the popular mind Christmas is the number 1 festival. So I think many people would be surprised to learn that Mark’s Gospel, probably the first Gospel to be written, skips out Christmas, and the first event it records is John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness.

One Lent, probably about 15 years ago now, I listened, with some others, to a recording of Mark’s Gospel, and it was very dramatic listening. Mark’s Gospel is the shortest Gospel, and it’s action-packed. Mark doesn’t beat about the bush. He wants to give us the real Jesus; he wants to make us face the truth, the truth about God, the truth about Jesus and the truth about ourselves. And he starts by getting straight to the point. He tells us Jesus is: “Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

I think that for many people Jesus and Christ mean the same thing. Some may even think that Christ is Jesus’ surname, and that he’s Jesus Christ in the same way that today someone is called John Smith. But Jesus and Christ do not mean the same thing. Jesus was his name, the name his parents gave him when he was born, following the instructions of the angel Gabriel. Jesus is a name full of meaning, because it means “God saves”. So Jesus wasn’t just any old name.

Christ means “the anointed One”. It refers to the old practice of anointing future kings with oil. The anointed One was to be the King who was going to usher in the Kingdom of God. In fact “Christ” is the English word for the Greek Khristós; the Hebrew equivalent is Messiah.

And not only is Jesus the anointed King, he is also the Son of God. Now, for Jewish people at that time the Son of God was a title for the Messiah, but Mark also makes it clear that Jesus was God’s Son in an even deeper sense.

So, in the first few verses of his Gospel Mark gets right down to who Jesus is: the anointed King, the Messiah, God’s Son. And there are two questions I’m going to address this morning.

· The first is - who exactly is this King? And

· The second is – where do we meet him?

So, firstly then, who does Mark say the King is? In verses 2 and 3, he quotes a prophesy from Isaiah 40: “It is written in Isaiah the prophet: I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way—

a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'”

I suspect that today we don’t get the full impact of these words,

Isaiah had prophesied that there would be a messenger who would call out, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.” Mark identifies the messenger as John the Baptist, and that means that Mark identifies the Lord who Isaiah says is coming as Jesus. But what’s so amazing about that? I gather that if you go back to the Hebrew passage, the word translated as our English word ‘Lord’ is the word YAHWEW, the personal covenant name that God gave to Moses, that God revealed to Moses in the burning bush. It’s the personal covenant name the Jews considered so holy that they didn’t speak it, they didn’t write it. And Mark is saying that the YAHWEH of Israel, the creator God of the universe, the rightful ruler and judge of the earth, has come to earth in the form of Jesus Christ. Do we realise how amazing this is? The immortal has become mortal. The unapproachable is something – actually someone - you can approach. The totally invulnerable has become vulnerable: the impossible has become possible.

God is so loving and so intent on our salvation that he has burst into our world and was uniquely born in Jesus Christ. God became human in Jesus Christ in a history altering, worldview shattering and life transforming event that sets Christianity apart from all other religions. Jesus is not only the Son of God, but he is also God the Son. Many people find that hard to accept, hard to believe. They agree that Jesus was a great man and had a divine consciousness about him. But God the Son – that’s too hard to believe. Maybe people in the 1^st Century AD could believe it, but it’s no longer believable in the 21^st Century. Actually, though, it wasn’t particularly easy to believe in the 1^st Century.

Remember that most of the original believers in Jesus were Jews, including Mark. And they had as many, if not more, cultural and intellectual barriers in believing that God had become human as we do. The name YAHWEH - they wouldn’t write down that name, and it’s still the same today for many Orthodox Jews. The idea that God could become a human being was totally and completely alien to what they believed in. It was against their culture, their intellect. Their barriers were huge. Yet something shattered those barriers. The original believers had as many barriers to believing that God became flesh as we do, but something broke through those barriers.

Many people believe that God is way out there; distant and far away and difficult to reach. We have to work very very hard to reach him. Yet the incarnation – God becoming human – tells us that we don’t have to strive to reach God. God himself has come to us. God himself has come close to us. God has given himself to us, so that it’s possible for us to know him.

I know many people in our church family are going through difficult times at the moment, and the incarnation gives us a very comforting message. It tells us that God isn’t a God who lives way out there, who doesn’t care. We have a God who has suffered, who has experienced pain and suffering even more intensely than us. In his book, The Cross of Christ, John Stott described Jesus’ suffering on the Cross as follows:“lonely, twisted, tortured ..., nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering."

So, who exactly is the King who Isaiah prophesied would come? Jesus is that King – the Son of God and God the Son. And Mark tells us that the King has come. And what sort of King is he? When I think of kings, I tend to think about famous English kings such as Henry VIII with his six wives, two of whom were beheaded! Now, Jesus was a completely different type of king. He is a King who came to suffer, to die a cruel death on the Cross, so that we might be forgiven.

And, secondly, where do we meet the King? We meet the king in the wilderness. The NIV translation uses the word ‘desert’, but I’ll stick to the traditional translation – ‘wilderness’. If we are going to find the King, we’re going to have to go out into the wilderness. John the Baptist spoke in the wilderness. People had to go out into the wilderness to be baptised. Jesus went out into the wilderness for 40 days where he was tempted by the Devil, as we remember at Lent. Now, the NIV translates ‘wilderness’ as ‘desert’ and for good reason. The wilderness that Isaiah referred to in his prophesy and where John the Baptist preached was like a desert. A visitor to a wilderness area in America once wrote in a visitors’ book, “Chairlifts need to be in some places so that we can get to wonderful views without having to hike to them.” But that visitor missed the point. You may have wonderful views in a wilderness, but a wilderness is not a convenient and easy place to be in.

The wilderness the Bible describes is a place that cannot sustain life. The wilderness is a place of thorns. Nothing grows. There’s no bread out there; you can’t grow wheat or anything; just thorns. There’s no water. It’s a place of thorns and thirst, a place of terrible loneliness because it can’t support a community – it can’t support life. Yet the wilderness played an important part in the OT history of Israel. Because after Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt, they spent 40 years in the wilderness trying to reach the Promised Land. It was while they were in the wilderness that God gave them the 10 Commandments; it was in the wilderness that they really started to learn what it meant to be the people of God in practice.

Why is the wilderness a place where you meet God? The wilderness is a place you can’t survive without the intervention of God. All the wells ran dry, so the Israelites needed God to provide water out of a rock. All the bread goes mouldy, so the Israelites needed the manna of God. Out in the wilderness Israel had to learn what we all have to learn – that God is not an add-on, that God is not an optional extra. Apart from the saving intervention of God, we have no hope. And ultimately all wells run dry, except for the living water from God, and all bread grows mouldy except for the bread of God, the manna of God.

What does that have to do with us? Just as in a literal desert, we find that all wells apart from God go dry, all bread but God’s bread goes mouldy, so in our lives we often meet God when we go through wilderness experiences. It’s very easy for us to put our hope in earthly things, or indeed other people. If only we get the right job, we say to ourselves, then everything will be OK. Or if we marry the right person, then all will be well. If only we can achieve our heart’s desire, then we’ll be fine. We all have our longings and we often believe that if we get what we long for, then we will be content. But CS Lewis explained that this isn’t so. He wrote: “There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give...[fulfilment], but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with these longings. As our economic crisis deepens, we realise anew how demoralising it is to be unemployed. When marriages break down and families break up, we realise how vital stable marriages are. Learning new skills can be tremendously worthwhile. But ultimately no matter how good a job we may have, no matter how secure our relationships are, they aren’t going to be enough. We need something more. Every well will run dry, except for the water of God. All bread will turn mouldy, except for the manna of God. And when we realise that we are lost without God’s intervention in our lives, only then can we meet the King. Only when we are in the wilderness can we meet the King.

John the Baptist was a messenger, preparing the way for Jesus, the Son of God and God the Son, the anointed King. He was telling the people to get ready for Jesus. It’s now only three weeks until Christmas when we celebrate Jesus’ birth as a human being. How ready are we for Jesus? Do we place our hopes in earthly things – our jobs, our relationships, money? Or do we realise that these things ultimately can never satisfy? Are we ready to meet Jesus in the wilderness?

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank and praise you that you are not a distant remote God, but that you loved us so much that you sent your Son to die for us. Lord, help us to follow Jesus as the true King of our lives. Help us to be ready for him this Christmas.

Amen.

Sermon 19th November 2011

2011-11-21T13:10:00.001Z

Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Matthew 28 verses 16-20.

I’ll bet you haven’t heard the one about the priest and the poor American farmer. So: in the course of doing a pastoral visit, the priest asked the farmer: “If you had a horse would you give it to the Lord?”
“Yes, of course,” the farmer replied.
“And if you had a cow?”
“Absolutely.”
“How about a goat?”
“Sure.”
“And a pig?”
“Now, that’s not fair!” the farmer protested. “You know I’ve got a pig!”

That story seems an excellent note on which to begin the ending of this series, for all sorts of reasons. The Gospel, the Good News of Jesus about the Kingdom of God, is always personal. It always cuts to the heart of our lives, and gets to us, right where we are now. In those terms, we each have a pig; and, as we come to the end of this series, we are each being challenged to give it to the Lord. Phrase it how you like: put your money where your mouth is; step up to the plate; stand up and be counted: no matter how you say it, the costly task is right in front of each of us. It is this calling, to go and make disciples for Jesus – anywhere: from next door; to the ends of the earth!

As you might imagine, we will get to the details of what is usually known as The Great Commission later. To make sure it stays firmly in our mind until we do, remember that in his book The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren wrote that this isn’t The Great Suggestion but The Great Commission. To obey it, then, is integral to our calling as Christians. It’s one of our 5 Godly life-purposes, as we saw at the start of the year when we studied Rick Warren’s book. We are Made for Mission: it’s not an optional extra, which we can get to if and when we feel like it, maybe. As I said at that time, we can’t underplay how this was the last subject that Jesus ever talked to his disciples about. This order is his legacy to them, to us: we must then carry it forward in his name. The good news is that doing it isn’t as scary as you may think it is!

When I opened this discipleship series back in September, I said that it was for every one of us. No matter where we personally may then have been – or not been – with God, the challenge was both identical, and very individual. All of us were being invited to take the next step forward, with God, in faith. I also said that the path would likely be different for each of us – as I’m sure we have found during these past 3 months. Even those many of us who have experienced bereavement in that time have been in different directions within that. Whatever shape it has taken for you, so many people have told me this Autumn has been significant for them, and in major ways. And I really don’t think that’s coincidental, at all. No, I’m sure that God has been building disciples in Herne Hill – to make us ready to make more disciples; here and wherever.

Now that we have reached the end of this series, I’m even more convinced that it has been, and is, for everyone. The challenge is still both identical, and very individual. It does not matter where we personally are – or are not – with God. All of us are being invited to take the next step forward with Him, in faith. That path is different for each of us, but it leads us in the same general direction: of being, and making, disciples of Jesus. That’s what we have been learning about in this series: how to be, and, by implication, how to make disciples of Jesus. Just because our focus moves on next week (to all the preparations for Christmas) doesn’t mean that we stop being Jesus’ disciples. Quite the opposite: I’m expecting a far more exciting Christmas, and 2012, here because we now understand better what it means to be, and make, disciples!

That fits well with Matthew’s unique ‘take’ on discipleship. All 4 Gospels have discipleship as one of their major themes, and each author brings their own flavour to it. Adjoa uncovered the fact that this word occurs no less than 269 times in the New Testament. I can add that all 269 of them are in the Gospels and Acts. So, in Matthew disciples are ‘Examples with a commission’, as we have been discovering each week. We have seen how that’s true both positively and negatively as we’ve accompanied Jesus and his disciples through Matthew’s account of events. We’ve listened to Jesus teaching the disciples, both ‘straight’ and in parables. We have seen them grasp his message, and get it gloriously right, and so horribly wrong. We have seen how they responded to his challenges, to the difficulties that he had warned them of, and to the tasks that he set them. If you missed any of these sermons, they are all posted on our blog-site – including last week’s. That’s when Adrian gave a whistle-stop summary of the key people, places and events. I’m glad he did that, because it frees me to focus more on the series ending place. Mind you it also needs saying that this is, in fact, the start of the rest of our life with God too; for each of us personally, and as a church.

That has covered the example part: what about the commission element, then? To kick that off here’s quote from Rob Bell’s new book Love wins. It comes in the chapter Here is the new there, which I’ll explain the import of later. In looking at the implications of that story about the rich young man which I spoke on 2 week ago, he writes: “Jesus calls disciples in order to teach us how to be and what to be; his intention is for us to be growing progressively in generosity, forgiveness, honesty, courage, truth telling and responsibility, so that these take over our lives as we are taking part more and more and more in the age to come, now”.

I only got to this part of the book after I had preached; but it struck me that this is the best note to conclude this whole series. Part of what I said a fortnight ago is that those who are Jesus’ disciples need to grasp, and I mean really grasp, the reality that we are living in God’s Kingdom now. It’s not that we’re waiting to go to heaven when we die; it’s that God’s real, abundant life begins here and now. God’s Kingdom is what Jesus came not just to preach about, but to bring in. By his birth, life and death Jesus made God’s Kingdom real, in the present. In Matthew it’s usually called the Kingdom of heaven, but it’s the same amazing reality. The way Tom Wright puts it in his commentary on the story of Lazarus is like this. He says that it’s some new part of God’s future which can and does, burst into our present. God’s Kingdom does that with real, tangible good news, with hope, and new possibilities. It does that even in the very worst of times – but not ‘just’ then.

Today’s not the occasion to tackle whether God still raises the dead through us. For today what’s vital is to recognise that to be a disciple of Jesus is to be part of God’s on-going work of making His Kingdom more real; here; day by day. As Rob Bell says, “here is the new there”. And that is how we are part of the answer to that foundational prayer that Jesus has taught us. “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” we pray, every week. Well, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”, Jesus said to his disciples, here at the end of Matthew. “Therefore go” – yes, that means you, and me – “Go and make disciples of all nations ... teach them to obey everything I have commanded you ... and surely I am with you always”.

How do we do that? I think that Rob Bell has got it pretty much right. I should say that there is controversy about parts of this book – but not this part. Nobody can argue that Jesus teaches his disciples how to be, and what to be. That’s exactly what we’ve seen in this series. There is a real, and truly counter-cultural radical ethical dimension to Jesus’ teaching. Who else encourages, and enables, us to be generous; and forgiving; to be honest; and courageous; to tell the truth; to take responsibility, for our own actions and lives? And what impact would it have, on how many people and situations, if the doing of that took over our life more and more? Wouldn’t it contribute to the reality of living in God’s Kingdom? And isn’t that what being disciples of Jesus is truly about: bringing in His Kingdom here and now by obeying Jesus and continuing this mission that he left us with?

Now perhaps, like me, you are rather daunted by that list of what we are called to be and to do as Jesus’ disciples. Even with his amazing promise to be with us always, growing in being generous, forgiving, honest, courageous, telling the truth, and taking responsibility are quite some challenges! For most of us they also require quite some change in us. Nothing is impossible with God, of course; and practice does make perfect too. So don’t ever stop aiming that high, or trying to get there, with God’s help, and in His strength. But get there in steps if you need to; and there are steps that just about all of us can take. I have permission to tell this story about towels, but before I do, please note that it is ‘only’ illustrative. So: as well as needing meals delivered, a local family recently needed towels. Those were duly provided by someone in the church – rather to the surprise of the extended family who had come to help. I heard it said that the explanation this person gave to their family was, “That’s the kind of thing this church does!”

It may not seem like very much, perhaps; but talk to anyone who has ever had meals provided, shopping or ironing done, a gift of money, or children looked after, during illness, or loss, or after having a baby. I can say, from much personal experience, that it is truly life-changing. I’m delighted to say that I think this church is generally very good at doing that, and more. It doesn’t just happen here, of course: within an hour of the news of my father’s death being known, someone from my mother’s church in Bristol had called in just to give her a hug, and to take her ironing away! These are among the practical signs of God’s Kingdom coming; and most of us can do them. It’s another way of us being disciples, of loving and supporting each other in the ways that Jesus wants us to do. And every time it happens it shows people what God’s love looks like – and what is possible for them too. So, go and be, and make disciples, then. Do it in those big ways that Rob Bell has listed; do it in the small ways too; bring in God’s Kingdom, wherever He takes, or leaves you; and so continue Jesus’ mission. Now let’s pray ...

SERMON 13TH NOVEMBER 2011 - REMEMBRANCE SUNDAY

2011-11-21T12:58:00.001Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches based on the reading from Matthew 26: verses 30-46

GNB: “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation.”
NIV: “Keep watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation.”

1. “Watch and pray” is a suitable text for a Service of Remembrance. There is a sense in which our moment of quiet was anything but peaceful as our minds replayed the links that our personal histories hold to the experience of conflict: so for some today those histories will have taken you back not just to the Second WW but beyond to stories of fathers and brothers and uncles and friends lost or damaged by the Great War; for you and for others, your memories will have come too from personal involvement in the Second World War, most likely as children and young people, affected by the consequence of war; for some our memories will have taken us to more recent, less widespread, but for you equally significant, conflicts abroad; and for all perhaps the images of recent desert wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. And for some, the memories will have been especially close: of sons, daughters, brothers or friends. And during those moments of quiet you will have watched. And prayed.

2. With only 2 chapters of Matthew left, you won’t be surprised that we are nearly at the end of our Parish series on the gospel’s teaching on being a disciple. It will be for Cameron, I suspect, to draw together the strands of our studies when he preaches next Sunday. I am anxious not to steal his thunder but I do want to set the scene for this morning’s passage (and perhaps to set you up for next week), So can I do a whistle-stop tour of the places we have been and the highlights we have seen: we started by the lake and the call to the fishermen; and then to the hillside, the Sermon and the challenge to be sure who we were apprenticed to; and then, out on the road, we listened to two stiff warnings of the consequences of signing-up – that we might be isolated (like sheep among wolves) and create conflict (and carry a cross); then we were back to the lake, among the big, vibrant crowds by the shore, listening to stories, especially a story about the fruit a disciple might show; then, as the party begins to move towards Jerusalem, Peter comes to the fore - “You are the Christ!” …. and again talk of a cross; and last week, some last teaching to the crowds (and to the disciples) about the cost of commitment.

3. Between last week and this much has happened and the atmosphere has changed. Jesus and his followers have come into Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast, welcomed by the crowd, challenged by the authorities. The teaching has become more pointed – warnings to and against the leaders, predictions of conflict and suffering and the promise of return and the rule of peace. In truth, if the teaching was difficult to apply on the hill-side, by the lake, on the road, now in the City it has become difficult even to grasp. But throughout, one word resonates – as if, were they unable to understand any more of what he was saying, Jesus wanted them to see and apply one essential truth: watch! Be alert!

4. You may be puzzled by this and it is true that we can lose the message in the drama of the action that is going on around the Teacher and his apprentices – the ride of triumph into the City, the display of righteous anger in the Temple, the debates with the Pharisees and the lawyers, the making of plots and, just before our passage, the holding of the final meal together. But now, in the quiet of the garden in the place called Gethsemane, think back over the stories he has told in the previous two chapters – of the foolish bridesmaids who failed to plan ahead and the wise ones who did; of the bad servant who takes the opportunity of his master’s absence to misbehave and the good servant who doesn’t; of the good stewards who invest their master’s wealth ready for his return and the bad steward who does not; and finally the account of judgment and the separation of the sheep and goats. In these last days, Jesus is preparing his apprentices, his disciples, to take responsibility – to be the ones who must be ready to plan, to be faithful, to steward and to serve. And this responsibility requires above all things they must be watchful, in the stories he told , what set the “good” aside from the “bad” was their watchfulness, their readiness..

5. It is this watchfulness which Jesus looks for in Gethsemane. I wanted it to be something different: I wanted it to be “watchfulness” that you would want from a security guard (“watch for the baddies coming!”); or more an example of empathy for him in his suffering (“watch over me”). But it isn’t: it is the same word as is used in the earlier chapters and so his concern, even as his own suffering reaches its crescendo, is that his disciples and ready to recognise what is good and to do what is right, come what may.

6. In lighting on these words in our passage, I have skipped Peter’s (and the others’) typically hyperbolic protestation of undying loyalty, the set-up to his denial. But let’s go back briefly to that part of the passage and notice how Jesus explains what will happen “this very night”. It is effective that he takes the image, the metaphor, the shepherd with the flock, which we have become used to identifying with safety and security (“I am the Good Shepherd ..”; “I am the gate … “, etc), and uses a passage of scripture to express what will happen: with the shepherd killed, the sheep will scatter and run away. Their focus gone, with no-one to guide them the sheep will return to their own way. But Jesus of course adds to the scripture: But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you …”. This is the context of the desired watchfuless: in all that is to happen, watch out for me, be ready to recognise me, don’t be tempted away.

7. My previous passage in the series was on the sun-soaked lake-side when we could joke about salesmen’s techniques and consider the richness of a disciple’s experience. I think it was even in that sun-soaked Indian summer of early-October. Now the Autumn is here and in our gospel the setting is very different. Very early on, in the context of facing testing, Trevor referred to the impending Rugby World Cup (what happened to that?); and I want to borrow an expression from the world of the rugby journalists to suggest that in today’s passage we are into “the hard yards” of discipleship. “Hard yards” sounds as if it ought to derive from the world of trench warfare but I can’t find that it does: it seems to come from rugby where it describes that passage in a game when the opposing scrums settle down for a relentless period of running into each other, making a yard here, losing a yard there. A punishing experience to be involved in. And I say that that is where we are with out apprentices in our passage today: facing the hard yards of discipleship: facing the prospect of the shepherd being slain and it all being lost. “I will go ahead of you. Watch and pray. Watch.”

8. They didn’t of course. Their exhaustion overtook them. We come back to the beautiful way in which the Bible tells the story how it might really have happened. Like us, they fell asleep when they might have watched, they fled when He was arrested and Peter did not to do what he had promised. But Jesus did: he was raised and he did go before them

9. Lastly, how does this apply to us? Because being a disciple involves being a person we do or will the hard yards of discipleship, not only times when our faith is not as strong as we would want, but times when our faith seems stretched, almost over-used with the demands made on us. Today we will pray for each other and those prayers will include prayers for folk facing such times now – facing illness or illness of someone close or coping with loss. Perhaps for some Remembrance Sunday itself reawakens memories of such times. And these are just some of what I think may be the hard yards in our discipleship. If that is you, or for when that is you, then watch, watch, be ready for the touch of the risen Christ.

SERMON 6TH NOVEMBER - ST. PAUL'S

2011-11-10T11:24:00.003Z

TODAY, OUR VICAR, CAMERON BARKER PREACHES BASED ON THE READING FROM MATTHEW 19 VERSES 16-30. THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS BECAUSE THE FINAL PART OF THE SERMON SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES THE CONGREGATIONS OF EACH CHURCH.

It must be about time for another of those straw-polls. So, hands up, please – but do be warned: you will be put to the test if you do! Hands up, then, if you think that you can pick up this building by yourself, and put it in the middle of Herne Hill ... OK, no real surprises there: it is, literally, impossible! Well, if you are rich, you stand far less of a chance of getting into heaven than you do of manually moving this building on your own!

That’s what’s known as jumping straight in there! Over the years many people have come up with all sorts of fancy ways of trying to explain how Jesus didn’t mean exactly what he said in Matthew 19:25. But he really did: a camel does not fit through the eye of a needle. The Greek word does not actually mean ‘thick thread’. There wasn’t a small gate called “The Eye of the Needle”, by which you got into Jerusalem if you unloaded your camel first. No, if you are rich, you have no chance of getting into heaven – without God! But the true point of that lies in the last part; and that’s just as well for those of us who are rich, then. Without God, it’s impossible; with God, all things are possible, however – as Jesus said in verse 26.

Opening in this way does run the risk of taking us down a less than ideal path with this passage. Of course people have debated long and hard about what verses 23-24 mean, for rich people in particular. It’s all especially topical for us, with a national debt in Greece making the global economy quiver – in the week when we read about outrageous executive pay rises. The Archbishop of York has waded into that one, even as the Occupy protestors remain camped outside major world financial marketplaces. Think of the impact that has had here; not just on St Paul’s Cathedral and its staff; but on the whole Church of England; it challenges how we all relate to markets, money and wealth: topical stuff! As the banners outside St Paul’s ask, What Would Jesus Do indeed?

For many of us this complicated topic is enough to induce a bad headache. But this Bible story says that wealth is a very personal matter too. We can’t, mustn’t, and won’t duck the big question: do Jesus’ words here mean that all Christians should sell everything that we have? In the context of this series, on being his disciples, is that what it takes to be one? It’s definitely worth asking yourself: if it does mean that, would you even be here; or would that be too high a cost for you to pay?

That is the big question, which needs to be raised today – and looked right in the eye. But once we’ve done that, I think we then need to try and pull back, and view the bigger picture. This was the detail of what it meant for this one particular person to be Jesus’ disciple. The detail might be the same for you; but it might not be. What is, or should be, the same, though, is what’s at the heart of the issue of discipleship. How this rich man put it to Jesus was in this way: “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”

Yes, we do have to dig a little deeper to get to the heart of the issue from that question. And, as Jesus’ reply to it made clear, that wasn’t the best question to be asking. But the fact is also that this is a question that many people do ask in some way, shape or form. “How do I get eternal life?” And the one thing that we learn from Jesus is that he always meets people right where we are. Yes, he always takes us on from there; or he tries to, anyway. That’s just what he did with this man. On this occasion he didn’t toss it back into his lap, in the way that we so often see in the gospels.

The way that Matthew tells it is different to how Mark and Luke do in their parallels, but not majorly so. In Matthew Jesus didn’t focus on getting this man to see it for himself: he ‘just’ told him the way it was. But we do need to see how the words that Jesus used here significantly widened the scope of the conversation. He wasn’t talking about heaven: instead Jesus was talking about real life; the sort that begins now, not after death. It may only have been after the rich young man had gone away sad that Jesus used the name ‘the Kingdom of God, or heaven’ to his disciples. But that was what he clearly meant when he was talking with this man too. There was, there is, so much at stake: now and eternally.

At one level it all seems so simple. In response to his initial question, Jesus reminded the man how God had already told His people what to do. He had given them those 10 commandments to obey. It’s significant that in verses 18-19 Jesus ‘only’ quoted the 6 commandments that tell God’s people how to relate to others, rather than how to relate to God. It could be that Jesus didn’t want to rock the man’s boat too hard right away. After all, he was probably, in the custom of his time, assuming that the wealth he had was a sign of God’s favour. But at the same time he still knew that he must be missing something. “I’ve obeyed those ... What else must I do?” he asked Jesus.

It was only then that Jesus talked about the matter of his money. Yes, Jesus did tell him to go and sell everything, to give the money to the poor and then follow him. Do note that he did that in the context of how this man could be ‘perfect’. That should ring bells for at least some, because Jesus spoke of the need for perfection several times. “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect,” for example. It’s a call that Jesus issues to all disciples, in all ages – so none of us are off the hook. A call to discipleship is a call to perfection, then.

The problem is that each of us has something that gets in the way of us being perfect in the way that God calls us to be. The word-picture that Tom Wright paints of this in his commentary is so good that I’ve decided to act it out. The choice of an apple inside this narrow-necked jug is not coincidental: think Adam and Eve! This represents whatever it is that we value most of all. For this man it was his wealth: what is it for you, I wonder? What is it that you are so desperate to hang onto that you won’t let go of it; even if your hand then gets stuck inside the jug? What won’t you let go of, no matter what?

Yes, I know that we humans can work out a clever way to get it out of the jug without getting our hand stuck. After all post-modern life is having what we want when we want, how we want it, isn’t it? But the point of this story is that’s not how it works spiritually. Whatever it is that we hold onto other than God; be it money; self; job; sex; family; status; control; ambition; addiction; whatever – means that we can’t receive the full, real, best life that God wants to give us. “What must I do to get eternal life?” Take the risk of having empty hands, of loving God first and best, and others as ourselves; then let go, and trust. But, if we’re honest, most of us are not too good at doing that!

Yes, it is a risk. It means entering into a world where things are turned upside down; where “the first are last, and the last are first”. It is a world where you may well have to leave everything, and everyone behind. You may have to sell up, give it all away; or leave your house, your family, your livelihood, your security – and not see for what reason. Remember that the throne that Jesus would be on soon after he’d said this was made up of two planks of wood and 4 nails. Yes, he is now at God’s right hand in glory; yes he has promised a sure reward, of real life eternally, of 100 times as much as we give up. The risks are great, and the cost high; but what is it we give up? Now, for real life?

The final part of this sermon is a rare departure from good and Godly parish tradition, by being applied in different ways at each church. Here at St Paul’s it’s time to talk about the recent questionnaire! The raw results from the 73 people who filled them in will come later; but there are lessons to be put in the context of this story. The questionnaire was deliberately set in a discipleship series because it is about how this environment can best be used for us to become better disciples. The many smiley faces and positive comments on the forms say that there’s much to rejoice in here. But some concerns were raised about how this set-up affects our worship, sense of community, and welcome to all.

At heart as a church we are about loving God first and best, and our neighbours as ourselves. So we need to challenge ourselves to think about others. There is something special and different about worshipping together, submitting to God and to one another. How can we enjoy that more, help each other to worship and learn about God more? There is an equal balance of people seeing the benefits in roping off the side aisles and those who are concerned by it. Your ‘lucky’ Vicar has now to choose what to do about that, until the building work starts. That choice is to keep on exploring together how we can best use these surroundings.

With having bigger congregations over Christmas, and the heating benefits there are at the sides, it makes most sense for those aisles to stay open for now. But that decision is set in the context of there being something special and different about worshipping together, and in submitting to God and to one another. So I’ll end with the challenge posed by Richard Foster in his book on spiritual discipline. It’s a challenge for each of us to look round as we come to worship together – and to pray that the people we see will meet with God. If we will all choose to do that, as fellow disciples of Jesus, then no matter which building we are in, or what state it is in, our focus will be right. That’s because it will be about worshipping this generous, life-giving God, who calls us to follow Him into life. So let’s pray ...

SERMON 6TH NOVEMBER - ST. SAVIOUR'S

2011-11-10T11:09:00.002Z

TODAY, OUR VICAR, CAMERON BARKER PREACHES BASED ON THE READING FROM MATTHEW 19 VERSES 16-30. THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT VERSIONS BECAUSE THE FINAL PART OF THE SERMON SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES THE CONGREGATIONS OF EACH CHURCH.

It must be about time for another of those straw-polls. So, hands up, please – but do be warned: you will be put to the test if you do! Hands up, then, if you think that you can pick up this building by yourself, and put it in the middle of Ruskin Park ... OK, no real surprises there: it is, literally, impossible! Well, if you are rich, you stand far less of a chance of getting into heaven than you do of manually moving this building on your own!

That’s what’s known as jumping straight in there! Over the years many people have come up with all sorts of fancy ways of trying to explain how Jesus didn’t mean exactly what he said in Matthew 19:25. But he really did: a camel does not fit through the eye of a needle. The Greek word does not actually mean ‘thick thread’. There wasn’t a small gate called “The Eye of the Needle”, by which you got into Jerusalem if you unloaded your camel first. No, if you are rich, you have no chance of getting into heaven – without God! But the true point of that lies in the last part; and that’s just as well for those of us who are rich, then. Without God, it’s impossible; with God, all things are possible, however – as Jesus said in verse 26.

Opening in this way does run the risk of taking us down a less than ideal path with this passage. Of course people have debated long and hard about what verses 23-24 mean, for rich people in particular. It’s all especially topical for us, with a national debt in Greece making the global economy quiver – in the week when we read about outrageous executive pay rises. The Archbishop of York has waded into that one, even as the Occupy protestors remain camped outside major world financial marketplaces. Think of the impact that has had here; not just on St Paul’s Cathedral and its staff; but on the whole Church of England; it challenges how we all relate to markets, money and wealth: topical stuff! As the banners outside St Paul’s ask, What Would Jesus Do indeed?

For many of us this complicated topic is enough to induce a bad headache. But this Bible story says that wealth is a very personal matter too. We can’t, mustn’t, and won’t duck the big question: do Jesus’ words here mean that all Christians should sell everything that we have? In the context of this series, on being his disciples, is that what it takes to be one? It’s definitely worth asking yourself: if it does mean that, would you even be here; or would that be too high a cost for you to pay?

That is the big question, which needs to be raised today – and looked right in the eye. But once we’ve done that, I think we then need to try and pull back, and view the bigger picture. This was the detail of what it meant for this one particular person to be Jesus’ disciple. The detail might be the same for you; but it might not be. What is, or should be, the same, though, is what’s at the heart of the issue of discipleship. How this rich man put it to Jesus was in this way: “Teacher, what good thing must I do to receive eternal life?”

Yes, we do have to dig a little deeper to get to the heart of the issue from that question. And, as Jesus’ reply to it made clear, that wasn’t the best question to be asking. But the fact is also that this is a question that many people do ask in some way, shape or form. “How do I get eternal life?” And the one thing that we learn from Jesus is that he always meets people right where we are. Yes, he always takes us on from there; or he tries to, anyway. That’s just what he did with this man. On this occasion he didn’t toss it back into his lap, in the way that we so often see in the gospels.

The way that Matthew tells it is different to how Mark and Luke do in their parallels, but not majorly so. In Matthew Jesus didn’t focus on getting this man to see it for himself: he ‘just’ told him the way it was. But we do need to see how the words that Jesus used here significantly widened the scope of the conversation. He wasn’t talking about heaven: instead Jesus was talking about real life; the sort that begins now, not after death. It may only have been after the rich young man had gone away sad that Jesus used the name ‘the Kingdom of God, or heaven’ to his disciples. But that was what he clearly meant when he was talking with this man too. There was, there is, so much at stake: now and eternally.

At one level it all seems so simple. In response to his initial question, Jesus reminded the man how God had already told His people what to do. He had given them those 10 commandments to obey. It’s significant that in verses 18-19 Jesus ‘only’ quoted the 6 commandments that tell God’s people how to relate to others, rather than how to relate to God. It could be that Jesus didn’t want to rock the man’s boat too hard right away. After all, he was probably, in the custom of his time, assuming that the wealth he had was a sign of God’s favour. But at the same time he still knew that he must be missing something. “I’ve obeyed those ... What else must I do?” he asked Jesus.

It was only then that Jesus talked about the matter of his money. Yes, Jesus did tell him to go and sell everything, to give the money to the poor and then follow him. Do note that he did that in the context of how this man could be ‘perfect’. That should ring bells for at least some, because Jesus spoke of the need for perfection several times. “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect,” for example. It’s a call that Jesus issues to all disciples, in all ages – so none of us are off the hook. A call to discipleship is a call to perfection, then.

The problem is that each of us has something that gets in the way of us being perfect in the way that God calls us to be. The word-picture that Tom Wright paints of this in his commentary is so good that I’ve decided to act it out. The choice of an apple inside this narrow-necked jug is not coincidental: think Adam and Eve! This represents whatever it is that we value most of all. For this man it was his wealth: what is it for you, I wonder? What is it that you are so desperate to hang onto that you won’t let go of it; even if your hand then gets stuck inside the jug? What won’t you let go of, no matter what?

Yes, I know that we humans can work out a clever way to get it out of the jug without getting our hand stuck. After all post-modern life is having what we want when we want, how we want it, isn’t it? But the point of this story is that’s not how it works spiritually. Whatever it is that we hold onto other than God; be it money; self; job; sex; family; status; control; ambition; addiction; whatever – means that we can’t receive the full, real, best life that God wants to give us. “What must I do to get eternal life?” Take the risk of having empty hands, of loving God first and best, and others as ourselves; then let go, and trust. But, if we’re honest, most of us are not too good at doing that!

Yes, it is a risk. It means entering into a world where things are turned upside down; where “the first are last, and the last are first”. It is a world where you may well have to leave everything, and everyone behind. You may have to sell up, give it all away; or leave your house, your family, your livelihood, your security – and not see for what reason. Remember that the throne that Jesus would be on soon after he’d said this was made up of two planks of wood and 4 nails. Yes, he is now at God’s right hand in glory; yes he has promised a sure reward, of real life eternally, of 100 times as much as we give up. The risks are great, and the cost high; but what is it we give up? Now, for real life?

The final part of this sermon is a rare departure from good and Godly parish tradition, by being applied in different ways at each church. Here at St Saviour’s it’s time to talk more about money! All of us who call ourselves disciples of Jesus are answerable to God for what He gives us – including our money. For the many of us who He doesn’t call to give it all away, the standard biblical starting place is a tithe. That’s one-tenth of our income to be given to God’s work in some way. The Church of England assumes that its members will give half of that tithe, so 5% of our income, to the church that we attend.

At the end of this series everyone will get letter that spells out the detailed implications of this assumption. Recent events in my personal life meant that couldn’t happen today; but I need to pass on the main headline now. St Saviour’s is heading toward a large financial short-fall this year – because collectively we have not been giving what we should be to God’s work here. A rise in our costs plus the departure of several key givers together has opened a big hole this year that will get much bigger next year – unless we choose to fix it. For today ‘all’ I’m doing is saying to look out for what is coming your way if you are a member. More than that, start praying about what God is saying to you, about your giving to His work here.

For all of us the question is how our financial giving reflects our discipleship. Our giving back to God must be in the context of how God has made the impossible possible, by the gift of Jesus’ life for us. This real life, now and eternally, is a free gift from God; but it is also one that we must respond to. As we know from this story, we can’t ever earn this life by what we do. What we can do, though, is to live generous, giving, Godly lives – loving Him first and best, and our neighbours as ourselves. That includes what we do with our money, and our time. So let’s pray that we each will respond to God’s call to live that way ...

Sermon 16th October 2011

2011-10-17T17:42:00.002+01:00

Today, Ben Hughes preaches based on the reading from Matthew 16 verses 13-28.

I could begin this sermon with a joke about Peter and the Pearly Gates … so not to disappoint here goes:

After a long illness, a woman died and arrived at the Gates of Heaven. While she was waiting for Saint Peter to greet her, she peeked through the Gates.

What she saw was a beautiful banquet table. Sitting around were her parents and all the other people she had loved and who had died before her.

They saw her looking and began calling greetings to her, “Hello! How are you! We've been waiting for you! It’s great to see you!”

Then Saint Peter came back and the woman said to him, “This is such a wonderful place! How do I get in?”

“You have to spell a word”, Saint Peter told her.

“Which word?” the woman asked.

“Love.”

The woman correctly spelled LOVE and Saint Peter welcomed her into Heaven.

About three years later, Saint Peter came to the woman and asked her to watch the Gates of Heaven for him that day. While the woman was guarding the Gates of Heaven, her husband arrived.

“I'm surprised to see you,” the woman said. “How have you been?”

“Oh, I've been doing pretty well since you died,” her husband told her. “I married the beautiful young nurse who took care of you while you were ill. And then I won the lottery. I sold the little house you and I lived in and bought a big mansion. And my wife and I travelled all around the world. We were on vacation and I went water skiing today. I fell, the ski hit my head, and here I am. How do I get in?”

“You have to spell a word”, the woman told him.

“Which word?” her husband asked.

“Czechoslovakia.”

We all have a bit of a laugh about St Peter. He appears to be the fool of the twelve disciples, the one who is hearty and fun but always walking into things and a bit of a clown. However if I was to ask who are the most influential people in history St Peter would probably be in the top three.

Aside from all the legends, it is very probable that Peter along with Stephen began the very first Church of Christians. You can read about it all in the book of Acts. St Peter’s account of his time with Jesus is probably Mark’s gospel. And depending on your view point - the first gospel written. Scholars say that Mark was a scribe

taking down Peter’s account during the siege of Jerusalem in AD60.

You see St Peter; the original fool for Christ…you could say is the founder of the Western Christian Church and in that Western Christian thought. The existence of this Church that we are all sitting in this morning and the Church on the Herne Hill is partly because of St Peter.

But that is a basic background to the man. We can think a little more about this passage and what it might mean for us today. Well in good learning style we can take three points from this passage:

· When we think we are ‘it’ and have made it with God, we probably haven’t and are in danger of mortal error. In other words, to be conceited and proud makes us vulnerable to evil.

· That we will be called to account for our stewardship in this world.

· That it is through Christ and Christ alone that we find salvation. By faith not by works.

This passage is also frightening and demanding as Jesus lays it down as it is: if anyone is to be a follower of mine he must leave self behind …It makes me very afraid for my eternal soul. So my first and most logical reaction to reading is fear. Because I am afraid that I won’t make it!!

But is fear so bad? On its own yes…but as a believer no…

I was recently watching the Importance of being Ernest. In the famous Lady Bracknell speech to the unfortunate Mr Worthing she asks: “Worthing! Do you know everything or do you know nothing?”

Worthing replies: “I know nothing”.

She says, “Good, I am glad you answered that correctly”.

Well what am I going to do about the fear for my mortal soul?

Well firstly, like Worthing… it is good to admit that we know very little…and I don’t mean being ignorant, unquestioning or blind to the facts. But I mean being realistic about who we are in front of God.

God decrees that the wisdom begins with the fear of God. That means not quaking or shaking in our shoes but understanding that it is in and through and by and because of God that we exist and that our providence fortune and ultimately eternal life is entirely down to Him and Him alone.

Nothing we do is worthy of God…As the Prophet Isaiah reminds us in Chapter 64 v6…Even our most amazing deeds are like filthy rags in front of God.

In this passage it is the same, Jesus takes the vulnerable and mistake-prone St Peter, acknowledges that it is from God that Peter’s wise response comes and then ordains him with one of the most responsible jobs in the Universe: the gatekeeper of heaven and the rock of the church.

You see friends…In the upside down values of the Kingdom of heaven we can be certain that it is in our weaknesses that we are made perfect in Him. Not in any perfection, nor in our own strength. That was the error of the Pharisees.

When we are conceited and full of ourselves then we become vulnerable and open to temptation and evil. Perhaps then the Lord’s Prayer might read….and lead us not into conceit so to deliver us from evil. When we think we are really great then better watch out because you know what’s coming.

Poor Peter, then. Right up there amongst the stars, Jesus’ chosen doorkeeper, then in minutes completely trashed. Jesus effectively says: Satan is working through you, you are a stumbling block to me… Verse 23

Yes it might appear that Jesus is being changeable and tyrannical. Like keeping people on the hop… But it is not that, because there is a spiritual dimension to this story….that is the proclamation of contested truths. Peter is part of that story.

These words that Jesus draws from Peter are words that shake the foundations of creation…words that will stand forever in time. It is very significant for us too as the human race. Peter is the voice of us all when he answers Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” “You are the Messiah, Son of the Living God…” Peter responds… Jesus says “Thank you very much; let’s now get on with it”.

If the Messiah was forced upon us by God then he wouldn’t be a messiah… the Messiah should be recognised and invited by a man first in order to be viable. “Who do you say I am?” Jesus asks… “You are the Messiah the Son of the Living God”…Peter replies…. and at that point a new level of activity begins. It is like Job in his innocent suffering, pleading with God for an advocate in the court of heaven. God says, “Alright then, righteous Job, I will send my Son” …It s like “Alright then Peter…yes I am the Messiah…took you long enough didn’t it?

The reaction from the spirits of the air….fury. Poor Peter again…straight in there they go…

And Peter shifts from the being God-centred to becoming ego-centred. Mistakenly thinking that it is something in him that has bought this favour and at that point he opens the door to temptation from Satan. “You think as men not as God thinks”…Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan”. Poor Peter, getting it wrong again…how does God treat his friends indeed?

Very hard…difficult stuff.

But it is alright because of the promise - He that is in us is greater than he that it is the world.

As my old Vicar used to say, “The devil prowls around like a roaring lion but his teeth have been drawn by the cross of Christ”.

We will be tempted and will sometimes fall but as Christians God gives us the resources to underpin us. We are on the winning side. The error is that we make ‘me’ the centre and not God the centre.

May I paraphrase a useful maxim from St Augustine?

“The maxim of the world is ‘Love self first, love others as a form or self and believe in God as an insurance against disaster’. The maxim of true faith is ‘Love God with all your heart, from that love the love for neighbour outpours …then you will find self’”.

So what can we learn from that? Well always temper success with humility and grace. Honour and be thankful to God with all we do and say as the Ten Commandments tell us. Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, be alert to evil, temptation and most importantly remember….despite Jesus’ extremely harsh words to Peter, He did not reject Peter in the end. Peter was still and is his friend.

Unlike, of course, the world view that usually punishes, rejects and condemns. Thus Jesus constantly restores Peter. Jesus is committed to Peter throughout Peter’s earthly life and beyond. Jesus makes friends for eternal life. That is quite a commitment.

We call this eternal hope and it is ours to claim today and forever. And the covenant of that promise of hope is what we are about to share together…the body and blood of Christ. This is my body broken for you…this is my blood shed for you. That is His body not ours…his blood not ours. Nonsense to the unbeliever but life to those who share the love of Christ as his followers.

So do not be too proud about yourselves and achievements. Forgive and allow to be forgiven. Be wise and smart. Alert to temptation and evil, remember that it is God that delivers us from the forces of evil. Remember we know very little if not nothing of the battles over our lives. And live in hope and the love of Jesus Christ.

I want to finish on the last remaining verses of this challenging and difficult passage by talking about heaven and hell (a sermon in itself perhaps). Jesus talks about heaven and those things that we need to do to get into heaven!

My rather cynical lecturer at Goldsmiths College used to write Christianity off as a form of behaviourism. If you’re good you go to Heaven and bad, Hell. It is a simple controlling and manipulating people’s behaviour. You can train a dog by reward and punishment. If you are bad no walkies…if you’re good here is a biscuit or whatever. School can be like that as well, reward and punishment. I’m a teacher and I know that it works to a point…it can get results…but does it make real friends in the end.

But to understand Heaven and Hell in those terms is to misunderstand God’s judgement. Accountability is what Jesus is saying in this passage. And it is positive accountability. Jesus says that God, in the company of his angels, like a jury perhaps… will give to each person due reward for what they have done. It is Jesus echoing the promise of God of Psalm 62… God’s steadfast and committed love towards those that are righteous.

That means all those unseen things that have pleased God that you have done in your life will not go unnoticed in the end.

Another way of putting it….unlike the world of sensationalist journalism where we tend only to read and hear bad news and never the more boring news of all those good deeds going on in our communities …the young teenager who does the shopping for his elderly neighbour, the schoolgirl who gets up, gets ready and takes all her younger siblings to school because her single mum is sick …the garage mechanic who wavers the fee of the father who has just been made redundant…the shopkeeper who gives free bread to the homeless living on his doorstep (these are example things have gone on in Herne Hill and Loughborough Junction this week).

But those deeds of sacrifice and love that might go unnoticed by the world do not go unnoticed by God. And that is a good thing and we need to tell people that God never misses a trick.

That promise runs throughout the Bible. There is a lovely image in Revelation describing Christ adorned like a bride in the robe of righteousness. Like fancy lace and tiny small stitches of embroidery of all of the smallest and greatest things ever done. It also says in Revelation that every tear will be wiped from the eye, all suffering made sense of….and so on…the details really matter to God.

Yes we have learnt from the passage although Jesus can be frightening and harsh…and we could use that as a stick to bash people with…wicked sinner you are going to burn in Hell and so on….but what is the point in that… fear is pointless unless it is balanced by the love of God…anyway who are we to judge, we are explicitly told not to judge others by Jesus himself

And yes there are people out there in the world who chose to do evil …they chose to do very wicked things… but they will have to answer to God for those things that they have done. And I trust that God will deal with them fairly and righteously.

Using this St Peter at the Pearly Gates joke, I have been asking my friends what word you should have to spell to get into heaven. Some have said love…tolerance…forgiveness…one said, “Nothing, because I don’t believe in heaven”.

I was talking about with another friend of mine who is a minister and he said “I know it’s kind of cheesy and a bit kind of smug…but there is one word that we need to spell that gets us into eternal life as promised by God and that is ‘J.E.S.U.S’.”

It is a claim that Jesus makes about himself so profoundly in John’s Gospel…. “I am the way the truth and the life, nobody goes to the Father except through me”…. “I have come so that you might have eternal life”, the Alpha the Omega, the beginning and end one with the Father…That was the claim that put Jesus on the cross for. Saying what he really is. That is what we are signing up to when we chose to follow him…

And that is the real paradox of heaven…in the end it is not about what you do or who you are (but those things do matter of course)…… it is who you know in the end and does He know you….And if your name’s not on the list you’re not coming in. The Lamb’s Book of Life….and if he doesn’t know you, who’s going to represent you in front of God and all his angels?

It’s Pascal’s divine wager…if you’re wrong about the claims of Jesus then you’re wrong for eternity… if it is all bunkum then you’re right for a life…can anyone afford to take that risk?

And if it is just about what we do - then the thief crucified next to Jesus Christ would not have found salvation between the ‘saddle and ground’ ….the truth is that it is through and by faith that we respond to the call of Christ and in that call, we are drawn to repentance and we say that we are sorry out of an newly awoken love for God and it is in that we inherit eternal life through Jesus and Jesus alone as a default promise of him dying for our sins on the cross.

When we receive and commune later in the service….think sincerely about what you are participating in…what you are doing as you take the bread and wine on your lips is that you are mouthing the words…I am sorry, forgive me help me be better…or more simply put: Lord I am not worthy to receive you but say the word and I shall be healed.

So friends…be a peace with God, with one another and share the love of Christ and just in case check your spelling of Czechoslovakia.

Sermon 2nd October 2011

2011-10-04T13:26:00.006+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, preaches, based on the reading from Matthew 10:26-39.

Now I’m sure you are all aware - I hope! - that our sermon series don’t just come out of thin air - there is prayer and discussion, more prayer and more discussion; there are preachers meetings and review sessions and then a bit more prayer and even - decisions.
So when it was decided that this series would be on discipleship I thought ooh good, always need to think and know more about that...lovely!...then when the rota went out and I got to see the passage I would be preaching on my heart sort of squeaked ... so

GOOD NEWS

34 Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law;
36 your worst enemies will be the members of your own family.
37 Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

NIV

34 Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
35 For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, ?a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law
36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’
37 Those who love their father or mother more than me are not fit to be my disciples; those who love their son or daughter more than me are not fit to be my disciples.
Hmmm
This sermon on discipleship was not sounding quite such a lovely prospect after all

What happened to Isaiah 9:6

GOOD NEWS

A Child is born to us!
A son is given to us!
And he will be our ruler
He will be called Wonderful
Counsellor
Mighty God, Eternal Father
Prince of Peace

NIV

"For to us a child is born, ?
to us a son is given... ?
and he will be called, ?
'Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, ?
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace'"

Prince of Peace - lovely
Isn’t Christ here to heal this broken world? Bring us back together under God’s Kingdom
Not talk of swords and setting family members against one another- making them each other’s worst enemies! Putting our families in competition with Him for our love

What’s going on??

In verse 22 Jesus has already warned his disciples

GOOD NEWS

Everyone will hate you because of me

NIV
All men will hate you because of me

Here Jesus reassures his disciples
Do not be afraid of people’s hatred
Three times in this passage He tells them - Do not be afraid, know that...
Verse 32

GOOD NEWS
If anyone declares publicly that he belongs to me, I will do the same for him before my Father in heaven

NIV
Whoso ever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven

But by the same token He tells them be afraid of God - and know this
Verse 33

GOOD NEWS
...if anyone rejects me publicly, I will reject him before my Father in heaven.

NIV

...whosoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven

So along with everyone hating them, family dischord swords not peace and being afraid of God...comes
Verse 38

GOOD NEWS
Whoever does not take up his cross and follow in my steps is not fit to be my disciple

NIV
...anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Perhaps when we stop being stunned by this demanding urgent frightening Christ, we may become aware of the cross.

This is the first time the cross is mentioned in Matthew’s gospel and as we reflect forward to all that is to come we may have some understanding of the urgent context in which Jesus is speaking.

Jesus has called on these ordinary men to do something extra-ordinary, to leave their old lives behind them and literally follow his steps day after day. And because of the sheer power of his living presence they have given up everything for Him, risked everything, devoted their love and their lives to Jesus.

For three years they have been daily in his company observing him, learning from him, obeying him, loving him; but although they do not know it yet, the cross lies ahead and when Jesus has gone they will still be here and Christ’s work on earth will be theirs to continue.

And what is this work?

If we turn to the end of Matthew’s Gospel 28:18-20 we read Jesus’ last words to his disciples, the last words these men would hear from the Lord they had given up everything for

GOOD NEWS

I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth.
Go then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.

NIV

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Called the Great Commission we are sitting here in Herne Hill today for one reason only, because someone somewhere, accepted that commission and made disciples and on and on down the centuries until the Good News reached us.
And the only point of being here today and any day is to be Jesus’ disciple and continue the work.
Will we be the someone somewhere to be looked back to, some time in the future, by someone whose life has been transformed by the love of Christ?

In his book ‘The Great Omission’, yes Omission, not Commission, the theologian Dallas Willard, yes American of course with a name like that, Dallas Willard draws our attention to the following fact, and I quote:

‘The word ‘disciple’ occurs 269 times in the New Testament.
‘Christian’ is found 3 times and was first introduced to refer precisely to disciples of Jesus - in a situation where it was no longer possible to regard them as a sect of the Jews - Acts 11:25 - 26

GOOD NEWS
25/26
Then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. When he found him, he took him to Antioch, and for a whole year the two met with the people of the church and taught a large group. It was at Antioch that the believers were first called Christians.

NIV

...So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

Why be pernickety about such definitions?

Because Jesus called us to be disciples.

According to a dictionary definition, A disciple
from the Latin. discipulus " is a pupil, student, follower,"
from a lost compound dis-cipere "to grasp intellectually.

So we are called upon to study, to grasp intellectually, to follow Christ and to make others students, intellectually and practically following Christ.

Dallas Willard concludes under this definition
‘Disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own, but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth.’

A growing understanding takes study and practice - that’s work on ourselves.
As far as work on others is concerned, Willard says

‘Jesus told us as disciples to make disciples, not converts to Christianity, nor to some particular ‘faith and practice.’ He did not tell us to arrange for people to ‘get in’ or ‘make the cut’ after they die, nor to eliminate the various brutal forms of injustice, nor to produce and maintain ‘successful churches’...’

Ouch!!

Hoped for good outcomes as these absolutely are, they follow in the slipstream of our lives as disciples, they are not in and of themselves the point.

Anglican Communion, Roman Catholicism, Orthodox, Reformed Church, Pentecostalist, Methodist, Quaker;
None of these, of us, is the point if we are not first and primarily, individually, disciples of Jesus, who live our lives in practicing our faith, making disciples.

Ouch again!!

Perhaps to say this causes offence, discomfort, resentment?

Perhaps a little like the feelings Jesus must have raised and still raises when he spoke of bringing the sword, of setting family member against family member.

He came to radically shake up people’s understanding of a lived faithful life, he came to thoroughly equip his disciples for the commission he would leave us with.

I have been trying to reconcile the Christ of the abundant life with the sword and the family enemies; and a thought came to me.

You know when you fly somewhere, before you take off, you have the safety information drill: often the point at which some of us lift our newspapers higher or check out what’s on sale in the duty free bit of the magazine, or just sit there mutely, trying to look interested, because we feel sorry for the air stewards who have been through this a million times and have to look like they mean it, while many of us are secretly thinking, listen if we crash, we die, never mind take your shoes off before you slide down the inflatable ramp…
Well you know when it gets to the bit about if you have an infant with you or someone who can’t put on their oxygen mask themselves, you must make sure that you put your own one on first, before you help them put on their one?
Well I’ve always felt that that seems wrong, like I should be helping them first, the infant or the person who can’t manage..
What if they can’t breathe and they pass out while I’m ‘selfishly’ helping myself first?

Well when I think of the sword, of families set against each other I think of this

On that plane, in trouble, unless my mask is in place I cannot breathe and I cannot help anyone else to breathe either.
In the same way unless I am breathing in Christ’s air I cannot help my family come to breathe it either, if I put them first we are both lost.
It doesn’t mean abandoning my family, but it does truly mean putting God first, being obedient to Christ, living by his values.

Living by His values we our commanded to
learn how to love our enemies,
bless those who curse us,
walk the second mile with an oppressor
let him fill every part of our life, so we can live out the gracious inward transformations of faith, hope and love.

And in making disciples we pass this on as Christ commissioned (Matt 28:19)
GN:
and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

NIV:
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

When we think of this discipleship command from Jesus, do we think what will this cost me in my life if I commit to this discipleship?
Do we think all I’m hearing is work, study work.. I’m not up to this
Perhaps another way to approach this command, is to reflect on the costliness of non discipleship,

to live a life without abiding peace,
a life not penetrated through by love,
not to have a faith that sees everything in the light of God’s overriding governance for good,
to live a life lacking in the hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances,
to live without the power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.

To live a life of non discipleship is not to know that abundance of life that Jesus told us he came to bring.

John10:10, Jesus said of, we the sheep..

GOOD NEWS

I have come in order that you may life - life in all it’s fullness.

NIV

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

And in his commission, if we do the work of discipleship, however costly our commitment may feel, he promises never to abandon us
Matt 28:20

GD NW: And I will be with you always, to the end of the age.

NIV: And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

And how does that abundant, ‘God first’ life chime with the sword, not the peace, that Jesus speaks of?

I was trawling the internet as one does from time to time this week and I came across this image.

For the Ghanaians amongst you this is a very familiar sight - it’s the Adinkra symbol for the Gye Nyame and you find it on greetings cards and wrapping paper, on fabric, on the side of tro tros the public mini buses...everywhere.
Now The World Alliance of Reformed Churches 24th General Council took place in 2004 in Accra and the theme for that conference was The Abundant life. In advance of the conference there was a competition held, to come up with a Logo to encapsulate the conference theme. And this was the winning Logo.
At the centre of the logo is an Adinkra symbol known as Gye Nyame. It literally means "except God".
The Gye Nyame represents God as the omnipotent and immortal source of all things.
It comes from the Adinkra proverb that says - the great panorama of creation dates back to time immemorial, no one lives who saw its beginning, no one will live to see its end, - except God".
There was nothing Except God. Without him there was no creation. He is the source of everything.

The sword that Jesus speaks of cuts away all that obscures our vision of our source our creator God .
To live that abundant life we have to return to it’s source, its creator - God.
.
In rigorous discipleship we are cutting away all that obscures our vision of God. Through discipleship we make the Kingdom of God visible, we make God Visible.

Some of you, may like me, have the daily treat of reading from Philip Yancey’s book, Grace Notes.
Well in the entry for 30th September he writes about a young mixed race woman from Cape Town he met in 2004 - Joanna.
Inspired by watching hours of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings on TV with her husband, Joanna wanted to put her own energies into the healing process in post Apartheid South Africa so she
‘decided to tackle the most violent prison in South Africa’
- Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison.
The prison population was controlled by drugs and gangs. To join a gang you had to assault another prisoner as picked out by the gang.
Prison guards left these ‘animals’ as they saw them, to it. Into this Joanna came on a daily basis.
She organised small groups, taught trust games and got prisoners to open up about their damaged childhoods.
The year before Joanna began her visits the prison recorded 279 acts of violence, the next year there were 2.
In her simple message of forgiveness and reconciliation she cut through fear and guilt and judgement, with the sword of her lived discipleship.
When PY met Joanna he says he
‘ pressed her for specifics on what had happened to transform that prison’
Her reply
Well, of course Philip, God was already present in prison. I just had to make him visible
As PY concludes
‘God is present in the most unexpected places. We just need to make God visible’.

In this morning’s passage Jesus paints a picture of costly discipleship, but non discipleship means no abundant life, means no making God visible.
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it... He tells his disciples.

Jesus turns everything upside down.

I think of the curtain tearing from top to bottom in the Temple in Jerusalem at the moment of Christ’s death on the cross. In his costliest of sacrifices he tore up the accepted way of faithful living, symbolized for Jews by the Temple, he tore up death’s hold over us.
He calls on us to follow his radical lead back to God to our creator.
There is no way to the Abundant life except through discipleship.

Perhaps the brutality and damage the sword may symbolise for all of us, can also be turned on its head,
if we imagine it cutting through misery, confusion and hopelessness,
a symbol then of ultimate healing through the removal of whatever it is that keeps us away from God,
a healing that we receive in following Christ, healing in His strength, for ourselves and for those we share with.

The words of the song we’ll sing next (The hymn we sang earlier)reflect that yearning to be healed

All who are thirsty
All who are weak
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life
Let the pain and the sorrow
Be washed away
In the waves of his mercy
As deep cries out to deep

(Come, those whose joy is morning sun,
And those weeping through the night;
Come, those who tell of battles won,
And those struggling in the fight.
For His perfect love will never change,
And His mercies never cease,
But follow us through all out days
With the certain hope of peace.)

I’m sure that yearning was in the Pollsmoor prisoners who were visited by Joanna and I would suggest that yearning is in all of us here this morning;
a yearning to be healed, to be whole, wholey ourselves , wholey alive to the gifts we have been blessed with.

God is present in the most unexpected places. Even in us ... we are the work of his hand.
Nothing exists except God.
We just need to make God visible, make visible the full Glory of God our creator within us.
Be his disciples, take in that Oxygen of Christ so we are fit to share it with others.
Be disciples, make disciples and everything will follow in God’s strength.

In obedient discipleship
May we lose our old life
and gain Christ’s abundant life.
Amen

Sermon 18th September 2011

2011-09-24T17:47:00.002+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches, based on the reading from Matthew 10 verses 1-10 and 16-20.

Sent Out

When have you felt under pressure? The Rugby World Cup in New Zealand is well under way. The New Zealand All Blacks are the hot favourites. But at every World Cup since 1987 they’ve been one of the favourites, if not the favourites, and every time they’ve lost a crucial match. In 1995 South Africa beat them in the final, as portrayed in the film Invictus. At other World Cups the French and Australians have proved their downfall. So the pressure is really on the All Blacks now the World Cup is on their home territory. Will they at long last win it, or will they choke yet again, as the pundits are rather unfairly asking?

A lot is written about the pressure on leadings sportsmen and women. Next year the likes of Jessica Ennis, Tom Daley and Mo Farah will be under great pressure to win gold medals for Great Britain at London 2012. But actually it is possible to overstate the pressures of sport. Keith Miller was a famous Australian cricketer after the 2^nd World War, and during the War he had been a fighter pilot. An interviewer once asked him if he ever felt under pressure on the cricket field. "Pressure, I'll tell you what pressure is,'' he replied. "Pressure is a Messerschmitt chasing after you, playing cricket is not.” Keith Miller did express it a bit more graphically than that, but he’s right. Life and death situations are undoubtedly far more pressurised than anything anyone ever experiences while playing sport. Fire fighters putting out a blazing inferno and soldiers preparing for battle know what real pressure is.

Jesus’ 12 disciples must have felt under a lot of pressure here in Matthew chapter 10. At the end of chapter 9 – in vs 36-8, we read that when Jesus “saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. [And] he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.’”

So Jesus sent out some workers to minister to the crowds. And those workers were in fact the disciples themselves – the twelve. It was they who were being sent out to spread the good news of the kingdom of God. I wonder how the twelve felt? They must have felt the pressure, for Jesus had given them a daunting mission, to go out and to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near. They were to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who had leprosy and drive out demons. Expansion was on the agenda, and the twelve had been given authority over disease and evil spirits. They had seen Jesus do mighty works; now it was their turn. That must have been rather daunting. But then Jesus piled on the pressure. “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves,” he told them.

We’ve perhaps lost the impact of these words through becoming familiar with them, but this is a brutal image. What happens to a sheep if it’s sent into a pack of wolves? A sheep amongst wolves! What a metaphor! The shepherd sent his sheep amongst the wolves. There are a lot of images in the Bible of the Good Shepherd rescuing his sheep. Indeed, we’ve had a sermon earlier this year about Jesus, the Good Shepherd. But the image of sheep amongst wolves is not one we think about very often. The message to the disciples was clear. They must expect opposition.

Yes, Jesus was saying to the disciples, as he sent them out on their mission, You must expect opposition. And where was this opposition going to come from? In vs 17, we see that it was going to come from the synagogues, from the religious leaders. From vs 18 we see that it was going to come from governors and kings, from the government. And if we look ahead to vs 21, we see that opposition would come even from family. Jesus was making it clear that the world was going to be opposed to God and to his people.

Now it’s probably fair to say that we as Christians in London in the 21^st Century do not face a lot of opposition in the way the early Christians faced opposition, or indeed in the way millions of Christians have faced opposition throughout the history of the church. Richard Dawkins and the new atheists have launched some strong attacks on Christianity. Some Christians have had problems in their workplace and indeed been sacked, but it’s still the case that we have it fairly easy compared to the disciples. We don’t expect to be hauled off to the courts for what we believe. We don’t expect to be beaten up because we speak about Jesus. We don’t expect to be charged with treason because we declare that Jesus is our king. We tend to take it for granted that we live in a tolerant society.

On the other hand we also know that in some parts of the world Christians do face persecution. And we shouldn’t be surprised when that happens. The message that Jesus brought was revolutionary, and revolutionaries are usually regarded as dangerous people. So Tom Wright, the former Bishop of Durham, issued this challenge in his commentary: “The question we face is not so much, ‘Isn’t it a shame that the rest of the world isn’t as tolerant as we are?’, but ‘Is this a sign that Christianity in the West has somehow compromised itself?’”

Certainly the history of the church has borne out Jesus’ warnings to his disciples. They were indeed beaten up, persecuted, thrown into prison and killed. They incurred the anger of religious and political leaders. Families have been divided by their response to Jesus’ message.

So, how does this apply to us? Some of Jesus’ instructions were very much specific to the twelve. For example, he said to them: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” (vs 5-6) That obviously doesn’t apply to us, for the good news of Jesus has now spread far and wide. But there are also principles that apply to us today.

Jesus saw that the people were in need. Jesus himself healed the sick, raised the dead, cleansed those who had leprosy and drove out demons. Jesus sent out the twelve to continue that mission, to proclaim that the kingdom of God was near. He also gave them the authority to perform great miracles on his behalf. He gave them authority to act and speak on his behalf – to heal the sick, to raise the dead and drive out demons. The mission that Jesus gave the twelve was the same as his own mission. It’s not as if Jesus had a mission that stopped and came to an end. Jesus gave the twelve the authority to carry out his mission. Their mission was Jesus’ mission. And at Pentecost God sent the Holy Spirit, so that we can continue to carry out the mission of Jesus – which was the mission of the twelve.

Now the mission that we have takes a different form. We don’t raise the dead as dramatically and obviously as Jesus raised the dead. We don’t cast out demons in the same way as Jesus and the apostles did, though perhaps we should take the powers of evil more seriously than we do. But the mission that Jesus gave to the twelve - to proclaim the Good News that the kingdom of God is near – is the same as the mission given to the church throughout the ages. We have been caught up in the mission of Jesus, the same sending. We don’t necessarily cast out demons, but we do fight against the powers of evil. We may not raise the dead, but we do proclaim a Gospel of life that will release people from the sting of death, the last enemy. We may not cleanse lepers in the literal sense, at least not in Britain, but we are called to bring people who are outcasts into the fellowship of the church. And while we may not see healing miracles on the same scale as in the time of Jesus, many Christians can testify that miracles of healing happen today.

This is our mission. It may take a different form, but it’s the same mission that we have been given from Pentecost to the end of the world. It sounds a very impressive mission, doesn’t it, to go to out to the world with the authority given to us by Jesus and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Jesus sent the twelve out with the power to heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead. But then there’s a sudden shift of emphasis in vs.16 when Jesus said, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.”

What happened to the power then? Jesus warned the twelve that people were going to hate them, that they were going to be arrested and thrown into prison. So what happened to the power? Now the church’s mission does entail power. Jesus gave the twelve power; he has given the church the power of the Holy Spirit and the power of the resurrection. Yes, he has given the church power, but that power is shown in a way that contradicts the normal understanding of power; it is shown in suffering. Jesus’ mission means power, but it also means the Cross. The Cross is as much a part of the mission of the church as is power over death and demons. The church will face opposition, and sometimes that opposition will be vicious and murderous.

An interesting feature of our Gospel passage is that the twelve were both shepherds and sheep. Jesus saw the need of the people, harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And so he sent the twelve out to them. And then he told the disciples that he was sending them out like sheep among wolves. They were shepherds, but also sheep vulnerable to wolves. If we are involved in mission, are we shepherds trying to gather together the vulnerable and oppressed, or are we sheep ourselves, vulnerable and oppressed? It’s both. When the church goes into society that is divided between wolves and sheep, there is only one place the church should be. And that place is with the sheep and overcoming the wolves by suffering alongside the sheep.

While I was growing up in South Africa, while apartheid was in force, the division between the sheep and the wolves was obvious. The division in Britain is more subtle, but our mission is to be on the side of the sheep and not the wolves. And standing on the side of the sheep can sometimes be a difficult to place to be in. And if we are going out as sheep amongst wolves, then Jesus has given us some advice on how we should act. In vs 16 Jesus went on to say: “Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

To be shrewd means to be acute in perception and sound in judgment. And in Jesus’ time the snake was seen as an animal of great wisdom and cunning. Snakes know the right time to strike and the right time to back off. That’s shrewdness. But also be as innocent as doves, Jesus urged. Doves were seen as symbols of peace, because of their non-violent nature. And they were also seen as a symbol of purity because of their natural innocence.

Innocent shrewdness seems an odd concept, but it’s something we do need. Jesus not only knew his followers would have to exist in a sinful environment, he actively "sent" them into that environment. But before he sent them he called them to consider where it was that they were going. Christians that are naive and unprepared for the reality of the world in which we live will fall down. Christ has sent us out into a world that is full of challenges, dangers and difficulties. We live in a culture that is often at best uninterested in Christianity and at worst hostile. There is pressure on us to compromise our standards, to blend in with the rest of the world. As Christians we need to know the challenges that we will face in a fallen world. We need to be ready to meet those challenges, but at the same time we need to keep our innocence.

Jesus sends out into the world, a very different world from the one the twelve encountered. But it is still a world full of need, full of people who are lost and who need a shepherd. And even if we in London don’t face the dangers that the twelve faced, there is still plenty of pressure on us. The church is under a lot of pressure today, but so were the twelve. That didn’t stop them, because the church has an unstoppable mission, but that mission must also involve bearing the Cross. Jesus had compassion on the crowds, so he sent the twelve out to them, on a mission to tell them the good news of his Kingdom. Do we have the same compassion as Jesus had for people in need? Are we willing to follow in the footsteps of the twelve?

Let’s pray: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” Lord God, we pray that you will give us innocent shrewdness as we seek to stand for Jesus in a world that increasingly doesn’t care about him or is indeed hostile to him. And in the midst of the pressures we face, give us compassion for a world that needs Jesus, but so often fails to realise it.

Amen.

Sermon 11th September Racial Justice Sunday

2011-09-12T14:06:00.002+01:00

Today our Curate, Gill Tayleur, preaches based on Matthew 5 continuing the study series on discipleship.

8 year old Sally brought her report card home from school. Her marks were mostly good, As and a couple of Bs. However her teacher had written across the bottom:
Sally is a clever girl, but she talks too much in class. I have an idea I am going to try, which I think may break her of the habit. Sally’s dad signed the card, adding the note:
Please let me know if your idea works on Sally, because I would like to try it out on her mother.

Who teaches you?
Whose disciple are you?
Who do you follow?

“No-one!”? Much as we like to think of ourselves as ‘our own person’, the truth is we are greatly influenced by others, and often learn from them how to live. Aristotle said that we owe more to our teachers than to our parents, for though our parents gave us life, our teachers taught us the good life. So, whose disciple are you? Who do you follow?

Probably, like me, you’re the disciple of several people, living and dead. People who’ve been there at crucial times in our lives, and influenced our responses to what’s happening, our thoughts, feelings and actions. First our parents and family, school teachers, friends, and later our colleagues, maybe bosses or mentors, politicians, musicians or public figures. Or maybe we just follow the crowd. Whoever it is, we’re still influenced; we still learn from others, what life’s all about, and how to live it.

BUT we can choose who we follow! As we heard last week at the start of this series on discipleship, Jesus calls people to follow him. “Follow me!” he says. Learn from me, how to live.

We’ve just read the opening paragraphs of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus teaches his listeners about how to live, as his disciples, as his followers. He teaches them about the OT law, about money, sex and power. He teaches them the attitudes they’re to have, the thoughts they’re to have, the words to speak and the behaviours to live. He spoke primarily to his disciples, we read in the first 2 verses. But others obviously listened in too, as at the end of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 7 it says the crowd was amazed at his teaching. Well for all who heard it, and for us hearing it today, this sermon is all about how to live as a follower or disciple of Jesus.

Jesus starts this sermon with these famous verses known as the Beatitudes.
Each of 8 statements that start with “happy!” or “blessed!”

Blessed are the poor in spirit! Blessed are those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted.

We may be familiar with these Beatitudes, but let’s try to look afresh at them and see how topsy turvey they are, how upside down to how we naturally see things. They’re counter intuitive and counter cultural. Since when was it a good thing to mourn, or to be persecuted? Since when did it pay in life to be meek or merciful?! How do those things show us to be happy or blessed?

Before we go on, a quick word about this happiness or blessedness. The Good News Bible we use at St Saviour’s says “happy” but Bible scholars point out that happy isn’t a very good translation here. Blessed, the more traditionally used word, is probably better.
The state of happiness depends on hap, that is chance, or on our outward circumstances, what HAP-pens to us. Whereas the state of blessedness, is a deeper joy and hope that we can know regardless of our circumstances. This blessedness comes from knowing God’s love and following Jesus, whatever situation we’re in. It’s untouchable by life’s circumstances! Isn’t that wonderful?!

So these Beatitudes show the mindset, the attitudes, the Beatitude attitudes (!), that Jesus says will cause us to be profoundly fulfilled and have a deep sense of joy and hope.
And these attitudes reflect Jesus’ own attitude, his humility and self sacrifice, in contrast to that of the world around. That’s particularly obvious in the last Beatitude, blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness! The verse that follows has one more blessed about being persecuted and insulted and lies told about you.
When you behave in a way that reflects Jesus’ topsy turvy beatitude attitudes, others don’t like it, don’t like it at all. Today is Racial Justice Sunday and we don’t have to think very hard to remember brave men and women who have been ill treated for working for righteousness, for being merciful and working for peace.
We could think of someone like Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela, or countless less well known people whose sacrifice and work has brought racial justice to many, in our land and across the world. And of course such justice is still denied many people today, and we think of them and pray for them especially this Sunday. The focus of this year’s Racial Justice Sunday is on human trafficking, as there are 480 people every day who are trafficked, that is forced into slavery or abuse, mostly girls and women for commercial sexual exploitation. Thank God for those who are fighting for justice for such people, even at a cost to themselves. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!

So each of the 8 Beatitudes shows an attitude, and a reward, a blessing. A blessing in our life with God, for now and later, now and for eternity.

Well there’s lots more that could be said about the Beatitudes and their blessings, but in this series on discipleship, today I want to move on to the next verses, about what Jesus said the consequences would be of living these Beatitude attitudes. He says that if you live like this, with these attitudes, and your actions reflect them, if you live as true disciples, then you’ll have a profound effect on the world around you. You’ll make an enormous difference. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

The Message paraphrase of the Bible, says, “Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re to be the salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavours of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste Godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. Here’s another way to put it: you’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colours in the world.”

Salt was, and is, used to give flavouring and act as a preservative. Without it food can be bland, and goes off. Followers of Jesus, his disciples, are to make the world a purer and more palatable place, preventing corruption and bringing God’s love and hope to the world.

And light is crucial for life! Perhaps we don’t appreciate the light we have, because we always have it, we’re not used to real darkness. Here in London there’s always some light, even at night. When we were on holiday abroad a few weeks ago, there was a power cut, just for a minute or so, but for that little while we literally couldn’t see A THING. Couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. It was scary! Even a little light, one small candle, makes a huge difference in complete blackness. And a lot of lights, in a city on a hill, give light for all to see for miles around.

So salt and light can and should have a huge impact. But only if the salt stays salty. Strictly speaking pure salt can’t lose its salinity, saltiness. But the impure salt dug from the shores of the Dead Sea could gradually become unsalty as the actual sodium chloride dissolved.
And light is only effective if it’s on a stand, not hidden under a bowl! That would make it useless!

Jesus is saying that if his disciples make no effort to affect the world around them, they’re of little use to God. We shouldn’t blend in. We should affect others positively, be a Godly force for good, bringing out those God-flavours and God-colours in the world! To do so, we must preserve our distinctive character, that comes from the attitudes in the Beatitudes. To do so, we must learn from Jesus how to live as his followers.

A few months ago I read this very interesting and challenging book by Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy. In it, he says being a follower or disciple of Jesus means we choose to be students or apprentices of him. We choose to learn from Jesus, every day, actually learning to do what Jesus taught.

He says being a disciple means being with Jesus, to learn from him, how to be like him.
He says, “I am learning from Jesus to live my life, as he would live my life if he were me. I am not necessarily learning to do everything Jesus did, but I am learning how to do everything I do, in the manner that he did things.

This is learning from Jesus how to live our lives, our real lives, our whole lives, the lives we’ve been given with the time, place, family, neighbours, personality, talents, finance, challenges and opportunities that are ours.

Let’s be specific and think about how we spend our working hours. Most of us spend a huge chunk of our life working, whether it’s paid or unpaid work, for someone else, or we’re self employed, or the work we do caring for our family, young or old. Or if we’re retired, the things we do in the week, to care for ourselves and others. Let’s call this our work, whichever of those things it is.

To be a disciple of Jesus, is to be learning from Jesus how to do our work as Jesus himself would do it. He was a carpenter, but might equally have been in another job. If he were to come today as he did then, he might be a school classroom assistant, a postman, a dentist, a bus driver, a lawyer, a physiotherapist, a cleaner, a full time parent, a student, an estate agent, a small businessman or a care assistant.
How would Jesus do that work, your work?
...
How would Jesus deal with the particular people you work with? The children, the customers, your boss?
What issues would Jesus be concerned about, in your work?
What might he want to challenge or change?
What would his priorities be?
Who would he watch out for?
How would Jesus do your work?
...
This idea that Jesus can teach us in our work, as well as everything else, really struck me. In Colossians we read that everything was made through Jesus, and he has knowledge and wisdom about everything! And that includes your field of work and mine.
This may be a new idea to you too, that Jesus is the authoritative expert on nursing, and accounts, and toddlers, and driving, and dementia, and European law, and dealing with rude customers and difficult colleagues?!
So we can learn from Jesus, as his disciples, how to do our work as he would, and our job can be a primary place of apprenticeship to Jesus. If it’s not, we’re cutting out a big chunk of our life from him!

So, how can we do our work as Jesus would?
Not by being the Christian critic, or being self righteous, or a killjoy, that’s for sure.
But perhaps by sensitive service to others.
By genuine love for everyone involved in the work.
By refusal to press for financial advantage.
By non-retaliation.
By gently but firmly not cooperating with things that everyone knows to be wrong.
By routinely sacrificing one’s comfort and pleasure for the quality of the work.
And by watching out for any obvious spiritual need or interest in Jesus, and being willing to speak up when there is. Sometimes, actions alone are not enough. These days, people accept that others behave and live in all sorts of ways, without questioning them. “Live and let live” is the slogan; so no-one may ever know why you are different unless you’re willing to speak up about your faith in Jesus.
Wow! Wouldn’t that lot bring God-flavours and God-colours to the place you work?

Finally then, HOW do we become a serious disciple or apprentice of Jesus?
First, we ask him! We emphatically and repeatedly express to Jesus our desire to see him more fully as he really is, as the one who can teach us everything we need to know – everything! We will discover that he is so wise, powerful, beautiful and good that we want to be guided, instructed and helped by him in every aspect of our lives.
So, secondly, we need to spend time in his presence, to learn from him, that’s praying and reading the Bible, and meditating on it, mulling it over, sometimes for extended periods. Trying to get wet from standing under a few drops of water every day, just doesn’t work. It’ll keep you damp, but to get soaked, sometimes you’ve got to have a shower! So sometimes we need to spend more than a few rushed minutes with him, we need an hour or a day put aside to be with and learn from him as our teacher.
Third, we decide to! Make it a deliberate intention, a priority. It’s your choice, and mine! So, will we take seriously the challenge to be a real disciple of Jesus?

If we do, then not only will our lives be turned upside down, but the impact we’ll have on those around us will be like salt and light. We’ll be part of bringing out the God-flavours and God-colours of our world.

And the point of it all? That God may be praised! “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
Yes, we’ll be “blessed!”, in the Beatitude sense, of a deep joy and hope that circumstances can’t touch. But as Cameron reminded us last week, the Christian life, the life of discipleship to Jesus, is NOT ABOUT US. It’s ALL ABOUT HIM, ALL ABOUT JESUS.
And so let’s follow him.

And now let’s pray...
Jesus we thank and praise you that we can have the privilege of following you. Help us to learn how to do that, in every aspect of our lives, day by day. May we have a deep, far reaching impact for good, in our homes, neighbourhood, work and the world around us. Amen.

DISCIPLESHIP
MATTHEW 5: 1-16
QUESTIONS TO PONDER

How would Jesus live my life?

How would Jesus do my ‘work’?
How would Jesus deal with the particular people I am with each day?
What issues would Jesus be concerned about, in my ‘work’ and life?
What might Jesus want to challenge or change?
What would His priorities be?
Who would He watch out for?

In my ‘work’, how do I measure up on:
Being a critic, self righteous or a killjoy?
Sensitive service to others?
Genuine love for everyone involved?
Refusal to press for financial advantage?
Non-retaliation?
Gently but firmly not cooperating with things that everyone knows to be wrong?
Routinely sacrificing my comfort and pleasure for the quality of the work?
Watching out for any obvious spiritual need or interest in Jesus?
And a willingness to speak when there is?

Sermon 4th September 2011

2011-09-12T14:00:00.002+01:00

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Matthew 4 verses 18-25

Peter had a temper;
Miriam was a gossip;
Jacob was a cheater;
Noah got drunk;
David had an affair;
Jonah ran away from God;
one Mary was a worrier;
another Mary was a prostitute;
Thomas was a doubter;
Paul was a murderer;
Sarah was impatient;
Elijah was moody;
Moses stuttered;
Gideon was insecure;
Zacchaeus was short;
Abraham was old;
and Lazarus was dead!

So what's YOUR reason for thinking that God isn't interested in, or can't do anything, with you, then?

As ever, chances are that I am – quite literally – preaching to the converted. You are probably listening to this sermon because you have already made the fundamental decision: to respond to God's call to you. At some time, in some way, however gradually it may have been, you have found yourself following after Jesus – even though he died some 2 000 years ago. Doubtless you are also all too aware that taking that key decision didn't make you perfect. You don't always get it right. In fact, if you're anything like me, you're probably amazed that God still bothers with you at all! How many times has He shown, or taught you this, or that, already? And how many more times will it take, until you do actually learn, and live, it, finally? Maybe, that is. Until the next time!

Well, that's why this autumn's series is for you, no matter where you are with God. It may be that you have already been well described. Maybe you're one of those who has been experiencing the ups and downs along this discipleship road for some time. Or it may be that you are at a rather earlier stage of this journey. Perhaps you're still wondering what this being a Christian lark is all about. Wherever you are along that spectrum, though, this series is for you. That's because it's inviting each one of us to take the next step forward. Your next step may well be different to mine, and to anybody else's. But what is for sure is that there is a next step for you. You see, faith in Jesus is a journey, and an adventure. It's one that is never over, until you meet him, face to face. So come on, then: it's time to press onwards.

Now, to coin a phrase, the greatest journey always begins with the first step. That's why we're beginning our term’s journey here, at the start of Jesus' public ministry in Matthew. Yes, it is half-way through Chapter 4 already; but Matthew had much to say to his readers before he could get to this point in his story about Jesus. To explain it briefly, the headline summary of this gospel is that it was most likely written for a mainly Jewish readership. I say “most likely”, because of course we don't know for sure. As with many of the books of the Bible, we don't know much very exactly: we don’t know when it was written; or where; or who for; or even who by, in this case!

This one has been known as Matthew since the 1st Century; but no such claim is made anywhere in the book itself. So it could have been written by Matthew, who might formerly have been known as Levi, the ex-tax-collector, who was one of Jesus' 12 disciples. In many ways it doesn't matter who wrote it – any more than it matters who it was particularly written to. There is plenty that we can work out from going at it backward; but what matters most is the fact that this is a book about the life of Jesus. Whoever wrote it, at whatever point in the 1st Century, what they wanted people to know above all is about who Jesus is. More than that, they wanted people to know not just what he did, but how anyone, at any point in history, can also become one of his followers. And of course that includes you, in the 21st Century!

Discipleship is one – of four – of the clear major themes in Matthew's gospel; and those other three are very closely related to it. It's also no surprise that each of the other three gospels also have discipleship as one of their own main themes. We certainly saw this theme in our series on John before the summer break. In case you missed it, it's best summed up by where we ended – with Jesus' call for us to go and bear fruit for him. Well, in the same way, Luke and Mark have discipleship among their major themes too. Like Matthew and John, they each bring their own distinct flavour to the subject. I won't name those other two now – mostly because our focus in this series is solely on Matthew's gospel.

What we do need to know from the outset, though, is the Matthew-take on discipleship. It's best summed up by this phrase: “Examples with a commission”. That's at the heart of what it means to be a disciple in the story of Jesus as it is told by Matthew. Disciples above all are those who serve as examples to others. They / we can and do serve as examples both positively and negatively – as we will see time and again between now and Advent. I don't want to spoil any of the fun, but that's good news for anyone – so that's all of us – who gets it wrong occasionally. We, and others, can learn as much from our mistake as we can from our successes. As is often the way, maybe we and others can learn more from those failures than we can from the successes. And the biggest lesson is surelythat it's more about God than it is about us.

That feeds into the second part of this discipleship picture in Matthew. Examples, yes, we are indeed meant to be – but examples with a commission. We have been chosen, by Jesus. That's not often how WE see things, of course! We tend to think more in terms of a decision that we have made. We have decided to follow Jesus, we think. But if I were to say that 'It's not about you', that will hopefully be familiar to those who were here in Lent. If I then add, 'It's all about Him', some will recognise both statements as among the classic one-liners from our “Purpose Driven Life” study book. More importantly they both remind us how this is all God's plan, God's initiative, and God's action, in Jesus.

It is also important to say that this discipleship course that we are doing from Matthew is part of a bigger picture. It's based on our commitment to keep learning from all that God taught us at the start of this year. To be purposeful about it, then: this is to help us learn more of our Godly purpose of having been Created to become like Christ. That's what it means to be a disciple, or follower of Christ, after all – to become like him. The word ‘Christian’ literally means ‘little Christ’. But, as we have already seen in Matthew, it's more than that as well. Disciples aren't 'just' those who have been called to be with Jesus; or 'just' to be examples; we're also commissioned by Jesus, to continue his work and ministry.

That's another theme which we will see time and again in this series, then. After spending time being with Jesus, learning from him, watching him, his disciples are sent off to go and do what he has taught them. Matthew then ends his gospel with the risen Jesus sending his disciples out, literally to the ends of the earth. That's where we will end this series on discipleship. We will see how Jesus then gave his disciples their job. It is the same job that his disciples today also have: to carry the message, work and ministry of Jesus to all people everywhere. And the sharp-witted will surely recall how that is the last of our five life-purposes too. Yes, we have each been Made for Mission: to carry on Jesus' work.

So there's the outline agenda for adults here over the next three months. We'll be seeing, and learning, what it means to be examples, with a commission. We'll be doing that from selected stories told in Matthew's gospel; and doing it in the context of two of our life-purposes: that we have been Created to become like Christ; and that we have been Made for a Mission: Jesus'. But I dare to suggest that none of that will even be possible unless we get our starting point right. What we have to admit today, then, is that this is all about Him, and not about us. Unless we can let go of any clinging illusions that we are in charge, we won't be able to follow where God is wanting to lead us, personally or as church.

If you have any doubts about that, look at what happened with these two pairs of brothers in today's reading. As so often with Matthew, this is shorthand, a summary of events. The second part of today's reading is also a summary, but more obviously so. Although his is the longest gospel, Matthew was a pithy story-teller, usually in a hurry to get to the meaty bits. Both sets of brothers had already heard and seen Jesus around their fishing town, Capernaum. Matthew left others to tell that part of the story. He jumped straight to the brothers’ point of decision: in response to Jesus' call. Jesus took the initiative: he approached them – which was very unusual at that time. He told them to leave everything and everyone they knew; and it was a lot! As fishermen, they had families, thriving businesses, and a secure future. Jesus simply told them to come and follow him – and expected them to obey instantly. They did; and just look what happened.

If you're not sure what happened, make sure that you are here to hear it as this series unfolds. Either way, I encourage you to read Matthew at home in the week too; and to catch up or re-read the sermons on our website. No matter where you are on this journey there will be steps to take that will lead you further along. All you have to do is be willing to answer Jesus' call obediently; no matter what the cost, or the risk. You see, the bottom line is that you too have been made to be an Example with a Commission. Wouldn't it be great if by us being that, people rushed here from all over to meet with Jesus? Let’s pray that it will indeed be so, then ...

Sermon 21st August

2011-09-05T13:48:00.005+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, preaches based on the reading from Acts 10, verses 1-8

Last Sunday Do you remember Adrian managed the marvellous feat of 2 sermons in 1; snapshots from the riots in one, Vanessa throwing the pink fluffy dice, Ben as Aeneas getting healed by Freya’s Peter in the other. But both sermons talked about the way God communicated with people through the miracle of healing, for Aeneas who was able to walk ,and for Tabitha who was raised from the dead.
And Adrian asked us to think about what God had said to us last week through the riots. What had He communicated to us?
Well we’re going to try a little speaking listening and communicating of our own this morning…

Do What The Angel Tells You
Whisper phrase from both sides. Simon will start it and the last ones come and tell Me.

Quietly pass it on to your neighbour, so they can hear it but not so we can all hear it. Let’s see if what Simon says reaches us at the front….
After
Sometimes we can clearly make out what God is trying to communicate with us and do what he asks,
sometimes it gets confused, because we aren’t listening carefully or don’t want to hear what he has to say to us,
or we haven’t realised that was God speaking to us.
God can communicate with us in all sorts of ways.
And fantastically along with miracles, answers to prayer, he sometimes sends angels; as he did with Cornelius in this morning’s passage.
Cornelius, the Roman commander of an Italian Band, not a bunch of musicians, but a troop of Italian soldiers , 600 of them, working for the Roman Empire.
Cornelius is an officer in the Roman Army.
This would have made him hated by many patriotic Jews, since the Roman army was the army of occupation in Israel at that time, and Caesarea where Cornelius is stationed is the headquarters of the Roman Governor of Judea.

So it must have seemed a strange thing that a Roman Officer as powerful as Cornelius would choose to worship the God of the people whose land he and his army were occupying…
I imagine some of the officers he worked alongside might have laughed at him, even disliked him for it.

All the same Cornelius and all his family believe in God. Cornelius loves God and makes sure to do all the things he is supposed to in obedience to God, praying to God always and giving money generously to those in need.

So, following the rules of the Jewish faith at the 9th hour, what we would call 3 o’clock in the afternoon (9 hours after dawn) he and his family and servants are praying.
Now at the 9th hour as Cornelius prays an angel appears to him and tells him what God wants him to do.
The Bible tells us of over 300 times when Angels are sent by God to communicate with people, from Genesis to Revelations and sometimes people hear clearly what God wants them to do ….like in our whispering ….and sometimes they don’t.
Can anyone here think of some of those times when angels appear to people in the Bible?
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Elizabeth, Mary

Well God sent me an angel this week, a lady angel, in fact I think she’s here (…she was at St Sav’s , Simon saw her didn’t you Simon…can you describe her….). Do you think I’ve gone bonkers…can you stand up Lady Angel… yes her name’s Melissa.
I don’t think Melissa is an angel for everyone or even if she will ever be an angel again, but last Wednesday morning she was for me.
I was walking from my house to Herne Hill station to catch a train to work in North London, and when I got to the station who should I see sitting in the waiting room but Melissa.
She looked busy texting or reading something on her mobile so I thought ‘oh I won’t bother her,’
but I then I thought ,’oh go on then there’s a little while till the train goes, go and say hello she can always tell me to clear off…tho you probably wouldn’t would you??

Now unbeknownst to Melissa, as I walked to the train station that morning, I had been praying to God about this morning.
‘Oh God’, I was praying, ‘can you help me out here, I have a sermon to give on Sunday as you know and I can’t hear what you want me to say.
It’s the 41st anniversary of Linus Van Pelt falling in love with Sally Brown in the Peanuts, Charlie Brown cartoons , I like the Peanuts cartoons, they’re fun can I do something about that?
Or what about the riots,should I talk about them?... Oh but Adrian talked about that last Sunday, have we had enough of that?
Or has anything funny happened to me this week…anything funny about Roman soldiers? How about Asterix?
Or how about how Cornelius’ name sounds a bit like corned beef….
No? Oh I don’t know God but it’s Wednesday already and I’ve got loads of other stuff to think about work stuff and home stuff and holiday stuff please can you help, so I don’t waste everyone’s Sunday morning…’.

So that’s what I’d been thinking of on my walk to the station.
So now I saw Melissa, sat down with her and we started chatting….she and Dan the boys had been away on holiday to Jersey to visit family… and they hadn’t seen any news… and then they came back and oh my goodness! Riots!
What’s been going on?? They thought.
Well a train arrived and it turned out Melissa and I were both getting that train and Melissa was only getting off one stop before me, she Kentish Town , me West Hampstead…so quite a lot of stops, and quite a long time to talk….
As it turned out we didn’t talk about Peanuts and Charlie Brown, we didn’t talk about Asterix or even Corned Beef but we did talk about the riots - almost the whole way - and I talked about Adrian’s sermon last week, about ‘what has God been saying to you this week’
and Melissa said, ‘and when are you next talking in church…
ME: ooh this Sunday actually…
MEL: and are you talking about the riots…
ME: no Adrian did that last week
MEL: oh but you can still talk about it…
ME: oh I don’t know…
MEL: well I’d like to hear some more about it….

And then it struck me….
What had I been asking God for help with as I walked to the station?
And who did I start chatting to at the station?
And what did she keep going on at me to talk about?

Now I am not saying that anyone who speaks to you just after you’ve been praying will have a communication for you from God…it might just be the man who’s come to read the gas meter, or it might be the dog lady come to shampoo and blowdry your pooch with the firminator…
But sometimes I believe God may have things to say to us that we may hear from the gas man or the dog lady, or our friends or neighbours, our teachers, workmates or who knows - maybe even the preacher….
So we need to be alert….listening for God.

In this morning’s reading Cornelius is following God as well as he knows how, then the angel comes - an angel comes!! Can you imagine! and tells Cornelius to do something that seems quite odd, to send his servants to find a strange man in another city and do whatever that strange man says…. odd, but Cornelius does what he’s told, is obedient, and the man who comes to his house changes his life forever.
That man is Jesus’ disciple Peter, who tells Cornelius, that Jesus, the son of the God he worships, came to earth and died and came back to life, so that he Cornelius and all people no matter who they are Jews or Romans or whoever, could live with the God forever, be loved by him and have the love and the life God made them to have.

That news changes Cornelius’ life. He now understands that because of Jesus his relationship with the God is no longer that of just an obedient Roman follower of God, but as a child of God, blessed with the gift of the Holy Spirit which fills him and all his family as Peter preaches to him., God loves ALL people.
Peter says vv 34-35
GOOD NEWS
‘I now realize that it is true that God treats everyone on the same basis.
Those who worship him and do what is right are acceptable to him no matter what race they belong to.’
NIV
I now realize how true it is that God does not show favouritism.
But accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.

‘do what is right– doing good things for God, living the way God wants us to live.

Luke who is thought to have written the book of Acts’s , emphasizes that a life of faith in God needs to be a strongly ethical one, where we think about all we do in terms of whether our behavior pleases God.

It’s interesting that the time Cornelius is praying when the angel comes to him is the same time in (Acts 3:1) that Peter and John had been praying at the Beautiful gate when Peter healed the lame man in Jesus’ name.
As a result of that doing good, that healing and Peter’s preaching afterwards about 5000 people come to believe in Jesus; and even though it means Peter and John are arrested, once they are released they and all those believers in Christ with them are filled with the Holy Spirit as Acts Ch 4 verses 34-35 says:
. GOOD NEWS
With great power the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God poured rich blessings on them all. There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale and hand it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed to each one according to his need.
NIV
With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them and brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.

In the community of Christian believers Peter and John are a part of no one is ever short of the things they need everything is shared out according to what a person needs.
Luke says Jesus’ Good news is Good news for the poor.
And we see healing and preaching and doing good happening all through Acts.

I wonder how God is communicating with us, to tell us how we can change people’s lives in this country today?
How are we doing good?
Just as Cornelius life was changed forever because he did what God told him and Peter did what God told him.
When we reflect on the riots and what happens next in our community and our country, how can we share what we know about living as Christians?
- that we believe there is more to life than getting stuff, trainers, clothes, games, tv’s ,music players.
- How can we encourage our brothers and sisters to be part of the fun that were the clean up posses in Clapham,
- the fun of handing out cupcakes like Ms Cupcake did in Brixton,
- the we love Peckham post it notes people; writing the reasons why they love Peckham on post it notes stuck to a boarded up shop.
How do we all stop thinking about getting stuff and start thinking about doing stuff?

Luke thought to have written the book of Acts was also thought to have been a doctor:
So Dr Luke as Adrian as calls him, is, as we might expect , a great believer in healing, in doing stuff to make our world more like God’s kingdom.

Perhaps we can all pray that when God tries to tell us the things he’d like us to do for him, to change his world to be more like the world he wants for us,
perhaps when he communicates with us, maybe through something we read in our Bibles,
through something someone says to us a bit like Melissa with me on Wednesday,
however it may happen, perhaps if we pray and listen and give God the time, so we can do things for Him and his world, rather than get things for ourselves,
perhaps then we can change the burning buildings and the smashed up streets and all people’s lostness and sadness, into Ms Cupcake kindness, cleanup fun, Peckham love and a world where we are not consumers, buyers and sellers, but a family, brothers and sisters who belong to each other, who care about each other.

Jacques Ellud In his book on money –Jacques Ellud describes money as a loan from God, entrusted to us for the purpose of investing in the kingdom of heaven.

We are to bring in the Kingdom Of Heaven to the world around us through what we do, how we share God’s love, how we use his Loan.
MP’s Bankers Newspapers, Rioters we have seen all sorts of our brothers and sisters all trapped in the desperate need to get more stuff.
As Christians following the example of Jesus we must counter the getting more stuff with the giving of Christ’s love.
It doesn’t mean giving away all your lovely stuff, or never buying another thing, but perhaps we can just pause maybe and question
how we spend your money, on what;
where we give, for what purpose:
how we spend our time,?

Is what we do everyday repaying God’s Loan to us,
is it investing in his kingdom with our time , our love , our money,
Peter heals, an Angel speaks, Cornelius learns that God’s love is for everyone.
Are we hearing God when he speaks to us however it is he communicates?
Is our presence a healing one, is our message a loving one?
Perhaps we can show by example following in Jesus’ footsteps, that there is another way to live.
It’s not about getting more stuff it’s about giving God’s love.
Giving not getting. In God’s strength.
Amen

Sermon(s) 14th August 2011

2011-08-15T22:01:00.005+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches based on the reading from Acts 9:32-43:

Peter heals Aeneas and Dorcas

“The news about this spread …and many people believed in the Lord.” Acts 9:42

1. Today I am going to attempt something which, to my knowledge, has not been attempted previously in the history of the Church [except at St Sav’s earlier!]. Today I am going to attempt to preach two sermons - at the same time. Let me repeat that: to preach two sermons; at the same time.

And fortunately both sermons start with the same question: What has God your creator been saying to you this week?

Sermon 1 starts over here with an introduction to the first person that Peter met in our reading today, Aeneas the man in the town of Lydda. [4 helpers and explain the rules]

Sermon 2 is over here: and when you get one of the numbers that you need, then I will do a bit of Sermon 2.

2. OK? [Play/read]

3. Sermon 1: And so we meet Aeneas, a man who had been paralysed for 8 years, unable to get up and carry out the ordinary things of life: now healed by on Peter’s instructions. We are told that the people living in his town and in the country around saw him and believed in Jesus. And then Dr Luke goes on to tell us about what followed on in another nearby town, where a popular and hard-working lady had died. So Peter went to her house, prayed for her in private, her eyes opened and she, like the man Aeneas, responded to Peter’s request that she get up! Amazing stories! Incredible stories!

4. Sermon 2: What has God your creator been saying to you this week?

5. Sermon 1: We have just been on holiday. It has been a very busy year and so I was looking forward to a very quiet holiday, away from it all and this is what I took with me: books(for stories and ideas), mobile phone (to keep in touch with family and the office in emergencies), Blackberry (to keep in touch with the office anyway), laptop (partly as back-up in case the phone and the Blackberry went down), Kindle (to get a newspaper every day – to keep in touich with what was going on).

A “quiet holiday”, “away from it all”?! Looking at this little pile, I will leave you to analyse me as you wish. To me it suggests I like to be in touch, to communicate?

6. Sermon 2: What has God your creator been saying to you this week?

7. Sermon 1: I firmly believe that God still allows miracles to occur in part because it is one way – just one way - in which God fulfils his desire to communicate with us. The whole history of God’s dealings with His creation, the story at the heart of our faith, is about a creator who wants to communicate to us His desire to recreate unity, to enable healing and to dispel fear both for us individuals and for our/His communities. Miracles – especially perhaps miracles involving healing such as that of Aeneas and Dorcas – even though we are used to them, perhaps take them for granted, in our familiarity with the Bible stories - are instances where God communicates most starkly, most obviously, His desire to be involved in, to intervene in those things which are at the heart of the lives of those he has made.

And the intervention creates a wave and people hear and people understand and people believe. When John the Baptist, in prison, sent his disciples to establish Jesus’ credentials, Jesus reassured him pointing to the signs of God’s intervention in people’s lives: “Go back and tell John …: The blind can see, the lame walk, [lepers] are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”

So the miracles are one sort of signs of God wanting to speak to us of His love.

8. Sermon 2: What has God your creator been saying to you this week?

If you have been listening to Sermon 2, you may feel a little short-changed; but then Sermon 1 has been doing the round of my mind for a couple of weeks. Over here, you have had and still have only the emotive appeal that asks you to join me in examining our response to the events of this week. In preparing for today, I could have dumped Sermon 1: except that to me, that God wants to be with us, in our minds, in our homes, in our communities, is what gives me the confidence to ask myself and to ask you: what has God your creator been saying to you this week?

The answers to that question may be very varied: for some the responses may be very personal – relief from fear perhaps; for some the answer may be directed at our churches as a community in the wider community. For some the answer may be “nothing”.

9. Paper at the back to note down any answers?

Amen

Sermon 24th July 2011

2011-07-27T09:03:00.001+01:00

Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from John 15 verses 9-17.

Well! It has been – once again! – quite a week! There were times when I did wonder if I had unwittingly become a contestant on that quirky Japanese game-show. You know, the one where the winner is the person who collects the largest volume of tears in a test-tube! It's hard to recall a day in the past 10 that has not been full of tears – be those sad, happy, hurt, or proud tears. And how many more tears have been shed this weekend, over the horrific events in Norway?

I may want to return to those various types of tears later – not least the ones that I have shed. For now I want to highlight one specific tear-source: this final week of the St Saviour's School year. As per tradition, it included the Year 6 production, which is always a tear-jerker to rival the Leavers' Service! For the record, yes, Friday's service was as tearful as it always is – and quite rightly so. But this year's show was a home-grown version of High School Musical. Shy 11-year-old's who we know well were able to sing, act, and dance their hearts out. Cue the parental pride – and more tears!

It all reminded me of a lovely story told by Eddie Askew, one of my favourite meditative authors. He described a school Nativity play where the shepherds – traditionally dressed up in tea-towels and rugs – had been encouraged to use their own words as they stood around the baby Jesus doll. Tearful parents had to stifle their giggles when one of the youthful shepherds piped up: 'Aaw: doesn't he look just like his dad!'

It was, of course, a line that he had heard some relative use of a new-born baby. He knew that it was a good thing to say at such a time, so he did. We may well laugh to hear it applied to Jesus in this way – but actually I wonder if that isn't the very best note that we could end this series on! It's not at all hard to pick out any number of different key strands that have run through our learning from John's gospel over these past 2 months. That's partly to do with how John wrote; in themes, rather than what we might call straight history. But as we begin now to draw out enduring life-lessons to apply to our Godly way forward from here, I'd very much hope that this theme is high amongst them: become like your heavenly Father; just as His Son is.

Those who went on the parish weekend away discovered all sorts of new angles and insights into John's gospel. If you missed it, whilst we were away we explored another of this book's major themes. In 'Glimpses of Glory' we looked at signs that Jesus performed in John. You can read it all on-line, or ask me for copies. Then you'll see that the new angles and insights part wasn't deliberate: it 'just' happened – much as today's one has done. There have been gems hidden in John's gospel which, for whatever reason, haven't previously glinted at me before this series, or the Ashburnham one. Now they wonderfully have done, though – like this calling has. So I believe that what God most wants is for each of us to become like our heavenly Father; just as His Son is.

This is what has particularly struck me as I have looked back at each of these “I AM” sayings of Jesus. The Father does not just appear in each one of them: He is central to them, every time! I challenge you to make time this summer to re-read all these passages that we have covered. Then try highlighting the word 'Father' in each of them. I reckon that you will be as amazed as I was to see just how big a role He played in what Jesus said and did – right from the start. For example, before Jesus said “I AM the bread of life”, he said, “It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven”. It was also there, in John 6, that Jesus said, “My Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life”. And that's just for starters!

It is just for starters, but, as I said at the time this series began, that statement set out Jesus' agenda for his life, ministry – and his death. He came, in the name of his Father, precisely so that those who believe in him could, and can, have eternal life. “I AM the way, the truth and the life”, Jesus said, remember! It was central to who Jesus was, and to what his Father wanted. So John then shaped his whole gospel around communicating this message to as many people as he could. Again we looked at that from the start, how John carefully chose his material. His aim was to lead his readers to discover the wonderful truth of who Jesus is – and how he shows us what God the Father is like. And yes, the purpose of all this was, and is, so that people like us then grow in the family likeness. We are meant to become more like Jesus, and so more like his Father, who is our Father!

You see, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also”. Those are more words of Jesus from this series – at the time when he claimed “I AM the light of the world”. It goes to show how we really could pick any passage from our series to see this point. The one that does it best, I think, is John 14, where Jesus said: “The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work”. Again and again Jesus made the point: he and his Father are one; they are doing the same work; they have the same purpose. Jesus even made that point by choosing to say “I AM” of himself. It means that he is God, just as his Father is God. And this is who we also are to become like!

This is all the context that our series ends in today, in John 15. Ben Hughes provided a great summary of all our learning from John, here and at Ashburnham, when he spoke on Jesus' saying, “I AM the gate for the sheep-pen”. Ben's paraphrase of what Jesus was saying and meant there goes: “I am the good shepherd, I am the door, I now manage the transaction between God and people … I know who should come in and who should not, I am the keeper, the watcher, the counter, the lover, the judge, the protector, I am the good shepherd, I am the way the truth and the life, I am the light, I am your temple itself, I am the door into eternal life … I am your sacrifice, your king, Lord, ruler and friend next door, I am your true neighbour, the bread of life. I am the one and only, I am the shepherd ... it all goes through and by me and if it doesn’t come through me … it is – like lies and deceit. Nobody enters unless it is through me … all else is like a thief. I walk on water … I command the wind and the waves … I have evil and chaos under my feet”.

All that, and more, is what we have learned from and about Jesus through John. And now we reach this part of chapter 15. Here Jesus says to his disciples – again to paraphrase it: “And now the time has come. All that I have tried to teach you, and show you, has brought me here, to Jerusalem, at Passover”. We have already caught a sight of that, even if we didn't look at Jesus washing their feet at the last supper in John 13 in either series. There is no doubt that Jesus is trying hard to prepare his disciples for life without him, though. And what better way could he do that than point them again, for one last time, to his Father! “As the Father has loved me so I have loved you; now remain in my love”, Jesus told them.

Those are the words that could, should, and must ring in our hearts and ears, into this summer, and beyond. Jesus has loved us as his Father has loved him: now we are to remain in his love. If we have grasped anything of who God is, or of what He has shown us, and done in Jesus; if we believe that we have been given the gift of eternal life by his death, then we are to grow in the family likeness. We have already been told how to do that: “I AM the true vine and (just to make that point again!) my Father is the gardener”. So, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you,” Jesus said. As he then went on, “This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples”. Then, in his final words, Jesus told us how to do it: “Love each other, as I have loved you”.

As usual, I've got to the point when it's time to round off – and there's so much more that could be said! There is no time to talk about my tears this week, let alone what Jesus means when he says that we are now his friends if we obey his commandments. Mind you, that is also a point where I began this series – saying that John usually whets our appetite for more! Our time at Ashburnham gave us starting points to look for glimpses of God's glory around and within us. In the same way I hope that these I AM's have inspired us to go further on our journey with Jesus. It's not just about finding out more of what he said or did, I'd hope. It is very much a matter of becoming more like him, as he is like our Father. And, to encourage you, here is news that we will be doing a Jesus-discipleship course together on Sundays in the autumn!

You don't have to wait, to grow or catch glimpses of glory. We each need to take responsibility for responding to this challenge, to grow in the family likeness. John has given us great starting points; and he offers us so much more, if we will just keep on listening. Not least, John points us here to the cross. It's there above all that Jesus shows us what God's love looks like and does – giving, costly, self-sacrificial, for others. And so, as the people Jesus has chosen, the ones he has shown how to love by loving us: love one another, then, as he has loved you – for His glory! And so let's pray ...

Sermon 17th July

2011-07-27T08:57:00.002+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley, preaches based on the gospel of John 15 verses 1-8.

One of the many things that strikes me about John’s gospel, along with just how deep and profound and poetic it feels, is how Jesus takes the ordinary things around him and uses them either just as an illustration or as a means to healing or other miracles. If you were at Ashburnham last weekend, one of the things that kept coming out of Cameron’s teaching was Jesus taking ordinary, familiar things, like a few fish and loaves of bread, or some dirt from the ground, or some water in jars, and transforming them and the stories and accounts that resulted can still have a really deep impact on us. I wonder what he would have used today if he’d been walking around the streets of Lambeth – burgers at McDonald’s maybe, or the 68 bus. Would he have said, “I am the good security guard” as he walked across Halfords car park? Would he have commented on Boris Bikes or the Royal Family or the collapse of the News of the World or a famous footballer’s baby daughter?

Because all he was doing when he spoke of the sheep or the vine was pointing to things immediately around him that were part of the daily lives of the people who were listening, things that they really knew and understood. That way what he had to say would really strike home. Life in 1st century Palestine may have been politically complicated with the Roman occupation and tension between the occupying forces, local Jewish political leaders and Jewish religious leaders, but day-to-day it was probably very simple. It was hot. It was dusty. Food was simple but probably wholesome. The sheep grazed on the hillsides and most people got by, finding enough, they hoped, from the fields or the lakes to feed their families and hoping no one became ill.

It doesn’t say in John’s gospel where Jesus was when he told his followers, “I am the real vine, my Father is the gardener and you are the branches.” I like to think he may have been just walking in the fields. Or they may have just finished sharing a meal in a long, dusky evening….but vines and their grapes would have been on everyone’s land. So they knew all about them and each would have thought about the vines that were familiar to them. We were in Greece recently, just a few hundred miles from where Jesus spoke these words so I was watching out for the vines. Some were younger, small bushes standing in rows with the branches trained off to either side by the gardener, some were large and very old, the branches going off the main stem about 8-10 feet in the air, for yards and yards, supported by wires or the sides of buildings. One of those older vines had split, right down the middle and a huge gap had opened up in the main trunk. I wondered how on earth the water still flowed through the narrow, gnarled strips of wood on either side of that gap, up from the ground, because the grapes still hung in abundance on the branches.

If they had been outside perhaps Jesus pointed to a nearby piece of land with a man tending his vines. “Look” you can imagine him saying, “if you want to be my disciples, you need to be very careful. See that branch on that vine….it is weighed down with bunches of grapes and the gardener is tending it and protecting it. But look at that one over there, can you see it has dried up and there is no fruit on it. See the gardener chopping it off and throwing it in a pile with the other dead branches. If you want to be my disciples, don’t get cut off from me and from what I have taught you. If you want to bear fruit, you need me. You need the relationship between you and me to be strong and you won’t get anywhere just on your own. “Remain in me and I will remain in you” is the way the NIV translation puts it and the same word is used in the Good News. “Remain in me…..” What is Jesus getting at, “Remain in me…….”??

A famous Christian woman of the last century, a writer, a Dutch woman called Corrie ten Boom who lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland during the Second World War wrote a book called “Not Good if Detached”. She was talking about bus tickets that she saw on her travels in America after the war that had two parts. But if one part got detached from the other the ticket was no good and you couldn’t use it. So half the ticket had written on it “Not good if Detached”. If I remember correctly – it’s a while since I read the whole book - she was urging her readers in the same way as Jesus urged his disciples, to stay very close to their Lord…don’t get detached. “The branch of the vine can only give fruit through Him. Without Him we can do nothing” is the way she puts it in the beginning of the book.

Corrie ten Boom and her family were just ordinary Christian people before the war but they decided to help some of the Jewish victims of Nazi oppression in Holland. In the end the entire family was arrested and only she survived internment in Ravensbruck concentration camp. But she learned to trust and to obey, to stay close and to pray, through everything that life threw at her. She learned, she says, that before their dreadful experiences they “had believed, but now they knew that the light of Jesus Christ is stronger than the deepest darkness.” And she had a big impact for many years after the war as she travelled around the world, telling her story. [St Pauls: I’ve got it here if anyone wants to borrow it after the service…..].

I was really moved this week at work....last week we were all getting really, really stressed over a very difficult court case we are involved in with a highly litigious and aggressive solicitor on the other side who threw so many serious allegations at my young colleague, let’s call him Stephen, that I feared Stephen might be driven off sick or to the edge of a breakdown. He wasn’t sleeping he told me and his wife was in tears when he got home and told her how nasty it was all getting….and Stephen is a pretty robust and down to earth character. He had just been driven, over many, many months, to the edge of what he could cope with. So I felt really burdened last weekend at Ashburnham and shared this with various friends there and spent some time praying. Stephen is also a Christian and on Monday I got in to find an email saying that he had prayed over the weekend about all that was going on and he really felt the burdens had lifted. He wanted to share with me that prayer really works and to encourage me in my own faith! I wonder whether we had both been trying too much for the last few months in our own strength and forgetting to take our burdens to the one who really understands, the one who knows because he has been here, the one who has been through it all….”Bring your offerings, however small, of loaves and fish to me and let me transform them” says Jesus to the boy in the crowd of 5000. “Let me into your boat in the storm and we will get to the other side together” says Jesus to his disciples. “Do not let your hearts be troubled…. Trust in God; trust also in me.”

At Ashburnham, in case you have not been there before, the buildings stand overlooking a lake and surrounded by acres of beautiful woodlands. So I thought I would walk through the woods and bring home a dry branch and a green branch that I could use as illustrations. I found the dry branch OK and here it is, and it took me a minute or two to realise why it was not going to be easy to find a green branch on the woodland floor..because the green branches are still attached to the trees and it is really difficult to wrench one off and I decided it would be wrong to try. The sap keeps them alive and strong and attached and difficult to break. They remain attached to the tree, like the branches of the vine that keep bearing grapes..

So if Jesus is the real vine and we are the branches, how do we remain in him..how do we stay strong and attached to Him? What is it that makes the difference?

Jesus gives his disciples at least two or three clues in this passage from John’s gospel. “If you remain in me and my words remain in you,” he says in verse 7, “then you will ask for anything you wish and you shall have it.” “If my words remain in you….” I think Jesus wants us to read and to study and to keep coming back to his teaching, his words, as spoken in these precious gospels, these astonishing survivors from the first hundred years or so after Jesus’ death. “Read your Bibles” he might say to us. Let the Bible become familiar to you so that it influences your everyday life and your actions and becomes part of you. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly”, it says in the New International Version of Colossians chapter 3 verse 16. Why not today decide, if you do not do so already, to start opening your Bible every day, or at least every weekday. Saturday might be a day off and Sunday a day for Church anyway! You might concentrate on the gospels or the Psalms perhaps if you find them the most helpful….and just see what God might be trying to say to you each day. I opened my New Living Translation (hold it up) just briefly last Monday morning before I went in to work to find that email from my colleague we’re calling Stephen and at 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 2 it said that “a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful.” It was precisely what I needed to hear that day when I had been wondering whether I still had the energy to go on and on supporting my team through their difficulties.

“If my words remain in you, then you will ask for anything you wish and you shall have it.” Of course we know that prayer is not a slot machine, but our experience is that when we really do try to be faithful, when we really do try to live according to Jesus’ teaching then in so many ways we see prayers answered. To spend some time in prayer each day…or maybe just each weekday, because Saturday is a day off and Sunday a day for Church! …is that one of the ways that Jesus is calling us down the centuries to remain in Him? If our faith is fundamentally a relationship, then as with any relationship we need to talk. Should we try to move forward as pray-ers from today? It was only when someone in church said in a meeting many years ago “Well if the Christians are not praying – for the community and for the world and for people they know who are in need – that I finally got my act together and bought a small notebook and started to spend just a few minutes each morning praying. This one is the latest version and for some reason my little Bible and my little prayer notebook have got completely stuck together in the last fortnight or so. I think the cover of the Bible is disintegrating for some reason and just getting sticky, but I thought it was a good illustration. Prayer and Bible reading, Bible reading and prayer.

Then thirdly, in verse 10, just on from the main passage today, Jesus says to his hearers, “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. It is not just the thinking and the praying, it is when you put what I say into practice, Jesus seems to be saying, that you will continue to know that closeness of relationship that I describe as “remaining in me”. Of course we all know that this can be hard…it would be quite wrong to suggest otherwise and thank God that forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian good news, but are our lives not richer when we do try to do what Jesus commands us to do? “This then is what I command you: love one another” is how Jesus sums it up at the end of this little section of John’s gospel, at verse 17.

Remain in me and you will bear fruit, is then Jesus’ promise to his disciples. Learn that the invitation to live with me alongside you in your life is not to restrict you and burden you or tie you down, it is to bless you because I know what is best for you.

The warning, in Jesus’ words today, is that cut off from him we will dry up and like the dry branch [break it] no longer bear fruit.

The promise, on the other hand, is of much fruit, and fruit in our lives that endures, lives of real and lasting value. Yes, we know this is not easy, it would be wrong to suggest otherwise, but I do believe it is worth keep coming back to and working for, because Jesus gives us glimpses of what is possible in our lives, our relationships, our communities, He gives us glimpses of glory.

The vine I liked best on our holiday in Greece is in a little village called Halki on the island of Naxos. It’s a place we have been to 3 or 4 times. The village centre is on a small hill, some of the old buildings are still in ruins but some have been restored and sell really beautiful pottery and wooden gifts carved from olive wood (I think Phil Brooks and Jenny got something from there yesterday at their wedding). There is a beautiful old distillery where they make a traditional liqueur from large fruit like lemons and a little traditional barbers using a cut-throat razor. And in the tiny centre of the village square is a small café with all the seats set out across the square. Up the side of the café grows a very old vine and the roof of the café is effectively formed by the branches of that vine spread out across all the tables and loaded with bunches and bunches of grapes. It is a beautiful and peaceful place, a picture for me of the kind of image Jesus wanted to encourage in the minds eyes of those who were listening to him that day. Think of the best vine you know he seems to me to be saying. That is what I want your lives to be like. The gardener will come along every now and then and prune you, but only so you can bear even more fruit…

[I have left at the back of the church this morning a bowl of water…if you want to, if you feel you need to, as you leave, I would invite you just quietly to dip your finger in the water and to touch it… perhaps to your head, perhaps to your hands (probably best not to your mouth, for health and safety reasons!), as a way of physically making some reconnection with Jesus Christ this morning and allowing any part of your life that has become dry to become stronger again as you seek to remain in Him, to remain strong….]

Amen

Sermon 3rd July 2011

2011-07-04T10:38:00.002+01:00

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from John 14: 1-14.

I AM THE WAY THE TRUTH & THE LIFE

As an elderly man was driving down the motorway, his mobile phone rang. Answering, he heard his wife's voice urgently warning him, "George, I just heard on the news that there's a car going the wrong way on the M4. Please be careful!"
"Honey," said George, "It's not just one car...It's hundreds of them!"

George was going the wrong way!

This morning we’re looking at the 6th in our series of Jesus’ seven
“I AM” claims. Today it’s “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
As we’ve seen looking at the first 5, these I AM statements, all make huge claims. And they were, and are, controversial. Perhaps none more controversial than this one. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no-one comes to the Father except through me.”
What a thing to say! What does it mean? And if it means what it seems to, that Jesus is the only way to God, how outrageous, how arrogant is that?! Who did Jesus think he was?

But first we’d better look at the context of these words. Jesus said them during the long evening he spent with his followers the night before he was crucified. That evening, at his Last Supper with them,
he talked a lot, his last chance to teach them before he died. They didn’t understand much of it at the time, but would later. This passage we’ve just read is typical; Jesus said he’s going away,
and they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand where he was going or how he would get there – even though he had told them before
that he had to die, on a cross. Thomas spoke up for them, and asked,
“Lord we don’t know where you’re going, so how can we know the way?” It was in reply to this question, that Jesus made this extraordinary claim. “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no-one comes to the Father except through me.”

Let’s look at the claim in detail then. Jesus said “I am the Way”.
The Jews talked a lot about THE WAY in which people must walk, God’s WAYS. God said to Moses, “You shall not turn aside to the right or the left; you shall walk in all the WAYS the Lord has commanded you.”
Isaiah said, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, this is the WAY, walk in it”. And the Psalmist prayed,
“Show me your WAY O Lord”.
So the Jews knew a lot about God’s WAY
in which they should walk.
And Jesus said, “I AM the Way”. What did he mean?

Say you’re in a strange place and ask someone for directions.
The person you ask says, Take the 1st right, cross the square, 2nd left, past the church, right at the roundabout with the pub, and the road you want is 3rd on the left.” You might get there, or you might not!
But suppose the person says, “Come, I’ll take you there.” In that case, the person IS the way, and you can’t miss it.

That’s what Jesus does for us. Other religious leaders might give us advice and directions, might point us to God. But Jesus takes us by the hand and leads us. We can go with him, follow him. He doesn’t tell us ABOUT the way or point to the way; he IS the way, himself.

The way to what? To God the Father. Jesus said, “no-one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus is the way to knowing God
as our Father. He says he’s the only way to turn your relationship with God, if you have one at all, from scary critical boss to loving father.
To turn the relationship from fear and uncertainty, “what does God really think of me, dare I approach him?” to absolute confidence, acceptance and love.

My children, teenagers, know that if they do something they shouldn’t, I’ll be cross, maybe very cross, but I won’t fire them or kick them out! They know I’ll still love them; I’ll never give up on them.
I’m a normal mother, no better than others, but how far I would go, as a parent, to save them from some trouble or suffering. Typically, when a child falls into an icy pond or fast flowing river, the parent leaps in, with no consideration of danger to themselves.
God loves us like that – he would go to extremes of his own suffering for us. And that’s exactly what he did. God our loving Father, became a man, Jesus, and suffered a horrible death on the cross,
for love of us. Our sin, our self centredness, cuts us off from God, and on the cross, Jesus took our penalty, paid the price for that sin, so that we can know God as our Father. God loves you and me so much
we CANNOT be fired! He’ll never give up on us, no matter what!

Jesus is the Way to that kind of relationship with God. Straight after saying no-one goes to the Father except by me”, he said, “If you really knew me, you would know my father as well”. It’s all about knowing God as father.

Jesus said, I am the Way. The Way to knowing God as loving Father.

Then Jesus said, “I am the Truth”. Many people have taught the truth, pointed to the truth and explained the truth, but Jesus claimed to embody it. I am the truth.

Jesus didn’t just teach the truth, although he did – he taught the truth
about God and humankind, about sin and forgiveness, and love, the truth about the problems of the world. But more than just teaching the truth, Jesus showed us the truth, and he said he WAS the Truth.
If you want to know the truth about God, look at Jesus. He said “Anyone who has seen me has seen the father.” Jesus personifies the truth about God.

We all base our lives upon some truth or other, something we believe in. That truth may be what we learned as a child, about the way to live. Maybe about the importance of the equality of humankind,
or the need to treat others as we’d like to be treated, or the supremacy of love. But whatever truth we build our lives on, at some point, it’s going to let us down. Perhaps because we can’t live up to it ourselves, when we don’t constantly live by that truth all the time.
Or perhaps because others we trusted don’t live up to it. Sooner or later, our truth will let us down.

So maybe we turn from a particular truth or rule for living, and turn
to love as the ultimate truth or way to live. We search for a true love,
the love we hope will complete us. Perhaps we build our life upon our love for our nearest and dearest, specially close friends, partner or children. But sooner or later love will let us down too, because those we love will at some point let us down, or lie to us, or not be there for us. Ultimately, our loves will let us down, because people aren’t perfect, they’re flawed - they’re like you and me!

So whatever our truth, whatever our rule for living, it’ll fail us, because we and others won’t be able to live up to it all the time, and because it can’t love us perfectly. And it can’t forgive us when we fall, it can’t lift us up and restore us.

BUT in Jesus, the truth has become a person, someone who can love and forgive us. All other truths and loves will let us down, but Jesus won’t! He is The Truth on which to build our lives.

Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth”. And then he said, “I am the Life”. I’m not just the way to knowing God, not just the truth worth building on. I am the life that will enable you to. When we come to Jesus, when we recognise him as the way and the truth, he fills us with his life. His life, his power, comes to change us, to regenerate us, to empower us, to live with Jesus as our way and our truth.

This is true! We can have the life of Jesus in us! The power of Jesus in us! In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he says the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in those who believe in Him.

A lot of people would say they try to live by Jesus’ teachings, to love their neighbours as themselves, to do as they would be done by, and so on. But who can say they manage to do so consistently? Who can really put others first all the time? I don’t know about you, but I know that I can’t follow Jesus faithfully and live his way in my own strength.
We need his power, his life, to enable us, to change us. And yes to forgive us and pick us up and get us going again when we fail, as we do. Jesus can be the Life within us for all that.

Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no-one comes to the Father except through me.” That’s the enormous, wonderful claim Jesus made.

But I can’t finish without saying something about the exclusivity of this claim and Jesus’ apparent arrogance in saying it. “no-one comes to the Father except through me.”
The only way you can really come to God, and know him as your loving Father, is through Jesus. The only way you can really build your life on the ultimate personal truth, is through Jesus. The only way to really fully know God’s life in you, now and for all eternity after death,
is through Jesus. Wasn’t it shockingly arrogant, for him to say all that?

But when we look at what he did, Jesus doesn’t seem arrogant at all.
He was humble – but never modest. He was very humble in how he dealt with people, so kind and gentle to people when they were fragile, so sensitive and respectful to those society despised, so forgiving to those who recognised their sin. And he served and waited on his followers, even washing their dirty smelly feet,
as a servant would.
Jesus wasn’t arrogant, he was humble –
but he wasn’t modest.
That is, what he said about who he was, these great I AM statements we’re looking at –
they pointed to himself, again and again.
He didn’t point away from himself to God;
he made these huge claims.
So, Jesus wasn’t modest, but was humble.

And humble is exactly the way his followers should be!
Not only because of Jesus’ example,
but because we know that the only reason we have found the way to God,
is NOT because we deserve it in any way, but ONLY because of God’s love and forgiveness. Only because of Jesus’ death for us, as we remember at Holy Communion this morning.

Yes, Jesus’ claims to be the only way to God are exclusive – BUT they’re the most inclusive exclusivity possible! This way to God is open to EVERYONE! EVERYONE can come to God through Jesus. This invitation is open to ALL! How inclusive is that?! The most inclusive exclusivity possible.

And the alternative to this exclusivity is some other exclusivity.
If the way to God was only open to good people, then what about the bad? What about those who’ve grown up with drink & drugs & crime & abuse and have little chance of living a so called good life?
That would be exclusive! What about you and me, when we fail to meet our own ideals? Would we be included as good people
who can find a way to God? Could we reach him by our own efforts? Jesus being the only way to God, makes it open to absolutely everyone, the good, the bad and the ugly! It’s that inclusive.

So, how might we respond to these words of Jesus?
“I am the Way the Truth and the Life; no-one comes to the Father
except through me.” If you’ve already come to Jesus as the Way to the Father, if you’re already a Christian, may I encourage you
to prioritise the time and effort and enthusiasm you give
to KNOWING God through Jesus? To getting to know him better and following him? Imagine having a fabulous loving father who wants to be with you and do exciting fun stuff with you, and not bothering with him? Let’s make the most of knowing our wonderful loving father God.

And if you’ve not really accepted these claims of Jesus, may I encourage you to explore them further? This morning we’ve heard Jesus say the astonishing thing that we can know the God of the universe as our loving Father! We’ve heard Jesus say he’s the truth to build our lives upon, and that his life can be our life, to transform and empower us.
What a claim!
What an offer!
It’s too great to be ignored!

Sermon 19th June 2011

2011-06-21T13:12:00.004+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from John 11: 17-27

I Am the Resurrection and the Life

The Fountain of Youth. The Philosopher’s Stone. The Holy Grail. What do they have in common? According to legend and to some well-known films and books, the power to grant immortality. In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Nazis and various other villains search for the Holy Grail, because anyone who drinks out of it will obtain immortality. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the evil wizard Lord Voldemort wants to get hold of the Philosopher’s Stone, because it will extend the life of anyone who consumes it. And in Pirates of the Caribbean – On Stranger Tides, Captain Jack Sparrow is in a race to be the first to get to the Fountain of Youth, a legendary spring that restores the youth of anyone who drinks its water.

In Pirates of the Caribbean, Jack faces many dangers and fights many battles in his quest for the Fountain of Youth. These films are very entertaining, but for me they raise the question – why do so many characters risk so much in their quest for these legendary sources of eternal life? Underlying these searches is surely the fear of death. Woody Allen has said some witty things about death. One of them is: “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.”

But as the cliché goes, there are only two things that are certain in life: - death and taxes. If you can afford a good accountant, you can cut your tax bill. But you can’t do that with death. There is no magic formula, no fountain of youth that is going to save us. So where can we find eternal life? Captain Jack Sparrow went on dangerous adventures looking for it, but perhaps there’s a simpler way of finding it. For Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

Of course going on a quest for the Fountain of Youth is the stuff of fiction. In real life people actually have to face up to death. There are various ways in our society for coping with death. One strategy is denial. With all the debate about the recent Terry Pratchett documentary on assisted suicide, denial is a bit harder at the moment. Nevertheless, I believe it’s an approach many people take. Let’s not talk about it. Death is obscene; death is not something we’re going to talk about. Many people never get around to writing a will because they think it’s bad luck. If you ignore your mortality, then maybe it will go away. In the long run, denial doesn’t work as a coping strategy. The problem with denial is that until you accept that there's a problem, there’s no way to find a solution or to move forward.

A second strategy for coping with death is to sentimentalise it. Denial doesn’t work, and so there’s this second approach for getting around the problem of death, sentimentalising it. Let’s face death, and let’s say death is our friend. Death is a natural thing; it’s just the final stage of life. Now, that actually does sound a more healthy approach than denial, but sentimentalising death isn’t going to work either. The Bible tells us that death is an enemy. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul calls it ‘the last enemy’. No, death is not a friend.

A third approach taken by some people is anger. Dylan Thomas, the famous Welsh poet, wrote as his father died:
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

But rage and anger on their own can’t solve the problem of death. Something more is needed. So let’s now turn to Jesus’ attitude to death. Jesus himself was indignant about death. If we look at what happens in the verses after today’s Gospel reading, we see that is the case. Jesus arrived at Lazarus’s tomb, and verse 33 tells that when he “saw [Mary, Lazarus’s sister] weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled”.

The Greek word for “deeply moved” means to snort as an expression of anger, to be moved with the deepest emotion. It’s rather like seeing a horse neigh and snort with fury, as it stamps its feet. The Greek word expresses a sense of anger, outrage and emotional indignation.

This is more than empathy. It’s not just that Jesus was entering into the grief and desolation of the two sisters, Martha and Mary, as they mourned their brother. At funeral services, particularly for someone who has died young, we experience a sense of desolation, but here Jesus’ soul was filled with rage. That’s very important. Why did he weep like this with such anger? Why did he snort? After all, he was about to bring Lazarus back to life. It’s not just that his dear friend Lazarus had died. Jesus was going to sort that out. It wasn’t just that his dear friends Martha and Mary were so deeply distressed. No, there’s a deeper reason that Jesus was angry here. It’s because for Jesus death is an intrusion into God’s world – an unwelcome intruder which causes terrible agony. And one of the greatest agonies is that it severs loving relationships; that is why it’s so painful. Here the sisters had lost the brother they love. No one could replace for these sisters their brother. Their love for Lazarus was special, and now he was gone, separated from them. And Jesus snorted with anger at the intruder who should bring such pain.

Death is an intruder, an enemy. But the good news that Jesus brings is that death is a defeated enemy. Jesus was not just indignant at death; he showed his power over death. We see in verses 38-44 that Jesus told the people to move the stone away from Lazarus’ tomb, and he told Lazarus himself to come out. And that’s what happened. The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus demonstrated his absolute power over death. Yet although this was a great miracle, Lazarus isn’t alive today. Lazarus was to die again. The stories in John’s Gospel are signs; they are signs that point to a greater truth. And this miracle points forward to the end of the Gospel where Jesus Christ himself was crucified and raised from the dead. He wasn’t brought back to life so he would die again. No, his resurrection is permanent; his resurrection is everlasting. Jesus has smashed death. He’s been there and re-emerged. It’s as if there’s a door marked death and one day each of us will have to go through it. But Jesus has been through it. He has come back and says to us: “I will get you through death.”

And the proof is this - that he has died and has risen again. This is tremendously good news for us as we reflect on our own mortality. None of us know exactly how long we have. Many of us may well live to a ripe old age, but we also know that life can be tragically cut short at an early age. But whatever the case, Jesus has demonstrated that he has power over death. Jesus Christ has smashed through death. CS Lewis, the writer of the Narnia books, put it as follows: “[Jesus] has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.”

Yes, Jesus has smashed death. But why did he have to smash death in the first place? Death is an enemy, an intruder. So how did it get into the world? Physical death is a symptom of a second kind of death, a far more subtle kind of death, and this second kind of death is the root cause of physical death and all its misery. And the second type of death is called spiritual death. Spiritual death separates us from God, and the root cause of this separation is sin. It’s sin that separates us from God. And all the suffering and all the pain of death comes back to that little word sin. All the desperate suffering we see ultimately comes back to sin. Sin is the problem. It’s a word that’s much misunderstood today. Sin isn’t just a spot of grown up naughtiness. There’s nothing naughty but nice about sin; it’s not a bit of fun on the side.

Our sin has separated us from God. That is the message of the Bible. So Jesus, the Son of God, came into the world, snorting at physical death at the tomb of a friend. But more importantly he came to deal with spiritual death which makes physical death such a tragedy. We know that Jesus, after he raised Lazarus, went to physical death himself – an excruciating physical death by crucifixion. Why did Jesus die on the cross? He died to deal with the separation that our sin brings between us and God. And without Jesus’ death we would face physical death and spiritual death alone. The apostle Peter subsequently wrote: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the [cross], so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24)

Many people are anxious, even desperate, about death. They want the comfort of knowing that death is not the end, and Jesus can offer that comfort. But if I stopped there I would be missing out something crucial. Yes, Jesus can sort out our death. He declared, “I am the resurrection and the life.” But it’s vital to look at the rest of verses 25-26 as well. Jesus continued: “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

We need to believe him. We need him to sort out the sin which causes spiritual death. We must accept the cross as well as the resurrection. We need to confess our sin, and to have our sin dealt with, so that our spiritual death can be dealt with.

Death is an enemy, but a defeated enemy. Through his resurrection, Jesus has defeated death. And if we’re willing to turn to him in repentance, we have the assurance that he will get us through physical and spiritual death.

Resurrection, though, isn’t just about what happens when we die. Resurrection isn’t just a doctrine. It isn’t just something that happens in the future. Resurrection is a person, a person who stood in front of Martha, and said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Jesus brings the future hope of resurrection into the present. Eternal life, resurrection life isn’t something that starts at some stage in the future. God’s future has broken into the present, and so resurrection life, eternal life can start now. Life on this earth, as Rick Warren reminded us, is a temporary assignment, but eternal life can start in this life. The Holy Spirit comes into our lives when we believe in Jesus; the Holy Spirit renews and changes us. The resurrection is not a future possibility, it is a present certainty. Wherever Jesus is, there is life, resurrection life.

In his letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul was able to declare, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55) Paul felt able to tease death, to taunt it, to stick his tongue out at it. How did he have the audacity to do that? Because Jesus has broken the power of death; death could not hold him. Paul was also able to say, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:20) Paul was able to say with confidence that the worst thing that could happen to him, death, was actually the best.

Personally I find it difficult to be as bold as Paul in the face of death. I feel very much that I’m preaching this sermon to myself, because I also have so much to learn. But I find it helpful to reflect on these truths. Jesus died so that we don’t have to pay for our sin. Jesus has defeated death. He’s risen to be our living Saviour. If we hold fast to these truths, then it will be possible to talk about death and have peace of mind. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” With these words, he’s asking, “Will you trust me not only with your life but also your death? Will you trust me? I’ve risen from death myself. I will take you through.”

Lord Jesus, thank you so much for the wonderful assurance that we need not fear death, that we can be at peace about our death because you have risen from death, and we want to put our hands in your hands now. Amen.

Sermon 12th June 2011

2011-06-20T13:38:00.006+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, preaches based on the reading from John 10: 11-18.

In 1780 George Alfred Ripley of Skipwith farm, nr Selbey in Vale of York entered the annual local agricultural show for best flock, and won a solid silver sheep cup. The cup was inscribed with the initials GA Ripley and silver marked ‘1780’.
7 generations of the Ripley Family raised sheep at Skipwith farm and every eldest son thereafter was named George A Ripley, So honoured were they to have won that cup.
By the start of the 20th century the Ripley’s had fallen on hard times and were now tenant farmers in Shaklefield . As the Depression dragged on George Albert Ripley was forced to sell up what stock remained and leave the farm. With his wife and young daughter Lizzie, George walked from Yorkshire to Lincolnshire ,all the family belongings piled onto a handcart with little Lizzie on top. In a hamlet called Somersby, George got work as a farm labourer. When she grew up Lizzie probably worked in service locally, later daughters, Agnes and Dorothy at 14 went away to work in service. George, the youngest and the only boy, ran away to sea to avoid becoming a farm labourer. He worked in Liverpool as a valet , but Young George wanted to better himself and went to night school to study marine engineering, eventually getting his ticket and working his way up to become chief engineer on the QE2.
But back in1947, with Young George now at sea, his wife and young daughter went to Somersby to visit Grandad George. He wanted to give the cup to the wife to pass on to his only son. He had remained a labourer all his life and had nothing else to give. During the war when George senior had feared the Germans were going to invade, the only thing of value in the house was the sheep cup so he buried it in the garden and there it remained until this visit in 1947.
The soil was still clinging to it, it was battered, discoloured and had no base, just the cup. The wife dutifully took the battered thing back to Liverpool thinking what’s the fuss?, had it beaten out back into shape and every week the little girl had to polish the cup.
Why do I start with that story? - Because the little girl Jacqueline whose job it was, as she puts it, “to polish that blessed cup week!”, was my mum. Believe it or not I come from a long line of Shepherds!
But what touched me so much about this story, was the family’s pride in their flock and their care of that flock and their feeling so honoured at how well regarded they were by their sheep farming peers. That’s what the Cup meant to them.
So much that they honoured the meaning of the cup by the naming of every first born son after the cupwinning George A Ripley of 1780, right up to my seafaring granddad George Alwyn.
Even when hard times fell and they were no longer farm owners they still held the sheep cup in high regard for what it represented of their past skills, duties and constancy.
As I wrote this on last thunderous Friday evening, a huge rainbow has appeared in the sky, I know there is a meteorological explanation, but the rainbow, the visible reminder of God’s constancy through all the storms of life from Noah till today and beyond, brings fresh comfort each time it appears.
Something of that constancy I see in the Ripley sheep cup, buried in that Lincolnshire back garden during the war for safe keeping, never to be sold not even when the family were in direst poverty, a solid silver cup, but prized for a value beyond money.
The last George in our family was my Uncle Andrew who will have died a year ago this Friday. But we still have the sheep cup of which Uncle Andrew like the rest of the family remained incredibly proud, for what it says of family, care and constancy down the ages
When we think on this morning’s passage Jesus speaks of that care and constancy to be found in a Good Shepherd.
“I am the Good Shepherd” he says.
What image is conjured by the word Shepherd?
Sun filled skies?
Neat green fields?
Fluffy lambs?
Perhaps a ruddy-faced shepherd in a smock, pipe in mouth, crook in hand, trusty black and white sheep dog moving amongst the flock alert to his master’s every command….?
Well actually on some days, in some places, that image may still hold true,
but there are shepherds and flocks on rocky outcrops in hot dry places all over the world, a bit like the Palestine of Jesus’ day.
And in New Zealand the shepherd is most likely to be found on a motorbike, with huge flocks roaming vast areas of land.

The life of the shepherd remains a physically demanding and at times incredibly dangerous one, the vulnerability of numerous sheep has not changed, wolves, sheep rustlers, dangerous terrain, disease,….. none of that has changed since the time of the Gospels.
I went online (as you do) and there are so many diseases to look out for in sheep!!
Footrot, Sore mouth, Scrapie or Wasting disease, Pneumonia, muscular dystrophy, Bacterial meningitis, Rabies, Tetanus, and Lamb Starvation. To name but a few.
Lamb starvation, the number one killer of lambs, is often is associated with a lack of shepherding.
It takes a good shepherd to be on the alert, ready and willing to defend their sheep against all comers.
In Biblical times the bucolic nostalgic image of that benevolent besmocked shepherd, beloved of Sunday evening costume drama, would have seemed bizarre.
For many at that time a shepherd was regarded as about as trustworthy as todays used car salesman, or should that be banker or politician.
Shepherds might either own their flock, be the longterm employee of the flock’s owner or short termers travelling from place to place picking up work where they could. There were good shepherds but there were also bad shepherds.
In v 12 when Jesus talks about the hired hand who sees the wolf coming and abandons the flock, he is perhaps thinking of those short term workers. The bad Shepherds. They are not in it for the long haul, they have no relationship with the sheep or the owner, theirs is not a lifelong commitment.
They are not the ‘Good’ Shepherd’.
Jesus says I am the Good shepherd.
‘I know my sheep and my sheep know me’, he says.

When you hear of something dreadful or wonderful happening, doesn’t that event take on a special meaning when you know someone involved, doesn’t it change the attention you pay to that event?
One of my best friends was awarded an OBE, I now always pay more attention to the announcements. I’ve seen the photos of her in her big hat meeting the queen and the daughter of communist parents, who were very proud!
I have another friend who was in Sri Lanka with her 2 young daughters when the Tsunami hit and barely escaped with their lives from their beach guest house. They were all traumatised. I watched events unfold with especial horror.

Jesus the Good Shepherd, knows his sheep intimately: as well as God the father knows him and he knows God the father.
There is no closer knowledge than that and that is how closely, Jesus knows all the corners of our hearts, all the events of our lives.
And that is how keenly interested in us, he is, how deeply connected to us he is.
(He is)The shepherd who cares so much for his flock, who is so alert to the dangers which may beset them, who loves that flock so dearly that he would die for them, for us.
Jesus is in it for the longest term with us, for eternity.
In John 5:24 he tells us
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

When he is the Good Shepherd of our lives no wolf can overcome us.

Jesus talks of having ‘other sheep’ who belong to him who must be brought into the same sheep pen as the first.
If we are the first sheep spoken of , who are these other sheep??
Well of course when Jesus was speaking to his disciples, they would have been the first sheep and we gentiles, non Jews across the globe, the other sheep.
Now as we listen to Jesus’ words in 2011, in a world where his message has reached our shores and our hearing, perhaps we also see ourselves as the first sheep, we who have heard the call to give our hearts and lives to Jesus,
And so perhaps we see the other sheep as those who have not yet given their lives to Christ ,
Or those who have no interest in giving their lives to Christ,
Who once did but have since wandered out of the pen
Or maybe those who feel they are not worth any shepherd bothering about their welfare..

We may have the comfort and encouragement of knowing that against the wolves that enter our lives we will be defended by the mightiest and most loving of shepherds,
yet beyond this comfort, if we are followers of Christ , then it is also his lead, his example that we must follow in the living of our lives.
If he is the Good Shepherd to all the sheep,
the we and the other,
then so must we be!

I was speaking at the Hay On Wye fringe festival – how the light gets in- last Saturday evening on the theme of altruism and charity.
One of the other panelists was a super smart, young very likable professor of Philisophy at the LSE. We were discussing the notion of the selfless deed and I spoke about the concept of a world family, for me out of a faith conviction that we are all God’s creation, therefore I would have a concern for my brothers and sisters globally. He argued that it is indeed a lovely idea, but was not convinced I meant it, since as a man of empirical evidence only, not faith, he argued that human beings really only care about kith and kin, family and friends but faraway people…? They are less likely to engage our interest or concern.
I can of course see why he would believe that and perhaps left to love the world as Jesus loves, under our own steam, that would be a much harder task,
but it is of huge encouragement and makes everything possible for us to attempt what Jesus asks of us,
when we remember on this Pentecost Sunday, that we are not required by Jesus to be Good Shepherds under our own steam at all!
We have the power of the Holy Spirit, the genuine power and inspiration left to us by Christ to support all our efforts.
Just as God the Father loves Jesus, just as Jesus loves we sheep,( loves us so much that he has willingly died to protect us from the wolfish conseqeunces of lives lived in the absence of God,) so we are called to love all of his sheep, those we consider in the pen with us and those we consider outside, for none of us are outside the love of Christ,
for all of us Jesus willingly died.

I come back to the comfort we have in knowing that we are defended by the mightiest of shepherds. Where we read at verses 17-18

GOOD NEWS:
“The Father loves me because I am willing to give up my life, in order that I may receive it back again. 18 No one takes my life away from me. I give it up of my own free will. I have the right to give it up, and I have the right to take it back. This is what my father has commanded me to do.”

NIV:
The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”
The outcome of the struggle between the Good Shepherd and the wolves that torment and threaten our lives is not in doubt, Jesus tells us he lays down his life, but he will take that life back. He is mightier than death. He does so willingly with the authority of the creator and in obedience to this creator Father God. That he lays down and takes up his life again is a manifestation of the power of the creator in whom we put our trust. That Jesus submits himself to the protracted agonies involved in laying down his life is the measure of his love for us and the measure of his understanding of how we suffer.
Our comfort is then in the deep power, deep love and deep understanding of our Shepherd, our defender, our protector and our guide. The one who walks the steepest mountain track of our lives alongside us.
Yet it is also our Shepherd who gives us the commission to continue his work.
In John 21:15-17 later in this Gospel at the last supper Jesus commands Peter

Take care of my lambs
Take care of my sheep.
Take care of my sheep.

(GNT)

NIV “Feed my lambs.”
“Take care of my sheep
“Feed my sheep

Eventually Peter takes up this commission, laying down his own life in Christ’s service and urges us, we read at
1 Peter 5:2
Good News Translation (GNT)
to be shepherds of the flock that God gave you and to take care of it willingly, as God wants you to, and not unwillingly.
1 Peter 5:2
New International Version (NIV)
Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be;
In our Good Shepherding we look to Jesus’ instruction, we look to his Holy Spirit for support and we look to the Kingdom of God as our goal for his world.
The American theologian Rob Bell writes about God’s Kingdom of Heaven in his book “Love Wins”:
‘Taking Heaven seriously, then,’ he says, ‘means taking suffering seriously, now….because we have great confidence that God has not abandoned human history and is actively at work within it, taking it somewhere. Around a billion people in the world today do not have access to clean water. People will have access to clean water in the age to come (‘Heaven’), and so working for clean-water access for all is participating in the life of the age to come. That’s what happens when the future is dragged into the present.’
As we think about how Jesus the Good Shepherd laid down his life, poured out his life for us, I would ask that we look into our hearts this morning…

Are we bringing Christ’s Gospel to his Sheep?
Are we bringing God’s Kingdom to his world?
Are we taking up the commission given us to take care of Christ’s sheep?
In our dark times do we remember that we are all worthy of the Good Shepherd’s care?
Are we using the strength and support available to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit?
Do we remember that the Good Shepherd laid down his life willingly,knowing he would take it up again, because there is no wolf in our lives more powerful to hurt us,
than the Good Shepherd is powerful to heal us.

Our commission is a demanding one - feed my sheep

Our defender is a mighty one - I am the Good Shepherd Christ tells us,
And the Outcome is a wonderful One because in Christ LOVE ALWAYS WINS.
Amen

Sermon 5th June 2011

2011-06-07T14:32:00.002+01:00

Today, Ben Hughes preaches, based on the reading from John 10 - verses 1-10.

Today’s passage is about sheep and Jesus being the door to the sheep pen. A sheep pen being where sheep are kept over night, usually covered over, nearly always a compound or fenced in area safe from thieves and wild animals.

Now I don’t want to be ‘woolly’ about my theology in this one , or ‘sheepish’ regarding our approach to the subject…hopefully you can ‘baaah’ some of the things that I might say…even though it might appear simply as mutton dressed as lamb, or dressed as a wolf in a sheep’s clothing, but the ‘shear’ weight of this parable and the way it ‘rams’ truth home never leaves us with a sense of being ‘fleeced’ and I am in ‘ewe’ of the story – this parable of Jesus the attendant of the sheep fold door and good shepherds John tells us is the ‘horn of plenty’ and carries ‘grazing truth’ of God’s love for us…

Ok enough of that…

It is probably very offensive to call people sheep!
Offensive to sheep as well!!

And it is an insult that’s been around some time. It is an ancient and historical insult.
There are ancient hieroglyphics alluding to the enemies of the pharaohs doing unmentionable things with sheep…but that is not our story…because this passage is not really about sheep. The passage is about Jesus’ authority as the son of God.

However before we look at that it might be useful to put this parable in the context of the general Biblical sheep metaphor because to do so helps us better understand the very important issues that we can learn from this passage today…

Sheep are very significant in the Bible, but most people think that they are simply used to illustrate our human collective cowardice, naive stupidity and neediness… but that is not the true and full picture. Sheep are used to describe our need for total dependence on God in everything and all we do, think and say. The simple sheep analogy puts God back to where He belongs in all our lives…as the number one commandment tells us: Honour your God with all your heart, soul and mind. Like a sheep without a shepherd is us without God.

So sheep are used throughout the Bible to illustrate human dependence on the Almighty. And there are many references to this within the Old Testament - which are very useful for a better understanding of who and what and why Jesus came. Isaiah, when he is calling back Israel to repentance, describes God’s people ‘as like sheep that have gone astray’…. Job pleads with the almighty for a once and for all sacrificial lamb that can permanently remove the suffering and groans of all creation…Psalm 23, the true shepherd’s psalm reflects …the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want he lays me down in pastures green and by still waters he leadeth me for thou art with me thy rod and thy staff…etc. and who is the Lord in the Psalm that David is referring to? It is the shepherd… I believe that it is the very same Lord that we know and love today…

But is it still fair then to describe us as sheep? We could easily say that being called sheep is not only an insult but irrelevant image for us today … most of us have very little to do with the dirt and muck of farming and industrial food production. Sheep are the cute like little white fluffy clouds.

You see, I like to think of myself as independent and a free thinking educated individual…I am no sheep, I need no sheep pen, do I really need a shepherd? I am an individual….I am the modern man, concrete is my earth, food comes in a plastic package…I wear sports acrylics!!! And, you might further say…fair enough, Jesus was relating this story to those in his day…an agrarian society not like ours. It is simply not relevant to me…sheep. Not today…

But that is not right…this story has enormous relevance for us in many ways, believer and non believer alike…and more so now than ever before perhaps… because of these same modern ideas of independence, and the modern acceptance of everyone’s view being of equal value…this story is really important as it is saying that there is only one way….Jesus!!

Jesus is very clear in this story…I am the attendant, I am the door, all those that do not and have not come through me…are thieves and bandits. And how do you know that? …you know because my sheep – you the Christian believer with faith - Jesus says, recognise my voice.

So what does it mean to be then a ‘Jesus sheep’?

Most importantly, as mentioned already….being a ‘Jesus sheep’ means being totally dependent on God. We as humans need looking after… like sheep we can be pretty mindless and certainly at times fearful and afraid. I know that I am…We do follow one another down ruts and paths and can do so, even to our own destruction. I know that I do…plenty of ruts and habits in my life…

Like sheep without a good shepherd, we can and do pollute our own fresh water supply if left without proper guidance. As habitual sinners, who can say that they are not full of tics and disease? So we need a good periodic washing and de-lousing. That is what happens when we repent….God is removing the impurities and containments that if left as in sheep, get worse and become fatal.

Like sheep we get distracted by our desire to feed…we cannot help ourselves and we get lost following our basic desires, forgetting where we are, following the devices and desires of our hearts the prayer book tells us, then suddenly we look up and its ‘where am I’…’what am I doing here’ ‘….help me God!!’. And then like all the wealth and possessions that we cling to and think that we need so much, a sheep’s fleece gets heavy and it weighs it down and if by unfortunate accident, a sheep in a heavy fleece falls into water, it will drown. Also a heavy fleece gets caught on fences and briars….ensnaring a sheep making it easy prey for bandits and wild beasts. Heavy fleece needs stripping back regularly.

And these thieves, bandits and wild beasts…what do they represent in the illustration?… I like to understand them as the three ‘T’ s temptation, trial and the terror of evil if you like. Like sheep, we have all gone astray as to each one his and her own way…then we are left vulnerable and alone… prey to forces more powerful than ourselves.

That is why we are like sheep and that is why we need the good shepherd.

But is there even more to this story than doors and shepherds?

Jesus is being quite funny with this story….he is being very cryptic and having a bit of a laugh at the expense of the poor old Pharisees. He is, in telling this story, doing a Samson and bringing down the whole crumbling edifice of pharisaic religious law crashing down…and whilst doing so, Jesus is packing this metaphor of him being the door and good shepherd with enormous and significant theology about His own claims and his divine purpose.

This passage is a direct move on everything that the Pharisees taught and stood for….That is why it is very useful for us….especially if we are involved in evangelism and wanting to set a good Christian example to others.

Jesus is saying to the sanctimonious and elitist Pharisee …‘no more of this!’ No more complex rules and complex laws…no more temple, temple sacrifice, temple taxes, infinite debate of tiny aspects and ruminations regarding the rights and wrongs of levitical law. No more showing off and demonstrating holiness in front of others…no more long faced fasting…po – faced prayers…no more pious giving, be like the widow, or the forgiven whore, the broken innkeeper, the repentant tax payer, the failed fishermen, be real to me and real to yourself…enough of the farce, the fake faces…’stop it do you hear stop it now!’ …’your game is up’ Jesus shouts!…and his message is that simple to them and to us…….I am the good shepherd, I am the door, I now manage the transaction between God and mankind…I know who should come in and who should not, I am the keeper, the watcher, the counter, the lover, the judge, the protector, I am the good shepherd, I am the way the truth and the light, I am your temple itself, I am the door into eternal life…I am your sacrifice, your king, Lord, ruler and friend next door, I am your true neighbour, the bread of life. I am the one and only, I am the shepherd…

Your job…you scribe, Priest and Pharisee is over. From now onwards it all goes through and by me and if it doesn’t come through me…it is – like lies and deceit. Nobody enters unless it is through me…all else is like a thief. I walk on water…I command the wind and the waves…I have evil and chaos under my feet.

And woe betide anyone or anything that attempts to go around me…so be careful how you conduct yourselves…if you know my voice, you are one with me…if not you are a thief and bandit.

And as with all Jesus parables, all the sayings and ‘I ams’ …they are multi layered, deeply systematic and so they keep going on and on - delving deep into the Old Testament and into the very beginnings of creation. Before Abraham I am, in my opinion the most seminal ‘I am’ of them all…. John’s Gospel chapter 8 verse 57. And the ‘I ams’ also work the other way- through forward time as well, on into our modern world and into the lives and hearts of all men and women, they challenge us and are so relevant today. That is why the words of Jesus will never go away…because they are the very words of God sown at the very beginning of time. And Jesus tells us that he is the good shepherd at the door of the sheep fold he is saying to those like you and me that have become his disciples and followers…that you can be in no better hands and no better care… and that is so reassuring.

Jesus the door to the sheep fold works for me on a very personal level as well because I am independent! …it helps me in my own walk with God…Jesus the good shepherd reassures me that I am alright…and God loves me for who and what I am…. the idea of Jesus heading up a search for the one lost sheep. That describes mine and many others calling and conversion. I also like the idea… that the outcast, the sheep that is different to all the others…the one that stands out, the black sheep of the family is the one that Jesus acknowledges and accepts…it helps me when I feel rejected by people and the world that Jesus does not reject any of us…and it reminds to do the same with others…never to reject anyone, especially those so different to us…. ….it also tells me to be reassured that nothing, no sin or terrible thing that anyone has done or will do is ever so bad. Jesus will forgive seven times seventy seven and we are expected to do the same …I also love the idea that Jesus knows his sheep by name…I know its hard to believe in a world of 6.92 billion people, but everyone is known intimately by God, no favourites, everyone equal all loved for who they are. And I love the fact that sheep is both plural and singular…we are one with one another…part of a world wide flock!

And Jesus knows his flock intimately, he knows us by name, each one being counted in and counted out. There is Ben, there is Mark, ok there goes Cameron, Dave, Claire, Esther, Rachel, Gary, Bernadette, Richard and so on he knows us by name and knew us in our mother’s womb. (Psalm 139), and I think its great that Jesus will defend us when we are attacked…we pray to be delivered from evil as in the Lord’s prayer….we often think nothing of it …but behind the scenes is a real battle going on, around and over us…Jesus is doing the business here and now….as his angels do all the time on our behalf…Jesus the door and the good shepherd works for me on every level.

Finally, I have this book called a shepherd looks at Psalm 23…a brilliant book. The refrain that he returns to throughout the book is very simple: when the shepherd is good, then so is the flock is good…the fences and fields are secure and the boundaries safe, the sheep are healthy and clean, the sheep feel safe and they know him and he them. When it is necessary, and the time is right, the good shepherd… leads his sheep along new paths to fresh still waters, to new pastures, the sheep know his voice and only trust that voice and so they follow him. The good shepherd prepares a path for us and will lead us to fresh pastures, even if it means going through the tough times, Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil for thou art with me they rod and thy staff they comfort me….and the good shepherd will lead us home safely…you can be assured despite all those terrible and frightening things that assail us on the way. Sheep, this shepherd concluded, when happy and safe, are carefree, fun loving, very amusing and very trusting…they are animals that are deeply loyal to one another and to their shepherd, and will follow their shepherd wherever he leads them.

I am very happy to be a ‘Jesus sheep’ - are you…

Dear Lord help us to live and know you more. Thank you for calling us, thank you that we have answered that call and know your voice…thank you for who you are. Bless us all…Amen.

Sermon 22nd May 2011

2011-05-23T09:28:00.002+01:00

Today, our Curate, Rev Gill Tayleur, preaches based on the Bible reading from John 8: verses 12-20

I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD

David received a parrot for his birthday. This parrot had a bad attitude and even worse vocabulary. Every other word was a swear word! David tried hard to change the bird and was constantly saying polite words, and playing soft music. But nothing worked. He yelled at the bird & the bird got worse. Finally, in a moment of desperation,
David put the parrot in the freezer. For a few moments he heard the bird squawking, kicking and screaming and then, suddenly, no more noise came from the cold darkness inside.
David was frightened he might actually have hurt the bird, & quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot calmly stepped out into the light, blinked and said, "I'm sorry that I offended you with my bad language. I ask for your forgiveness."
David was astounded and was about to ask what changed him,
when the parrot continued, "May I ask what the chicken in there did?"

There isn’t really a proper link between that joke and our text this morning, apart from the darkness of the freezer. But it made me laugh.

Jesus said,
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.”

What a thing to say! It sounds wonderful, light of the world,
and the light of life. But what does it mean?

These words of Jesus have a picture, a claim, a call & a promise.
The picture, the claim, the call and the promise are all enormous,
and we’re going to look at each 1 of them.

First the picture, or metaphor. The light of the world.

The greatest natural light we know, the light of the sun, is incredibly powerful. And it’s a source of life. What I mean is, without the sun,
there would be no life on our planet. The sun’s rays keep the earth at exactly the right temperature to sustain life as we know it. Any hotter would be too hot, any colder too cold. That’s why global warming
and depletion of the ozone layer are so worrying. And the sun gives life to plants in a very direct way. Most plants need sunlight on their leaves to make food, and die if put in a dark place. And plants provide food for the rest of the food chain, right up to us humans.

So light is a source of life.

Light is also a source of truth, the source of knowledge. It’s how we get information about the world around us. Without light we stumble around and bump into things, because we don’t know what’s there!
But with light, we do know what’s there, and we can behave accordingly. And we talk about ‘throwing light on’ a subject, because we know it’ll help us understand something better. So light is a source of knowledge, of truth.

And light is a source of joy. People who live at the north and south poles experience depression in the dark months, as do many people who suffer from SAD seasonal affective disorder. It’s medically known that without enough sunlight, some people get very depressed. And many of us find a light bright day, be it a hot one in summer, or a cold bright day in winter, brings a smile to our faces and lifts our spirits. So light is a source of life, of truth and of joy. That’s the picture.

Secondly the claim. Jesus said I AM the light of the world.

We heard from Cameron last week, about the significance of Jesus saying I AM. I AM were the words God used as his name, to Moses and his people in the Old Testament. I AM was such a special name,
that then, and now, Jewish people don’t write it down. They might write G_D.

Saying I AM in the way Jesus did, was a way of saying I’m God,
and it outraged the people to hear it. As Cameron said last week,
who did Jesus think he was?

In the Old Testament, there are many places where God himself is described as a light to his people. David said in the Psalms,
“The Lord is my light and my salvation”, and he prays, “let the light of your face shine upon us O Lord.” The prophet Micah declares,
“Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.” And Isaiah prophesies the coming of the Lord with the words, “the Lord will be
your everlasting light.”

But there’s more that we need to understand, to grasp the enormity of this claim to be the light of the world. Let’s look at the context.
Back in chapter 7 of John, v 37, it says that this scene took place
at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. The feast of tabernacles
was a national 7 day holiday, which remembered the time the Israelites spent 40 years in the desert after being freed from Egypt.
In those years in the desert, God gave them something to follow,
as they travelled around. In the day they had a great pillar of cloud, and at night a pillar of fire, which went in front of the people
as they journeyed through the desert. The pillar of cloud, and of fire at night, showed God’s presence with them, his protection of them
and his guidance, literally leading the way. They followed it.

So, at the Feast of Tabernacles, as part of the celebration, to remember the pillar of fire, there were 4 enormous candelabras of candles, in the temple area where offerings were given. These huge candelabras blazed so brightly that they lit up the whole temple and beyond. And at the end of the feast, they were put out. At that point, many of the people must have felt very keenly, the fact that they no longer had God’s presence in quite the same way his people had in the past.

And it’s right then, at the end of the feast,
right there where the blazing candelabras had been put out, that Jesus stands up and said, I AM... the light of the world!!! Not I’m the light of the temple, or the light of the Jews, but I am the light of the world!

It’s as though he said, you have seen the blaze of these temple candelabras flooding the night with light. Well I’m the light of the world, not just for the festival but for all people for all their life. The lights in the temple make a brilliant light, but in the end they’re put out. I am the light which lasts forever!

What a claim! It led to an argument with the Pharisees about whether Jesus had the right to make any claim at all about who he was. They argued about who his witnesses might be and who could testify to support his claims. And Jesus makes more claims to be
sent from his father God.

These claims are so enormous, so outrageous to them, that John implies it’s surprising no-one grabbed him to kill him, v 20. Not yet they don’t.

So Jesus used a picture, light, and makes an enormous claim. I am the light of the world. How are we to respond to such a claim?

Along with the claim, Jesus made a call. A call to follow. “Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.”

Jesus calls people to follow him. All people, everywhere. WHOEVER follows me. Whoever you are, whatever your background, whatever your age. Whoever follows me. This applies to all of us.

So what does it mean to follow Jesus?

The Greek word John usesd for follow here, in whoever follows me, is akolouthein, and it’s found used in 5 ways:

It’s used of a soldier following their captain. Following their captain on long route marches, following into battle, following in campaigns in strange lands. A soldier follows wherever their captain leads, and Jesus is calling us to follow him as our commander, going where he says, doing what he says, living how he says.

Then this word for follow is used about a slave following their master,
doing whatever is required, at the master’s beck and call. Jesus calls us to serve him like a slave, willingly, joyfully. We can do so, knowing he’s the best master we possibly could have, because he loves us so much!

Next this word for follow means following the advice of someone wise. It’s accepting an expert’s opinion, and following their guidance. Jesus calls us to follow him because he is the ultimate expert and guide for life.

Then this word for follow is used for following the laws of a city or nation. Jesus calls us to follow the laws of the kingdom of God,
that is to live his way, under his kingly rule.

Finally this word for follow, is used to follow an argument or line of teaching. Jesus calls us to listen, understand, remember, hear and obey what he says.

Those are some of the ways that word follow is used, and they’re some of the ways we are called to follow Jesus. Whoever follows me – will have the light of life! That’s the promise.

With the call, comes a Promise. Jesus said, Whoever follows me, will have the light of life. You and I can have the light of life!

Like the pillar of fire in the desert, we can have God’s presence with us, his protection, and his guidance for our lives.

We thought earlier about how light is the source of life, truth and joy.
And Jesus brings us life, truth and joy when we follow him.

On another occasion (in John 10, we’ll look at in 2 weeks time) Jesus said he came that we might have life to the full. We have life to the full when we follow Jesus, because we’re living life as God intends, living with meaning and purpose. Our recent series on the book the Purpose Driven Life explored the whys and hows of living for the purpose we were designed for. Planned for God’s pleasure, to worship him, formed for his family the church, created to become like Christ, shaped for serving God and made for a mission.
Following Jesus we can have a purpose driven life, living life to the full, both here and now, and for all eternity. When we follow Jesus, we have real life!

Then when we follow Jesus, he shows us truth. If we want to know what God is like, why he has made us and what life is all about, we can look to Jesus. God has shown us what he’s like, by sending his son Jesus to come and show us, in what he did and what he said.
And here’s the record of it! When we follow Jesus, we discover the truth about God and about life.

And when we follow Jesus, we know his joy. Jesus promised his followers joy, the joy that comes from living life as God intends. Joy that’s not dependent on circumstances, like happiness is, because many sad and painful things happen to us in life. No, the joy Jesus gives is deeper than that, and comes from knowing that we are following him, and from knowing his presence with us, whatever we go through in life. Knowing how much he loves us! There is no greater joy than comes from following Jesus and living his way.

So following Jesus is the way to know real life, life in all its fullness.
It’s the way to know the truth about God, and to know his joy.

And when we do so, as his followers, we then reflect the light that comes from him,
the light of life, to the world around us.
In Matthew 5 Jesus said
“you are the light of the world...
let your light so shine before others,
that they will see your good works
and praise your father in heaven.” We follow Jesus, the light of life,
and as we do so, we reflect that light into the world. Living God’s way, we love as he does, we put others first, we are generous and kind and patient and self controlled. We spread the light of Jesus
by our words and our actions.

So the question is, do we want to go our own way, or follow Jesus, the light of the world?

When we walk alone, going our own way, we’re bound to stumble and fall, because so many of life’s problems are beyond our solution.
When we walk alone, in the dark, we’re bound to take a wrong turning because we can’t see where we’re going. But when we follow Jesus, following him as our commander, our loving master, our wise expert, our king and our teacher – then he has promised, that we’ll know fullness of life! We’ll know the truth! And we’ll know real joy!

The picture, the claim, the call and the promise – they add up to a wonderful invitation: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.”

Do you want to stumble through life in the dark? Or do you want the light of life? Then let’s follow Jesus!

And now let’s pray...
Jesus, light of the world, we thank and praise you for calling us to follow you, and for your promise that you’re with us, even closer than the pillar of fire in the desert. May we follow you faithfully, in every way that you call us. In your name, amen.

Sermon 15th May 2011

2011-05-16T13:25:00.001+01:00

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from John 6 verses 35-43 and 48-51

“Who do you think you are, then?” If you have ever had that question put to you directly, you will know how it can feel. Depending on where the emphasis is put, it is anything from demeaning to argumentative through confrontational to downright aggressive – or worse. There is nothing positive about being asked, “Who do you think you are?”, though – as I too know from personal experience. But there is a way in which that same question can be raised in an even less positive way: “Who does s/he think they are, then?” And that's exactly the way we hear that question put in today's reading from John chapter 6!

Who does he think he is, then? “Isn't this man Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” That's how the religious leaders grumbled to each other, in verse 42 of this story. By this stage they had already heard, and seen more than enough. They were quite rightly outraged by it – just not enough to put the question quite so rudely to Jesus' face; or not yet, anyway. But what he had said, and done by this stage (and that was even before they had heard the shocking nature of what he was about to claim); who did he think he was!

Now, this is all new, to all of us. We're jumping straight in today, landing here in the middle of chapter 6. Not only is the story well under way already. It's also the story as it's told in what is the most notoriously challenging gospel to grasp. Of the four biblical accounts that we have of Jesus' earthly life, death, and resurrection, John's is the most foreign to us. It's best put in terms of John thinking and writing in a circular fashion rather than a linear one. John didn't begin at the beginning, with Jesus' birth, and then go through the key events of his life and work until his death, followed by his resurrection, and then end neatly with his return to heaven.

No, John dipped in and out, exploring in depth, from different angles, themes and ideas that emerged from the story of Jesus. That was far from random, though. John had the bigger picture in mind, right from the beginning. He deliberately started with his own theological development from the story of creation, with how Jesus fitted into God's eternal plan. And John made no secret of what he did, or of why. As any good reporter would, just like the other gospel writers, he chose his material carefully. He wanted people to come to accept that Jesus is the Son of God, to believe in him, and through that to have this eternal life that Jesus came to bring. And we know that's what John wanted to do, because he said so (in 20:31).

That was, and is, fully consistent with what God Himself wants – as we've heard Jesus also say here, in verse 40. “What the Father wants is that all who see the Son and believe in him should have eternal life”. So John wrote his gospel with that as his main aim. Those who study John must keep his intent very much in mind, then. Adults here will be studying this book, right through to the summer. We'll be doing so in a rather John-like way too. Instead of going through a section of it one part at a time, we're picking out a particular theme. Like 90% of what's in John, this is a theme that we won't find spelled out in any other gospel – but it's still a really important one for us to grasp. Apart from anything else, it makes clear Jesus' own answers to the more polite version of that question: “Who are you?”

Of course these are answers to that question being taken seriously. It does need to be taken that way too. It comes up time and again, in all 4 gospels, in the mouths of any number of different people who had encountered Jesus. More than that, the Bible says that one day we will each have to answer it for ourselves. Eternity hinges not just on what we say in response to the question about who Jesus, but on what we truly believe. Is he the unique Son of God, who died and rose again for us? In the language of this passage, is Jesus the one who can feed us with the sort bread that will sustain life for ever? Or is he not? What do you say?

We don't have to answer that right now – though hopefully many of us could do so. The plan is to take some time to look at the answers to this question that we find in John. Amongst other things, this series will help us to hear what Jesus has to say about himself. This is one of the many features that John is famous for – how Jesus made 7 key claims about who he is. Of course those were usually phrased in the language of first-Century Palestine. None of them take too much unpacking to make just as much sense today, though. Bread certainly doesn't; or is it just in my house that the only question is how many loaves to buy?!

Before we get to this claim of Jesus in more detail, it may help to look back briefly. We spent the first part of this year on what became our Lent book, The Purpose Driven Life. We said at the end that we'll carry on living on purpose, for God. So, just to be clear, this new series links into our life-purpose of being Created to become like Christ. Its purpose is to help us to understand more fully who Jesus is, and then how we can become more like him ourselves. To state the obvious, of course there are ways we can't, and won't, ever become like him. In those places we can understand better who he is, though, and what he came to do; and how to tell others that.

So there's our purpose, to keep in mind along with John's. To all of which there is one more important introductory point to add. It relates to the nature of the theme that we have picked out for this series. These are known as the “I AM” sayings of Jesus, because that's how they each begin. Jesus said: “I AM ... the bread of life” being today's specific topic. That may not sound like much of an issue in such a me-shaped society. We're used to people talking about themselves: “I ... ; I am ... ; I will ...” – we all do it, lots! But there was something very significant about Jesus applying that phrase in particular to himself, in the way that he did, at the time, and in the place that he did.

We need to realise that for any Jew, then or now, this was significant in a deeply offensive, blasphemous way. “I AM” was the name of God as He had revealed it to Moses. For Jesus – or anyone else – to take it for themselves in this way, in that culture, was to be saying that they were God; and that never goes down well! The trouble in this instance was that this large crowd, including the religious leaders, had followed Jesus to find out more about what had just happened. Of course his words, said here three times, “I AM the bread of life”, hadn't come out of the blue. Chapter 6 opens with the familiar story, of Jesus, up a mountain in the middle of nowhere, feeding a crowd of at least 5 000, with hardly any food.

It's the only miracle story that all 4 gospel have in common, and the detail in them is almost identical. But it's not the kind of thing that we expect from those claiming to be God. So it's no surprise that those who had witnessed it started to ask who Jesus is, then! There's plenty to the conversation that then ensued – which we were never going to have time for today. In fact we don't even have time now for a proper look at the edited highlights of that conversation. But I'm sure that you have already got enough to take away with you to ponder further through the rest of this week. That's the kind of thing that John inspires in many people, wanting to go and look from a few other angles at the issues that he raises!

I'm sure too that you haven't missed the main point of this amazing claim. Jesus is saying that what he does, here by feeding all these people, isn't the main point – much less the end of the matter. Him then saying, “I AM the bread of life”, extends his purpose so much broader, and deeper. Bread here is more than 'just' the staple food that keeps us alive day by day. The Hebrew people had that too, bread from heaven that kept them alive in the desert. But this is more than that: when it comes from Jesus, this is the kind of food that is able to feed us so that we won't ever die.

John intends us to see that this is God, Jesus, speaking eternal life into being – in the same way that He spoke, and made the world! As this passage ends, Jesus was crystal clear about exactly what that would mean for him. This bread, that gives those who believe in him eternal life, is his body, which he will give for that exact purpose. This has been God's plan since before the world was made. It's a plan that Father and the Son work together with the Spirit to bring about, and to make real in life-changing ways – for whoever accepts it.

This is the first “I AM” saying in John. But we couldn't pick a better starting place for this series if we tried. What is to follow will pick up so much of what we have begun to see today. Jesus is the source of life, and the one who keeps it going eternally. His words have power to change reality in ways that we can scarcely believe. These are words, and deeds that can change our reality – now and for ever. Isn't it worth taking time to find answers to who he is, and what that means, then? Let's pray ...

Sermon 8th May 2011

2011-05-10T11:19:00.004+01:00

This Sunday, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, delivers a shortened sermon - due to the fact that today is our Annual General Meeting here at St. Paul's. He preaches, based on the reading from Hebrews 10 verses 19-25.

It is only just after Easter; but fast-forward in your mind if you can – to Christmas. Picture a happy family gathered round the tree, opening presents. For his younger son, the proud father has got an iPod; for his daughter, he has bought an iPhone; for his older son, he has splashed out on iPad. Domestic bliss is ruptured when his wife opens her present – to find an iRon!

I want to say that today's joke has nothing to do with the short sermon that follows. But then I realise that it perhaps does, after all. It may be that the point of it is this: none of us, no matter what our age, our gender, our standing in the family, or anything else, receive anything other than the very best that God can give. Because of Jesus, and his death for us we are invited to enter into the Holy of Holies, the inner throne room of heaven – with confidence! Wow!! What a place to be; what a standing to have; what a privilege to have been given, for free. And all 'just' because God loves us, and so has himself paid the price for us to come in!

Today is a 1-off; it's a transition, from Easter to life beyond, with our AGMs added into the mix too. But it's still worth saying that this is where the application begins in this letter. Up to this point, it has been ground-work. Here's where we begin to grasp what it really means, that Jesus is who he is, and has done what he has. And there could be no better launching-pad than that. For both reviewing the year that's behind, and setting the agenda for the year ahead, where else could we want to look? Where else other than to this amazing privilege that we now have, because of Jesus' death?

This really is the best context for us to do our necessary task in. Each year at this time we are challenged to work out again what it means for us to be God's Easter people. How do we live in the light of this story that we rightly re-tell year in and year out? For all good Anglicans, the church annual meetings are never far behind Easter. So we have this ready-made framework. It invites us to ask questions about our past year of being God's Easter people; and to resolve how we will be that in the year ahead. But do note how both hinge on us being God's Easter people. How we lived last year, and how we will live out this one, depend on us being those for whom all things have changed, for all time.

Yes, we are those for whom all things have now changed, because of Jesus' death at Easter. But I believe that God's message to us for the year ahead is mostly about Him wanting us to carry on as we have been! That's not a secret, as anyone who's seen the programme card knows. Today's heading, based on these words from Hebrews, is a call to persevere – to keep on keeping on. As we look forward, let us indeed then “Consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds”, as it's phrased here.

Doing that won't be anything new, it must be said. Spurring one another on toward love and good deeds is something we had plenty of practice of in the last year. Now, strange as it may seem, we are looking back today to see how we did that, and more, in the calender year of 2010. That was quite a year, for some of us personally, and for all of us corporately. It was another year when we had to depend on God, and grew in faith and trust and hope, in ways that we couldn't possibly have foreseen. And we did both depend on God and grow in 2010 – not least because He who promised is faithful.

As usual, by the time we get here, we are already well into the year that we are looking ahead to. That doesn't matter much – because part of what we're doing today is 'only' affirming the course that we are already on in this new year. In that sense, this is simply a health-check; but it is a well-timed one, coming this soon after Easter. So it's worth us thinking about how confident we really are about entering the Most Holy place. We know that can do that, because of Jesus: but do we? How confidently? And how sincere are our hearts if and when we do so; not just today but every day? And then, how unswervingly are we holding onto the hope that we profess? How much are we trusting in God's faithfulness – and, in particular, in how He keeps His promises?

These are all questions that we can, and should, be asking ourselves today, and as we go on from here. Looking back at the past year, in this Easter context, should encourage us in every way that we need. It reminds us first and foremost of what God has done – and that it truly all depends on Him. We couldn't ever do any of this for ourselves; but He has done it for us, and now invites us in. 'All' we have to do is to respond, in faith and hope and trust: and then we do have to persevere, to carry on as we are!

So, there is the challenge, and the encouragement for today – looking both forwards, and backwards. As we look back, let's see what God has done, and praise Him for it. That's not 'just' for the good news of Easter, but also for all that we saw and experienced for ourselves in 2010. And as we look forward, let's do so with confidence in what God has done, and in what that means. Let's enter His throne room with confidence; drawing near with sincere hearts; holding unswervingly to the hope we profess; trusting in God's faithfulness; and spurring one another one to love and good deeds, day in and week out; in and for Him. And so let's pray ...

Sermon 10th April 2011

2011-04-12T22:11:00.000+01:00

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, continues our Lent study of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. The Bible reading focus is Acts 1: 1-8.

"The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to make us more like the Son of God.”

“Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.”

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it's thinking of yourself less”.

“Trouble is inevitable; misery is optional.”

“What you are is God's gift to you; what you do with yourself is your gift to God.”

“Life is like photography: we use the negatives to develop.”

“You can make more money, but you can't make more time.”

“The truth WILL set you free – but first it may make you miserable.”

“Some drink from the fountain of knowledge. Others just rinse and spit.”

“People usually need your love the most when they deserve it the least.”

“Live so the Vicar won't have to tell lies at your funeral”.

“You'll notice that a tortoise only makes progress when it sticks its neck out.”

“Your behaviour is what you believe; all the rest is just talk.”

“When you get to your wit's end, you'll find that God lives there.”

“What was the best thing before sliced bread?”

At least some of those great one-liners should be familiar to at least some of you from this Lent. Others of them won't be, because they come from a variety of sources. But they (almost!) all communicate something of the essence of our learning from the start of this year. That's when we first began to talk about this helpful, challenging, and imperfect book, The Purpose Driven Life. Today marks the end of our second time through its section headings on Sundays. But it's not the end of our learning from it – we hope! Many of us will still be reading a chapter of it a day, right through to Holy Saturday. And of course the plan was, and is, for this to go on shaping who we are, what we do, and how we do it – as people, and as a church – for the rest of our lives!

I realise that's a big claim. But what we have had is a chance to ask fundamental questions, about what we believe and how we then live that out. There are times in everyone's life when we need to do an exercise like this. We decided that it was high time in our corporate church life for us to do that together – and I, for one, am so glad that we have. It may not be 100% the case that now our stress is reduced, our decisions are simplified, and our satisfaction has been increased – as the author, Rick Warren, boldly claimed in his introduction! But how many more of us are better prepared for eternity now than we were before? And even if that alone is the case, then it has been worth doing – to fit us for home.

After all, “life is a temporary assignment” – to slip in another of the book's one-liners. But, having said that, I'm then not even going to try to sum up this series today! As there is more material under every heading than 2 full sermons on each of them have covered, that wouldn't be possible to do anyway. Even so, probably the best note to end on is with a personal challenge: so what has God been saying to you this year, then?

If you are not instantly sure of God's message to you, then it's probably the part that is making you squirm the most! So: is that about how you have been Planned for God's pleasure, maybe? Or the fact that you have been Formed for his family? It's just as likely to be that you have been Created to become like Christ too. Another alternative is knowing that God wants you to accept how you have been Shaped to serve him. Let's not forget today's title heading either: that you have been Made for mission! Or is it ALL of these Godly purposes for your life, perhaps? If so, then it's time to recall that “you were born BY his purpose FOR his purpose”. “It's not about you”, remember: “it's all for Him!”

Sticking with the one-liners, “Blessed are the balanced” is then a particularly good note to end this series on. One of the key facts that we have learned, and been challenged by, is how God has more than 1 purpose for our lives. We all need to factor in, and live out, EACH of these 5 purposes if we are to be the people who God has made us to be. There are some of them – or even some parts of some of them – that we will each feel particularly passionate about. That's why we need each other – and all of us – in the church, of course! It's together that we make up the people, or body, of Christ. We need all of us, working together, to be the church that God wants us to be, doing what He wants us to do; and of course that means you too! God made this church for you, just as much as he made you for this church right now.

Now of course it would be easy to pass over this final part of God's purpose for our lives. It is true to say that in some ways it is the hardest, and most risky, aspect of what God has made us for. It's also potentially the most joyous one, though – if we remember that there is a party in heaven every time someone becomes a Christian! Not only can each of us play our part in heavenly party-making; we must do so! As we saw on this purpose first time through, Jesus' crucial parting words to his disciples were about this mission that he had made them for. We heard Jesus' sending words from Matthew 28 – and noted how they appear in all four gospels, in some form or other.

That same message has now also been reinforced by today's reading, from Acts. Jesus' final act before his ascension was to send his disciples out – into their community, their country, into other cultures and nations as well. That's not meant to be a progression, so much as all happening at the same time. All people everywhere need to hear the good news about Jesus as quickly, and as often, as possible. It is a matter of life or death, the Bible says. And if we believe that then we must live it! Otherwise we are literally saying to people that they can go to hell, for all we care. And that's the exact opposite of what God has done for all of us in his Son. He came to seek, and to save, the lost: us!

As we are preparing to commemorate and celebrate at Easter, Jesus died so we don't have to. None of us belongs here by right; not one of us deserves to be here. We are where, and who, we are only because of God's love and His grace – because Jesus died for us. Yes, Rick Warren keeps on stating this throughout his book; and that may be partly what some of us haven't liked about it. But we can't deny that he is absolutely right about it! Nor can we deny that this is the 1 of our 5 Godly purposes that we can live out in this life only. There is real urgency to the mission that we have been made for, then.

I am aware that because of the way that the timings have worked out, lots of us won't have got to this section of the book yet. You're in for a real treat, then – yes, and for plenty of challenge beside! As I said last time, there are many practical suggestions in these pages for us all to consider. I'd be delighted to have conversations with anyone who is inspired to go on a missionary trip as a result – whether it is near or far! It has become clear that we are not currently a church that's filled with evangelists. But mission is one of the purposes for which God has made us, personally and collectively – and that again means you! So don't feel that you have to wait: come along to Alpha next month; bring a friend, a spouse, a neighbour – or perhaps even a stranger! If you have someone in mind, take the risk, and invite them!

Something else that I highlighted on this purpose last time is worth saying again this time. We are 'only' called to be witnesses to what Jesus has done, and is doing, in our lives. In court 'all' a witness does is to tell what they know, or have heard, or seen. We are not meant to be experts, or lawyers proving the case beyond reasonable doubt. Mind you, having said that, the Greek word for 'witness' is the word from which we also get 'martyr'! Times are different for most of us now, but in the church's early days – as is the case in some parts of the world today – people risked their own lives by being witnesses for Jesus. No matter what the cost of it is though, this is God's purpose for us all. Another of Rick Warren's one-liners is that “Jesus calls us not only to come to him, but to go for him” – and that means you too!

As we do come to the end of this series in church today, there could be no better point that this to end on. Again it's quoting Rick Warren, this time quoting Jesus – which he has done quite a lot of, I hope you've noticed! In the Message version, John 13:17 reads: “If you understand what I'm telling you, act like it”. There really will have been no point in you having read this book unless it changes how you live the rest of your life. You have however long the rest of your life is to get ready for eternity with God. How better could you prepare for that than by spending it living out these 5 purposes that God has made you for? So go on, ask yourself: how will you live: for God's pleasure; as a member of his family; becoming like his son; serving his church; and furthering his mission? What does that look like: at home; at work; in your leisure; in every way? “God's truth transforms us” – or it does if we choose to let it: so will you? Let's pray ...

Sermon 3rd April 2011

2011-04-12T22:02:00.002+01:00

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our Lent study of Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life.

Shaped for Service
(Purpose Driven Life)
A Children’s Church leader (not in our church!) was discussing the Ten Commandments with a group of five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honour" their father and mother," the leader asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without skipping a beat one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill."

Today’s ‘purpose’, the fourth purpose in ‘The Purpose Driven Life’, is ‘Shaped for Service’, and I think it’s closely linked to the second purpose, ‘Formed for God’s family.’ As Gill explained a couple of weeks ago, when we become other Christians become our brothers and sisters; the church becomes our spiritual family. And family relationships can be very tricky; loving, yes, but also very awkward at times. Sibling rivalry in particular, going back to Cain and Abel, can be very intense.

One way of building up relationships is to adopt an attitude of service, to be willing to serve each other. If we are willing to serve each other and genuinely recognise each other’s needs, we can become more like the loving family that God intends us to be.

That makes service sound very inward looking, but it isn’t. We are also God’s servants in the world.

St Teresa of Avila wrote:
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion
is to look out to the earth,
yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good
and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.”

It is through Christians, that is through people like you and me, that Christ’s love is shown to the world. God has called us to serve the world.

Now if you’ve already read ahead to Purpose No 4 in the book, you may have noticed that the actual wording of the purpose is, “You were shaped for serving God.” And what I’ve been talking about so far is serving each other and the world. But it is through serving each other and the world around us that we serve God.

The idea of being a servant now seems very out of date. When I hear the word, I think of TV series like Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs. The wealthy lords and ladies lived in their splendour, with dozens of servants pandering to their every whim. If the servant was lucky, he or she would have had a kind master or mistress who treated them well, but in a very paternalistic way. Another image is that of servants in the old colonial days or apartheid South Africa serving their white masters. The relationship was very one sided; all the power was with the master, and the servant had none. The servant was totally at the beck and call of his master.

On the other hand servanthood in the church is very different. As Christians, we have a lord and master, Jesus. But Jesus is a servant lord, the Servant Lord. There is only one occasion in the Bible where Jesus referred to himself as Lord, and that was the time when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. We commemorate the occasion on Maundy Thursday, in just under three weeks’ time. In the middle of a meal with his followers, Jesus stripped himself, wrapped a towel around his waist, got on his knees and washed his disciples’ feet.

Jesus’ action in doing this was very pointed. Foot-washing was not primarily a ceremonial custom. It was practically important because people walked in sandals through dusty, muddy and smelly streets. People’s feet got very dirty. Not surprisingly, washing someone else's feet was thought to be a lowly task, left to the household servants in those households which had servants. But Jesus and his disciples wouldn’t have had servants. His followers would have shared among each other the jobs that servants in wealthier households would have done. For some reason or other, not one disciple accepted the duty of washing feet that evening. Perhaps they were in such a state of competitive pride that none of them were willing to do it; after all it was not that long ago that they had been arguing amongst themselves who was the greatest. Jesus' disciples weren’t going to perform this task, so Jesus did.

When Jesus reached Peter, Peter protested, “You shall never wash my feet.” I suspect he was embarrassed, seeing Jesus kneeling in front of him when misplaced pride had prevented Peter and the other disciples from washing the feet. Jesus insisted; Peter had to put aside his misplaced pride.

After washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus returned to his place. And he reinforced his point by saying, “Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord’, and rightly so, for that is what I am.” It is the only time in the Gospels that he calls himself ‘Lord’; as the disciples have just seen him wash their feet, he can tell them this without risking that they will get the nature of his Lordship wrong, for Jesus is a servant Lord, the Servant Lord. And Jesus can tell those who were so unwilling to serve each other that they too must be servants. If Jesus, their Lord, can wash grubby feet, so can they. “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.”

Jesus, the Servant Lord. He sets the example for us. Yes, our Servant Lord calls us to serve. But how?

In our reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul lists several spiritual gifts, such as messages of wisdom and knowledge, faith, healing and tongues. This isn’t the only list of spiritual gifts that Paul provides. There are a couple of other lists (in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4) that include other things, such as teacher, encouragement, giving, leadership, administrator, evangelist and pastor. Paul lists 21 in all, and I suspect his list wasn’t meant to be exhaustive. It’s a very wide ranging list, ranging from the extra-ordinary to what many would regard, incorrectly, as very ordinary. And in working out how we can serve, Rick Warren suggests we start with spiritual gifts.

He’s come up with the acrostic SHAPE which stands for:
• Spiritual Gifts
• Heart
• Abilities
• Personality
• Experiences
So let’s look at each of them in turn, starting with ‘Spiritual Gifts’.

Spiritual gifts are the set of special abilities that God has given us to serve him. All Christians have spiritual gifts, but no individual Christian has all of them. We all have spiritual gifts, but they’re spread amongst us. For that reason we need each other. We all have gifts to contribute, and no single person can do everything on their own. So it’s important to find out what our spiritual gifts are, so we can play our part in the church family.

And secondly there is ‘Heart’, the special passions God has given us. There are some things we feel passionate about, and there are others, which may be equally important, that we don’t. We can’t feel passionate about everything, so it makes sense to concentrate our energies on those areas that we are passionate about. If trade justice is your passion, then Traidcraft may be just up your street. If evangelism is your passion, then encouraging people to do Alpha is one way to fulfil your passion. And if you have a heart for prisoners, why not think about joining the team that visits Brixton prison? As Rick Warren puts it; “Figure out what you love to do – what God gave you a heart to do – and then do it for his glory.”

And the third part of SHAPE is ‘Abilities’, the natural talents that we were born with. Now I must admit to a being a bit unsure about the difference between spiritual gifts and natural abilities. Some spiritual gifts do clearly go beyond natural abilities, for example miracles and speaking in tongues; others seem, in human terms at least, to be very much the same, such as administration and teaching. Looking at the different translations of our passage from 1 Corinthians 12 itself, there does seem to be some overlap. Both the NIV, which we use here at St Paul’s, and the GNB, which we use at St Saviour’s, start by referring to gifts, the GNB to ‘gifts from the Holy Spirit’ and the NIV to ‘spiritual gifts’. But the GNB translates verse 6 as, “There are different abilities to perform service, but the same God gives ability to all for their particular service.” The distinction between spiritual gifts and natural abilities is a difficult one to draw, as they are both given by God.

James Jones, now the Bishop of Liverpool, suggests the following in his book¸ Servant. Talents are natural abilities. God gives them to Christians and non-believers alike. Spiritual gifts are given by God to Christians to build up the church. Spiritual gifts may chime in with natural abilities or not. A good teacher who isn’t a Christian has received a natural ability to teach from God, even if they don’t recognise it. But this gift is very different from the spiritual gift of teaching. It makes sense for a Christian who is a teacher to think if they should be a Children’s Church leader; they may also have the spiritual gift to teach about Jesus in a way that builds up the faith of young people. But that’s not an assumption we should make. After a week of teaching at school, God may call a hard-pressed teacher to serve in a different way.

On the other hand, you may feel that you don’t have a natural ability for a particular role in the church, such as a Children’s Church leader, but God can equip you for the task. Whatever the difference is, God does want us to use our natural abilities to serve him in the world. Some people are called into full-time ministry, but most of us spend the majority of our time on non-Church related activities, in our jobs or in looking after our families. When we serve God in the world, he wants us to use our natural abilities to the full.

The P in SHAPE stands for ‘Personality’. There are may different types of personalities; introverts and extraverts; people who like routine and those who like variety; some people work best on their own and others in teams. There is no right or wrong personality. But our personalities will affect how and where we use our gifts and abilities. We need to use them to serve God in a way that fits our personality, not someone else’s.

And finally the E in SHAPE stands for ‘Experiences’, those parts of our past, both positive and painful, which we can use to serve God better. Rick Warren suggests that it is painful experiences that God uses the most to prepare us for service. “Who could better minister to the parents of a child with Down’s syndrome than another couple who have had a child with the same condition?” he asks. He points out that St Paul had bouts of depression, and was honest about them. We can use our painful experiences to help others.

There are many ways we can serve God, each other and the world. But the starting point is to have the attitude of servanthood that Jesus, our Servant Lord, had when he washed his disciples’ feet. We all have different roles in the church. Some roles may seem more important or glamorous than others. Yet from God’s perspective this isn’t the case. Each role is valuable, and God wants us to carry out the tasks that he has assigned to us, not to compare ourselves to others.

I’ll finish with some more words from Rick Warren; “Imagine what could happen if just 10% of all Christians in the world got serious about their role as servants. Imagine all the good that could be done. Are you willing to be one of those people?”

Let’s pray: Heavenly Father. Thank you for the example of Jesus, our Servant Lord. May we be willing to follow in his path, serving each other and our community. Amen.

Sermon 27th March 2011

2011-03-23T23:21:00.004Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh Cunnell, preaches based on the reading from Romans 8:28-30

“We know that in all things God works for good with those who love him, those whom he has called according to his purpose.
Those whom God had already chosen he also set apart to become like his Son, so that the Son would be the eldest brother in a large family.
And so those whom God set apart he called: and those he called he put right with himself and he shared his glory with them.”Romans 8:28-30

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose.
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be firstborn among many brothers.
And those he predestined, he also called: those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
LEGO!!!!
OK so how do I factor being created to become like Christ into trying to find a work placement for a 15 year old, worrying about work, having to re sort a mess of the banks making that I thought was dealt with weeks ago, getting ungettable tickets for my mother in law’s birthday, running out of time to do everything, , worrying about work, supporting a loved one emotionally who lives thousands of miles away, helping with homework, getting people to DO homework, checking essays, walking the dog, worming the dog, going to Sainsbury’s , attending hospital appointments, did I mention worrying about work, returning friends’ phonecalls, emails , texts, discovering why the car engine is still leaking even after being ‘fixed’ weeks ago, repainting the house..ha ha, doing a thorough spring clean ha ha. You get the picture.

So I ask again where is growing in a Christlike way in this picture??
So that is my picture I am sure we all have our own variation on that picture.

How do we contend with all the day to day pulls and pushes of our lives while being mindful of the Christ centred lives we wish to lead as Christians?
How do we come to terms with the idea that we are created to become like Christ, what can we know or understand of the entire nature of our divine Lord made man?
IN the Bible alone.
We have words and actions reported by those who knew him, saw him, were inspired by his Holy Spirit.
We have the spreading of reports of what he did and said by those who were taught by him, rebuked by him, loved by him.
A whistle stop grabbing of examples in no particular order, is all we have time for now, although we will be looking at who Jesus tells us he is in scripture, in depth later in the year in our “I am” series. So..
We meet Jesus with the Samarian woman at the well, a disatisfied and devalued woman of multiple relationships. Jesus gives this despised woman his entire focus, the entire light of his love: the longest conversation between Jesus and someone else reported anywhere in scripture. We see Jesus spending time with the deranged , the unclean, the excluded, the despised.
We have Jesus angry at the market sellers in the temple, weeping over a friend’s death,
cooking breakfast for friends,
knowing that one of his friends had betrayed him,
We see Jesus being baptised,
Jesus wanting his friends to keep him company,
Jesus dreading what is to come, battling his fear,
…all human responses we can relate to.
And we also meet with the divine Jesus;
Jesus turning water into wine,
feeding thousands from a couple of fish and loaves, healing people, feeling power drain out of him from the slightest touch on his clothes from a woman in need of his healing,
casting out demons,
calming a raging storm,
walking on water,
raising people from the dead,
battling the devil,
dying and coming back to life…. overcoming death itself

The man and the divine is this where we begin to intersect, where we discover ourselves becoming like Christ.
Where we have Jesus spending time with the deranged , the unclean, the despised, the excluded, so can we spend time.
We can pray for his healing , his forgiveness.
Where we have Jesus teaching how to live a life that pleases God, Jesus praying and teaching prayer, we can continue to learn from his teaching in scripture, spread his teaching, pray his prayer.
We can call on the divine power of his Holy Spirit to touch our lives and the lives of those around the world.
Rick Warren says Obedience unlocks God’s power.
Loving Jesus is about obedience to his vision for our lives and a desire to grow spiritually into the person God created to become like Christ.

As many some of you will know this Thursday just gone I co hosted with another actor William Gaminara, a fundraising dinner for a South African Christian charity Learn To Earn. The parish of Herne Hill was also very much a part of the evening, Geraldine was our chef, Jonathan her sidekick, Jim our quiz creator, Adrian our quiz master, Daisy, Lily and El, waitressing, both church urns making coffee & tea and various family and friends guesting.
At the end of a very long happy evening, I drove Roche Van Wyck to Battersea, home to the friends he’s staying with.
Roche is the director of Learn To Earn. You may have seen him here one Sunday last year. At Learn to Earn he is following the vision for his life that God has given him.
He is very productive, very twinkly, travels a lot, giggles a lot for a round bearded Afrikaaner, loves a good Cape Meerlust red wine.
Roche I’m sure will have other meetings while he’s here, but he came over especially for this dinner, and although also speaking about the charity, spent all day with us laying tables, carrying chairs, sorting literature, at the end of the evening, unsetting tables, clearing away glasses, scraping plates, all the while joking though still quite jet lagged.
And as we drove through the quiet south London streets at 1am in the morning, his first question was ‘Where is William spiritually?’- Willy the co organiser.
In the midst of the hustle and the bustle, Roche’s focus in that moment was on his new friend’s relationship with Christ.
We are called to be the body of Christ, this isn’t just as his hands and feet but also as a ‘gathering together in communion’ , a community of Christ, and in that moment Roche was concerned that Willy not miss out on being in that body.
The wonderful work that LTE does is a blessing in the world in itself, in that seeks for social justice for people who have been disenfranchised and the means for them to get back dignity into their lives, through work and training, but more than that LTE evangelises by example. Through his work Roche meets people where they are, like Jesus with the woman at the well, he shines the love of Christ on them in the circumstances of their lives and in doing so opens the arms of that body of Christ and says come on in, come home.
This is what we are called to do wherever we are. That is God’s will for us. WE evangelise by example and our example is Christ.
Now remember the less than edeifying picture of my daily life which I drew earlier ?
Clearly it comes no where near to the extreme circumstances Christ found himself as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane knowing the full horror of the crucifixion to come.
Matt 26:39
“ Yet not what I want, but what you want”
“ Yet not as I will, but as you will”
he accepts after much anguish.
It was not without anguish that he prayed, it was not instantaneous obedience, even though he new the wonderful consequences of his grissly death would be salvation for us,
and even though he knew the dreadful consequences of not dying for this broken world, would be no opportunity of redemption for us.
Even knowing all this, Christ struggled before coming to to that place of obedience.
In our daily life we too struggle.
Christ had in Gethsemane ‘Divine Vision. he had that God vision we lack, he could know of the ultimate good his present sacrifice, his present struggle would reap.
He could see into the lives and circumstances of all those surrounding him as he prayed that night,
he knew the disciples would fall asleep leaving him alone, he knew who of his closest beloved companions would kiss and betray him,
who would deny all knowledge of him,
who would doubt his resurrection,
never mind those who hammered in the nails to his feet and palms
and yet among his last words were words of forgiveness.
Luke 23:34
“Forgive them Father!. They don’t know what they are doing”
“ Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing”.
And then John tells us he said (John19:30)
“It is Finished,”
The plan for which Christ came to earth was set in motion.

And over 2 millenia later we wrestle with our day to day lives in the context of God’s plan for us. But we do not wrestle alone.
We are not the divine Christ in the world but we have been given the divine support of his Holy Spirit. We can call on that Divine spirit to be our source to fill us top to toe so that at the end of our lives we can say, it is finished, our work with God on earth is finished, we are returning home.

We can only be obedient to the Will of our heavenly father not through sheer frankly unsustainable willpower on our part , but through that source of Divine inspiration waiting to empower every step of our lives in Christ, his Holy Spirit.
Changing the way we think to Christ’s way, becoming obedient to his will, is beyond our own will power while we still hold on to our old mind. It’s like changing our diet and exercising in a burst of willpower but in our mind still hankering after all the things we’ve given up and yearning to sit in the sofa not run about…
Verse 30 of this morning’s reading tells us
“And so those whom God set apart, he called; and those he called, he put right with himself, and he shared his glory with them.”

“And those he predestined, he also called: those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

As Rick Warren points out , the solution to a life times sustained change of mind, is to let God transform the way we think, to let ourselves be put right with God ( be’ justified’ by God). And how are we ‘put right’ ( justified), brought into a proper relationship with God?
Paul explains in
Romans 12;2
“Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of mind.
Then you will be able to know the will of God - what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.”

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

And what is the point of being ‘put right’? In doing so God chooses us, sets us apart from our old lives in order that we may become like Christ, the purpose we are looking at today.
In Verse 29 of this morning’s reading Paul confirms this purpose
“Those whom God had already chosen he also set apart to become like his Son, so that the Son would be the eldest brother in a large family.”

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be firstborn among many brothers.”

How do we generate the mindset to sustain this transformation. This growth towards becoming like Christ?
Rick Warren points us to the need for a spiritual renewal of our thoughts.
Ephesians 4;22 -24
“So get rid of your old self, which made you live as used to – the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires.
Your hearts and minds must be made completely new, and you must out on the new self, which is created in God’s likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy.”

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;
to be made new in the attitude of your minds;
and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

The example, the only example that we have of that revealed, “true life”, “upright and holy” (true righteousness and holiness )is the life of Christ.
In choosing us and setting us apart from our old lives, God is preparing us to live as our new selves, living “the true life”,( in true righteousness and holiness) as modelled by Jesus.
Christ lights our path, his life model of Love, Humility, Obedience, thorough knowledge of scripture and trust in God to address our physical and spiritual needs is our guide. And that guidance is all underpinned by the astonishing joy of Paul’s words
“We know that in all things God works for good with those who love him, those whom he has called according to his purpose.” (Verse 28)

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose.

If we love Christ wholeheartedly, whatever the direction that loving guidance may take us in our lives… jump in , hold back, pray, wait…God will be working for good with us.
He chooses to partner us in the bringing of good into the world, in whatever form he chooses that good to be.
More than that, this relationship, this partnering extends to others who have given their life over to Christ, for we individual Christians are to be the body of Christ.
Part of the prayer we pray together before receiving Holy Communion says
“we are one body,because we all share in one bread,”
We share in the symbol of the sacrificed, risen Christ. A physical symbol of us absorbing the body of Christ into our body , being literally filled with his presence.
So in this sharing, we acknowledge to each other that it’s not just an individual pool of good we can bring to the world, working in partnership with God through loving Jesus, but an endlessly expanding sea of Good: because like the apostles we love Christ in communion with one another.
Not one brick alone but a body of bricks building one church family, the continuing body of Christ on earth.
And what a fantastically mixed body we are,
all with our own day to day pictures,
all with our own paths of obedience to follow ,
all calling on Christ to be the source in our lives of all we do, in response to all circumstances , by the power of his Holy Spirit,
all concerned to follow in love, the ultimate Good our God is working with us towards.
In Roche’s question ‘where is ‘so and so’ spiritually?’ I would suggest we find the ultimate good of partnership work with God.
When Jesus meets with the Samarian woman where she is in her life and addresses her spiritual needs, we are led by example to examine our own practical everyday actions and responses to situations.
Are we encouraging those we encounter to come spiritually closer to God? Or do they get no sense of Christ’s presence in us, that they could be drawn to.
Are we calling out and inspiring through the divine building brick in ourselves an answering need in those we meet? Are we calling out the divine building bricks in others to come together as one expanding body of the loving Christ?
During the next song as we ask Jesus to be the centre of our lives, please just take a moment to hold your lego brick as you consider the joy of how you are a partner in God’s working for good in the world. Then please come up during the song and add your brick to the green base, as a symbol of our body of Christ in Herne Hill.
How wonderful that that particular Christ shaped brick of our lives can join with all those other differently shaped bricks so that we all grow together as the body of Christ, becoming more like him as God created us to be.
After we’ve sung we’ll go into our time of confession, asking God to forgive our shortcomings where we try to live by our will power alone, so that we are free to grow from the source of Christ in our lives through the power of your Holy Spirit.
Let’s pray MUSIC
Heavenly Father Thank you for loving us, thank you for the privilege of being able to become like Christ individually and in communion with others. Make us lovingly bold to examine our hearts and our actions, so that we may humbly ask your forgiveness when we have not reflected your love in our behaviour. Please pour your spirit on to this body of Christ at St Saviour’s/Paul’s this morning, so that we may love you in all the different pictures of our lives and know for certain that we are part of building your work for good in the world.
In the power of Christ who died for us we pray,
Amen.

Sermon 20th March 2011

2011-03-21T20:03:00.001Z

Today, our Curate, Gill Tayleur, continues our study of The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.

FORMED FOR GOD’S FAMILY 20 MARCH 2011 EPH 3:14-21

Three members of a church are in a boat far out to sea. They decide they are going to confess their sins to each another.
One asks another, 'What is something that you have a problem with?'
The first church member says, 'Well, I have a problem with alcohol. I drink far too much. I can’t get through the day without it.'
The second one says, 'Well, I have a problem with lust. I desire every young woman I see.'
One of the others asks the third church member, 'Well, what is something that you have a problem with?'
The third man replies, 'Gossip, and I can't wait to get back to shore!'
... ... ...
In that wonderful prayer we just heard from Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, Paul prays that they would be strong in faith and really know the hugeness of God’s love. How high and deep, how broad and long it is.
And the interesting thing is that he prays it for them, not just as individuals, but together.
Together as God’s people.

We are God’s people, together, too.

Our ‘togetherness’ is what we’re looking at today, as the 2nd of our life purposes described by Rick Warren. In his book, our Lent book, the Purpose Driven Life, Rick suggests that we are Formed for God’s Family. Formed for God’s family. He says we are called to belong, not just to believe.

I should think lots of us consider ourselves to belong to this church. And for many of us, it’s a belonging to a church family.

When we chose to believe, when we start to follow Jesus,
God becomes our father and we become his child in a special way. And other Christians become our brothers and sisters; the church becomes our spiritual family. Family relationships, as we all know, can be very tricky! Family relationships are often characterised by deep love and commitment, but also real tensions and issues! And the church family can be much the same.

This morning I’m hoping to enthuse us all with the wonderful picture that the Bible gives of how church family relationships might be, at their best. And I’m hoping to challenge us all to deal with the ways in which our relationships are not their best, and to take steps to make them better.

So, we’re formed for God’s family. How should that family get on?

In the New Testament, there are over 50 times when the phrase, “one another” is used. We are commanded to love one another, pray for one another, encourage one another, reproach one another, greet one another, serve one another, teach one another, accept one another, honour one another, bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, submit to one another, be devoted to one another, laugh and cry with one another, and have many other mutual responsibilities. This is how we’re meant to treat one another! It’s tremendous! All that mutual love and support! And it’s tremendously difficult. Because our relationships are with REAL people, not IDEAL people.

And real people are sometimes difficult, annoying, frustrating and imperfect. Like you and me. They irritate us, they wind us up the wrong way, they let us down, and they hurt us. Like you and I do.

So, how do we build the sort of loving relationships those “one another” phrases describe, with real not ideal people?

First we have to spend time together! Not just over a coffee after church, although that’s a good place to start. Many of us do stay on for a drink, although of course there are reasons why some can’t. If that’s not something you often do, maybe today, or sometime soon, you could do so. And if you do usually stay, how about speaking to someone you haven’t before, or not for a long while? It’s not just about catching up with friends, although that’s part of it. It’s also about looking out for one another and caring for one another, including those on the fringes. Or those who are different from us – in age, for example. The night before his death, Jesus told his followers that they’d be known by the love they’d have for one another. When we come together, as we do, from different backgrounds and races, it’s a challenge to really connect across those differences sometimes, but it’s important that we do.

So, church family relationships start here on a Sunday morning, but in order to build the sort of loving ‘one another’ relationships we’re thinking of, a chat after church isn’t likely to be enough. Are there people in the church family that you see outside of Sunday morning? Perhaps, a few, who live nearby? Or maybe those who go to one of the small groups we have here in the parish. I realise that not everyone would be able to get to one, but let me remind you we have 7 small groups, of people who meet together weekly or fortnightly. Some meet in the day, some in the evening, and one with childcare for toddlers.
The groups are a great way to get to know a few people better, and be able to give and receive the sort of care and support we heard in those ‘one another’ phrases. Ask me or Cameron more about them after the service.

So our church family relationships, like any family relationships, need time and attention. They also need to be real. By which I mean there’s a time and a place for being open and really honest with one another. Sharing our hurts, revealing our hopes and fears, confessing our failures, admitting our doubts and our weaknesses, asking for help and prayer. That sounds difficult, risky or scary? Yes it can be hard, but being honest and learning to trust one another is essential if we’re to really care for one another, support and encourage one another effectively.

Which brings me to the next aspect of ‘one another’ relationships. They’re to be mutual. Two way. This is about giving and receiving! We all like to be independent, don’t we? But as God’s family we’re designed to be dependent on one another. The Bible uses the picture of a body: we are all like different parts of one body. And the eye can’t say to the hand, I don’t need you! Or a head to the feet, I don’t need you! We are designed to need one another. That’s how we work best together and become what God has made us to be. Formed for God’s family.

Of course there may be particular times in our lives when we need to give more, and times to receive more. At times we’re to rejoice with one another, at other times to weep with one another, and to carry one another’s burdens. It will depend on what we’re each going through, but such support and care is to be mutual.

So, formed for God’s family, we’re to spend time with one another, be real with one another, mutually caring and supporting one another. That sounds pretty attractive to me, on both the giving and receiving ends! But let’s face it, it’s not always like that. And so perhaps it’s not surprising, that another ‘one another’ we’re commanded to do, is to forgive one another, bear with one another and accept one another.

I suspect we need to bear with one another, and forgive one another more often than we care to admit. Because we are all imperfect, selfish, needy, irritating people! We’re sinners! With faults that rub others up the wrong way. I can be bossy, convinced I’m right and you’re wrong, and totally caught up in my own perspective, wants and needs. And so can you! And so of course we infuriate one another, disappoint one another and hurt one another. And the closer we get, the more we’ll do so! Well, isn’t that how it works in families?! But – learning to forgive is really important. Jesus told his followers to forgive one another as God forgives us. So here, in God’s family, this should be a place where we see forgiveness and grace flowing between each other all the time, because together we’re children of our great Forgiving Father God. Remember how much he has forgiven us, me!

We all need forgiveness and mercy, because we all stumble and fall. Sometimes we need help to recognise that, and sometimes the most loving thing we can do is to very gently draw someone’s attention to their sin or shortcomings. But only if we do so in mercy, forgiveness and love, and help them get back on track. Would we dare to do that?

And that brings me to the last aspect of church family relationships I’d like to highlight – unity. We’re not to criticise, not to gossip, not judge. We’re to be realistic in our expectations, and focus on what we have in common, not our differences. We’re to build up the unity of God’s family. The man in the boat in my joke wasn’t exactly going to build unity if he gossiped when he got home! It can be so damaging, destroying trust and openness at a stroke. Instead let’s make sure the things we say build one another up, individually and together.

Well there’s plenty more that could be said about relationships within the church, including unity, on the wider scale. We’ve not time to address those as well right now, but I think some of the same principles apply.

Before I wrap up this taster of how our church family relationships might be – of course many of you will read more about all this when we get to days 15 to 21 in the Purpose Driven Life – I’d like to recognise how there are many ways in which this church family does already have a lot of the sort of loving relationships we’ve been thinking about. I’m not suggesting we’re starting from scratch! But there are probably some of us who aren’t plugged in to these sorts of relationships, giving or receiving. There are probably some of us who aren’t in real, honest relationships, who aren’t being the part of the body they might. And I dare say there are some of us who need to forgive, or be forgiven. Let’s hear that list of ‘one another’s again, and listen out for what we might need to do in response.

“Love one another, pray for one another, encourage one another, reproach one another, greet one another, serve one another, teach one another, accept one another, honour one another, bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, submit to one another, be devoted to one another, laugh and cry with one another.”

So, do these ideas about how our relationships might be, within God’s family, make you excited or daunted? Maybe both!

Our Ephesians reading, about being strong in faith and knowing the hugeness of God’s love, TOGETHER as his people, ends with some wonderful encouragement.

St Paul says,
“[God] is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us!”

Living in the loving ‘one another’ relationships we’ve been thinking about this morning, is tremendous, and tremendously difficult. BUT God’s power – remember, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead! – is at work IN US, to do more than we can ask or imagine! How wonderful! It’s possible! God can do it! And so let’s pray...

Sermon 13th March 2011

2011-03-15T03:49:00.001Z

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker preaches based on our Lent series, The Purpose Driven Life.

25 550. That should be a number that's familiar to many of you, after this week: 25 550. But why? If you need a clue, think Wednesday; as in Ash Wednesday ...

Any offers? ... That's the average number of days that most of us will live for! It's quite simple maths to work out that Rick Warren is assuming the biblical ideal of 3-score years and 10 is where we have reached. Any quick Internet search will show that's not the case, though. The UK is joint 20th in the world in terms of life-expectancy. Males born here in this century can expect to live until they are 78, and women to 82, rather than the Bible's 70 years. By the way, that's double the figure for Swaziland, which has the world's lowest life expectancy. To save you working it out, that UK average is then about 28 400 days for men, and 29 900 for women.

Be that all as it may, the more significant figure that I'd hope is in your minds today is 40. I'd hope that it's there even if you've not started reading our Lent book, The Purpose Driven Life. It should be there even if you didn't come to the Ash Wednesday service, which marked the start of Lent. I'm hoping that you are all good enough Anglicans to know that Lent is this 40-day period that is purposefully set aside for us to prepare for Easter. It's a long-standing practice of the church, dating back to the 1st Century. It's based on the example of Jesus before the start of his public ministry. It's also the principle that underpins our studying this book together this Lent: important events and occasions need, and are worth, getting ready for.

In this book Rick Warren has in mind an even bigger occasion than Easter that we need to get ready for. It's hard to think what could be bigger than Easter, I realise. But what is bigger is what Easter has opened the door to – and that is to eternity itself! So Rick Warren is quite right to challenge everyone to use a mere 40 of our supposed 20-something thousand days at least to ask ourself relevant big-picture questions. Is there more to life than just here and now? What on earth am I here for? Do I matter? What is my purpose in life? And how then should I live my life?

Having posed those questions, Rick Warren moves beyond them almost immediately! As many of you will have read on Wednesday, “It's not about you” is the first line of his first chapter! Yes this book is a genuine invitation to ask big life-questions. It is a process that occupies this biblically-significant 40-day period, at the rate of 1 short, challenging chapter per day. But his assumption from the start is that none of these questions – like life itself – make any sense unless we accept the existence of the God of the Bible. As the author puts it, “If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born BY his purpose and FOR his purpose.”

These are the sorts of phrases that hopefully many of us have been reading since Wednesday. Even as I read it yet again, I'm finding this helpful, challenging stuff. And I know that there is plenty more of the same to come! However, I'm sure that you will also have discovered already some of limitations of the book. It's far from perfect, in its language and also in its thought. But even in those places you can still use it, to help you to clarify what you believe, and why. And that in itself is a useful exercise, specially if you accept Rick Warren's key proposition. He believes that one of the main purposes of our life here on earth is to prepare to spend eternity in heaven with God. And that needs quite some preparing for!

That is the main thrust of the chapter that many of us will have read yesterday. We have been made for eternity with God; and we need to be, or get, ready for it. Beyond this point we will be going to places that few have reached yet, then. I am unfortunately having to cover rather a lot of ground today. The original plan was for us preachers to use these Sundays off to reflect on the section of the book that we'd all be in the middle of reading. Given when the school holidays fall, though, we only have 5 Sunday for this series, rather than the 6 we need. That means that I'm having to speak on the seven-day introductory section – plus the first of the 5 life-purposes that Rick Warren then sets out, 7 chapters at a time!

The first thing to do is to point you to our web-site, then. You'll find there all the sermons from our first run-through of this book. That includes full sermons on the introduction, and on how we have been planned for God's pleasure – as well as the 4 other God-given life-purposes. That series finished just last week, to help us get as ready for Lent as possible. We're doing it twice, like this, partly because we have always known that there's more material in each section than we could sum up on any one Sunday. It also reflects just how important these issues are – even for those who are already Christians. Our intended aim is to enable us to live truly focused, Godly-purposeful lives; for, and in, Him. We want that for us as a church, at St Paul's and at St Saviour's, and we also want that for us as individuals.

Back to today, in some ways it's a shame that the timings are like this. I was looking forward to keeping my promise to tackle the 3 key biblical life-metaphors! I could speak with feeling on how life is portrayed in the Bible as a test of our faith and trust in God, when circumstances aren't as we'd choose them! Globally that would be relevant in the light of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. It could apply personally too, after the past fortnight when Jocelyn when has barely been out of one hospital or another. First it was for surgery on her transplant scar, and then because of a whole range of complications that have arisen from that. And we have not yet got to the end of this process either!

However, the Bible portrays any number of ways in which God can, does, and will test us, our faith and hope – and Rick Warren makes good use of many biblical examples. You can read those for yourselves, and also about how life-metaphors unconsciously shape how we live. In case you have missed the connection, I will point out that the Bible sees life here as temporary assignment because heaven is our home for eternity. And I will also mention briefly the third Bible life-metaphor now too: life is a trust because God watches how we treat what He entrusts to us – gifts, time, talents, money, people, and in every other way. Details of that are in the relevant chapters coming up – but do note there are eternal consequences to that, both ways!

On the basis that Rick Warren is right, that life is a test, a trust and a temporary assignment, what comes next? Well the logical step is to do exactly what we are urged to at the end of today's reading – to understand, or to find out, what God wants us to do. In passing, I should also point out that in this series we'll frame each section with Bible passage, instead of speaking on one, as normal. This passage frames our task for the rest of Lent, and beyond – understanding God's will for our lives. Rick Warren says that our whole life-purpose is to bring God glory, in what we do, and in how we do it. Life is not for or about us remember; it's all for Him! What we then read in God's Word, His revelation of himself, are these 5 key life-purposes that Rick Warren writes the rest of his book about.

Clearly I don't have time to say too much on the first of those purposes now. Gill covered a lot of the ground first time; and you will have 7 chapters of material on it to enjoy from the middle of this week. But I do want to encourage you to take very seriously this idea that you, yes YOU, have been planned for God's pleasure! When asked, Jesus said that the greatest commandment from the Old Testament is that we are to love God first and best, with everything we've got and are! We do that in response to God's love for us, of course. The Bible is full of expressions of God's love for us, in word and in deed. We see His love for us most clearly on the cross – where Jesus died so that we don't have to, but rather can love him back.

As anyone who has ever loved knows, when you love someone you want to make them happy. You want them to enjoy you as much as you enjoy them – and God is no different! In fact, we are made in God's image: He has given us our 5 senses to enjoy Him, and His world. What He wants above all is for us to use all of that for and with Him, in ways that He enjoys! That's as good a definition of worship as I have ever heard. It's wonderfully put in the Message version, like this: “Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life and place it before God as an offering”. How can we live for God's pleasure? By doing exactly this, every day, day after day – for Him!

Of course nothing is ever quite that simple! But maybe it's a whole lot less complicated than we sometimes make it! I'm sure that we'd all do well to read, and heed, Rick Warren's simple advice in these chapters. It can show us how to: obey God; trust Him; communicate with Him; surrender to Him; be His friend; and give Him our all – in bad times as much as in good. And these are lessons and stories that we can come back to time and again in the months and years ahead. This series isn't some passing fad: it's purpose is to help us to learn to live permanently changed lives – so preparing ourselves for the eternity during which we will be enjoyed by, and enjoy, God! So let's pray that it will do just that ...

Sermon 6th March 2011

2011-03-07T11:27:00.002Z

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Matthew 28 verses 16-20

Here's one for anyone who has ever been driven mad by some kind of public works, be it as a pedestrian, a cyclist, or a driver - i.e. it's for all of us! This fictional action takes place in a leafy suburb, where an intrigued onlooker observes how two industrious workmen slave away all day. One digs a hole, and the other follows behind him, and fills the hole in. They work up one side of the street, then down the other, and then move on to the next street. They work hard all day long one workman digging a hole, the other then filling it in again.

In the end our onlooker overcomes their British reserve, in order to satisfy their natural curiosity, and solve the mystery. He politely says to the hole-digger, “I'm impressed by the effort you two are putting in to your work; but I really don't get it. Why are you digging these holes, only to have your colleague fill them up again?”

The hole-digger wipes his brow, and sighs. “Well, I can see it probably looks odd, because we're normally a 3-person team. But the one who plants the trees called in sick today.”

As is often the way, the sermon-connection is perhaps a little tenuous. My best effort to make one is that it can be easy to keep on living life in what become our habitual ways. We don't always stop to think about what the point of it all is. Mind you, my hope very much is that if that was true of any Parish of Herne Hill regulars then this is already a past issue for you! Nobody could have sat through the last 6 weeks here without at least asking some key, fundamental questions: what does life mean; why are we here; and how should we live?

Today marks the end of our first run through this very helpful book, The Purpose Driven Life. I don't plan to say too much by way of concluding thoughts on what we have learned so far. That's not least because we're starting it all over again next week! As I said at the outset, there's far too much material under each of the book's 6 headings to be covered in just one sermon. The American author, Rick Warren has produced a book that is meant to be literally life-changing. Its deliberate aim is to get people to stop and ask such questions – on the basis that God created all of us for particular purposes. The idea is that life can't, and won't, make sense until we start to live out the purposes which we have been made for. These are important, and eternally valuable matters, then. So they are well worth giving a decent amount of time to – whatever stage of life, or faith we are currently at.

Plenty of other people have been here before us – at least 30 million in the book's first 5 years! We have decided to join in, by making this our Lent book. More details next week on how it's all going to work – but it starts in earnest from this Wednesday. This Lent we are all invited to read one of this book's short chapters per day – except on Sundays! And if you're worried that you have missed what we have said on it so far, it's all posted on our website, or we can print copies for you. There is no excuse for not getting involved, then: purposefully!

This is about each of us actively choosing to go on the most significant journey that we could ever make. Yes, many of us are Christians, and some of us have been for a long time. If that's you, it could be a case of taking what you already know and re-focusing it for your next step forward in faith. Lots of people I've been talking to share my sense that God is up to stuff across this parish at the moment. And I'm sure that this process is a key part of that. It's like God is inviting us to be clear about what we truly believe. More than that, it's like He's inviting us to be intentional about what we then do – individually and corporately. That, in turn, must come out of understanding what God wants for us and from us – personally and as church.

So today we arrive at Rick Warren's final suggested God-given purpose for our lives. Yes it's the one that so many have been desperate to get to – because it's that God has Made us for Mission! We will explore that in about as much detail as we have the book's four other suggested purposes – but we also do need to set it in context. One of the many quotes that I have noted from this book is: “Blessed are the balanced”. No, that's not one of Jesus' Beatitudes (as his “Blessed are ...” statements are known) in modern language! It is from Rick Warren, but it's still vital that we hear it.

As we read throughout this book, God has made us each different. Yes, we are all made for these same five key, Godly purposes; but God gives different people different passion-levels for each of them. It's part of the unique person that God has made you that you should express that passion – without expecting everyone else to feel the same way too! It's definitely not true that I am right by emphasising one area, and anyone who doesn't do what I say is wrong. We each need to listen just as much to the passions of those who care equally as deeply about God's other purposes for our lives. That is how we will achieve a Godly balance, for our own life, and also for our life together, as a church.

This principle cuts both ways, of course! We need people who are passionate about each of these 5 life-purposes. If we don't, we'll be missing out on some of what God wants for us. The picture the New Testament most often uses of the church is that of the body: we need eyes and ears; hands and feet; and every other part too! In the purpose-driven language of this book, then, we need people who are passionate about how we are: Planned for God's pleasure; Formed for God's family; Created to become like Christ; Shaped for serving God – and just as passionate about us being Made for mission too! In other words, every church needs at least some people who are passionate about worship; and about fellowship; and about discipleship; and about ministry; and about evangelism.

The Bible passage that we have hung this one on – not surprisingly – is that known as Jesus' Great Commission. Rick Warren is swift to point out that all four gospels record some version of this encounter between Jesus and his disciples at the end of his life. We also find it at start of Acts, right before Jesus was taken into heaven. And of course we are meant to pay special attention to someone's parting words. When they know this is 'it', the very last thing that anyone says is what they most want us to remember. So, as Rick Warren puts it, we have to see this for exactly what it is – it's Jesus' Great Commission, not his mild Suggestion! It's for us to do, not to think about whether we might possibly feel like it, maybe!

For some reason, this is the Godly purpose that most of us find it hardest to be passionate about. There is something rather exposing about having to reveal who and what we are – especially in this current anti-faith era. But aren't you glad that someone once did that for you? And if you don't now do it for someone else, how will they ever hear or know the good news of Jesus? And of course it's based on the example of Jesus himself. He chose to give up the glory of heaven, to die in shame on a cross – for you! The nature of God is to reach out in love; and that's whose image you have been made in. Here's a God-given purpose to get truly passionate about, then!

Rick Warren has plenty of practical suggestions in his book to help us get over our fears. He helpfully points out how this call applies to our community, country, other cultures and nations simultaneously. Like so much else, you can read the detail of it for yourselves when you get there in Lent. But I will (hopefully!) encourage you with one specific thought from the book. 'All' we have to do is to tell our story! We are called to be 'witnesses', look: not experts, but witnesses. Nobody else shares your story – literally nobody: present, past or future. Only you can tell it – and you must, because you are part of God's on-going work. Yes, you are part of the evidence for the reality of God's grace and love: you!

Again Rick Warren has practical tips on how we can all do that effectively and honestly, in good times and in bad alike. And we are all called to live out this purpose, remember! It may not be your primary area of passion, perhaps; but it is just as much part of you, and us, living a Godly, purpose-driven life as all the others are! You have been Made for mission. Your calling is to continue Jesus' own mission, to tell and show everyone the love of God. And, be encouraged! Above all, we are to do it in the light of Jesus' very specific promise that he also made here: that he will be with us in the doing of it, every step of the way!

So, there you have it: edited highlights of living a Godly, purpose-driven life. In these 6 weeks we have addressed, and answered, the three basic life issues that many struggle with: Who am I? Do I matter; and, 'What's my place in life?' As Rick Warren says, the answers are found in God's 5 purposes for us – which are about Him, not us, remember! We are: Planned for God's pleasure; Formed for God's family; Created to be like Christ; Shaped for serving God – and Made for mission. Now that we know all that, the blessing lies in living it out. How amazing that we can spend all of this Lent working that out, on our own, and together! So let's pray that we will ...

Sermon 20th February 2011

2011-02-22T12:37:00.001Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adjoa Andoh-Cunnell, preaches based on the reading from Colossians 3:12-17.
My cousin Katie rang me last week
“Fabienne, her 9 year old daughter, on the way to
school that morning had said
“Why am I going to school? What’s the point of
being here, what’s my life for?”
Should she be worried about Fabi, cousin Katie
asked me.
The existential angst of the under 10’s… pretty
dramatic stuff, but Fabi’s a smart kid, I encouraged,
sounds to me like she’s just asking the question we
all ask at some point in our lives…What on earth am
I here for. Let her watch Kung Fu Panda I say, it’s
reassuring…but we’ll come back to that…

In the opening passage of the book we’re following in
our current study series, ‘The Purpose Driven Life’,
Rick Warren writes:
‘This is more than a book; it is a guide to a 40-day
spiritual journey that will enable you to discover the
answer to life’s most important question: What on
earth am I here for?
By the end of this journey you will know God’s

purpose for your life and will understand the big
picture – how all the pieces of your life fit together.
Having this perspective will reduce your stress,
simplify your decisions, increase your satisfaction,
and most important, prepare you for eternity.’

That’s quite a claim.
Yet when I began to read the section on Purpose 4 in
the Purpose Driven Life, the Purpose we’re focussing
on this morning, ‘You Were Shaped For Serving
God’, it seemed to me that the answer to Fabi’s
question lay in front of me.
Rick Warren contends that we were indeed shaped
by God for service and this is why..
He says
‘You were put on earth to make a contribution.
You weren’t created just to consume resources –
to eat, breathe, and take up space. God designed
you to make a difference with your life…..you were
created to add to life on earth, not just take from
it….it is called your ministry, or service’.
We were shaped for service?
So consumer or contributor?
If we follow Jesus then we are choosing to return
to God’s shaping of us, we are choosing to be a

contributor.

In Ephesians 2:10 Paul writes

‘God has made us what we are, and in our union
with Christ Jesus he has created us for a life of good
deeds,’-GN
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus to do good works- NIV

Once we choose to follow Christ then contribution is
our path, service is our shape.
God loves us simply because we exist, not because
of what we do, when we follow him and gives our
hearts and lives to him we rediscover the human
being he shaped us to be.
Just as the tree absorbs carbon dioxide and gives
out oxygen, as followers of Jesus, we are to absorb
the world and give out God’s love in service, using
the unique shape or gift He has blessed us with.
The oxygen expelling tree is just made that way and
so too are we, made for good deeds.
If we doubt the appeal and likelihood of being made
to be a servant in the 21st century, then lets look into

our hearts and ask ourselves if we would really prefer
a life lacking service where we would constantly
have everything done for us, get everything we want
whenever we want it, not having to try for anything,
never have a sense of achievement after having
worked hard, never feel that something we have
done has made life better for someone else, never
make someone smile through a kindness we’ve
done, never help someone who needs it.
Let’s ask ourselves if a life like that would be
preferable?
I wonder if that might not leave us feeling hollow and
pointless.
I would suggest that our natural joy is to contribute,
to be a part of something, to make a difference.
Look at the exhilaration of the people of Egypt, for
those who were in Tahria Square together; I heard
people interviewed talking about how sad they
were to leave the square after President Muhbarak
resigned. They didn’t want to lose that special feeling
they had discovered, being together with fellow
citizens, being brave and taking risks together,
making a difference with their protests and calls for
freedom for all Egyptians.
Contribution and service suit us, make us feel good

even if no one but God sees it. Jesus is clear
What are we for? To follow Him, to follow his
example In Matthew’s Gospel 20:28
He says we are to be
‘like the Son of Man, who did not come to be served,
but to serve and give his life to redeem many people’
‘just as the Son Of Man (who) did not come to
be served but to serve and to give his life as a
ransom for many.’

We are SHAPED for SERVING God.
So what service are we going to be good at giving?
And what is the shape God has given me?

One of the great things about having children,
grandchildren, God children, nieces and nephews,
working with children or having children around
in your life generally is that they can be cover for
doing fun stuff which others may assume you should
have ‘grown out of by now’.
This means I get to watch the classic cultural icon
that is the cartoon Kung Fu Panda and cry, and look
forward to the sequel this summer.
Kung Fu Panda as I’m sure you all know is the story
of a hapless pudgy panda, clumsy and daydreamy,

who works in his father’s café serving noodle soup,
but longs to be a kung fu superhero. He is unfit and
uncoordinated but in a series of adventures and
misadventures he realises his dream when the Kung
Fu Master discovers Panda has the gift of agility,
ingenuity and speed when food is the goal.
Gradually Panda’s skills are honed so that food is no
longer required and with his new found gift he is able
to do more than be a kung fu superhero, he is able
to use his gift to protect his family and neighbours,
defeat the villain and save the town.
The master has encouraged him to discover his gift
and use it at once to make a difference for good in
the town saying:
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but
today is a gift, that’s why it’s called the present!”

Do we look at ourselves like pugdy hapless hopeless
Kung Fu Panda, do we dream but not believe that we
have skills and gifts to offer?
Are we stuck, not risking trying out these gifts we
have to offer today?
Are we scared to be in the present, to use God’s
shape in us, to be his gift in the world around us.
Are you familiar with that critical comment,

‘look at so and so they think they’re God’s gift..!’
Well what if we accept that we are God’s gift?
What if we accept Paul’s words that we are as verse
12 of this morning’s reading says:
‘…the people of God; he loved you and chose you for
his own’
‘...God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved’

We are God’s chosen people, he has blessed us with
gifts, so that we can be a blessing in the world.
Remember Ephesians
‘God has made us what we are, and in our union
with Christ Jesus he has created us for a life of good
deeds,’
For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ
Jesus to do good works

What’s the thing we’re good at, our gift, and our
shape?

It may not be physical agility and ingenuity when
the goal of tasty snacks lies ahead, like Kung Fu
Panda…or maybe it is…
Pens and post it notes are coming your way just
take a moment to consider and write down answers

to some questions I’ll put to you that may help us
identify what we might have a gift for, what might be
our shape. I’ll read the questions when we’re ready in
a minute but meantime consider;
it maybe that you’re a great cook, or you have a legal
brain and training that can help people work their
way through the law to sort out a problem, or you
may be the person who just makes people feel better
when you’re around them, who brings comfort or
encouragement, or laughter. Do you have a facility
for mechanics, are you creative with arts and crafts,
are you a good planner? Do you sing beautifully, are
you good at sports, Great with needle and thread,
a musician, do children like playing games with
you, are you cool to hang with teenagers, are you
the person who had a really terrible time at some
point in your life and can spot when someone else is
struggling in their life, are you a computer whiz, are
you happy to pray with people, can you give medical
advice or point someone in the right direction for
seeking help in the health service, are you a fabulous
flower arranger, can you serve coffee and tea with
a smile, can you share your office skills, are you a
people person not nervous to welcome a stranger or
visit the lonely.

In Romans 12:4-6 Paul says;

‘We have many parts in the one body, and all these
parts have different functions…we are one body in
union with Christ. So we are to use our different gifts
in accordance with the grace that God has given us.’
‘Just as each of us has one body with many
members, and these members do not all have
the same function, so in Christ we who are
many form one body…We have different gifts,
according to the grace given us..’

Note Paul doesn’t add, but some of us have no gifts
at all so just sit on the sidelines.
We all have gifts and no one gift is better than
another. All are different, all needed and we all have
one.
In 1 Peter 4:10, Peter encourages us,

‘Each one, as a good manager of God’s different
gifts, must use for the good of others the special gift
he has received from God’.
‘Each one should use whatever gift he has
received to serve others, faithfully administering

God’s grace in its various forms.’

So now to the gift questions for us to think about,
please write down any thoughts on your post its and
hold on to them:
What do I really enjoy doing most?
When do I feel the most fully alive?
What am I doing when I lose track of time?
Do I like routine or variety?
Do I prefer serving with a team or by myself?
Am I more of an introvert shy person or extravert up
front person?
Am I more a thinker or a feeler?
Which do I enjoy more – competing or cooperating?

The answers to these questions may help us come to
an idea of what God’s gift to each one of us is, what
shape he has blessed us with for service. There are
many types of gifts.
The novelist Aldous Huxley wrote
‘Experience is not what happens to you. It is what
you do with what happens to you’
Our gift may be in the sadnesses and struggles we
have experienced.
Paul knew about struggles and in his second letter

to the church at Corinth he writes in Ch1 v 4 of God:
(pto)

‘He helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able
to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using
the same help that we ourselves have received from
God.’
‘…who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we
can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort
we ourselves have received from God.’

As Rick Warren puts it
“God never wastes a hurt”
We may wonder why doesn’t God forgive us when
we come to him to be saved, save us and take us
straight to heaven,
But in a world as broken and suffering as ours, we
have work to do to bring God’s kingdom into being,
here in the world he created.
We are to stay here, to follow the path of service laid
down by Jesus on the Cross and risen again. When
we look at what we’ve written down, look around this
room at each other, we should be encouraged that
together we all have work to do, all of us here, we
have work to do to make a difference in the name of

Jesus.

There is a Danish proverb which goes:
‘What you are is God’s gift to you
What you do with yourself is your gift to God’.

This is not a one way street; we are made to be in a
relationship with God.
In the way we go about using our gift, our shape,
whatever it may be, we reflect God’s love to the
world, but we also reflect our love to God. That’s
what happens in a relationship; we are loved and we
love.
So when we serve in the world we show God how we
love him.
If we love God whole heartedly then we will serve the
world around us whole heartedly.
Rick Warren argues
‘While knowing your shape is important for serving
God, having the heart of a servant is even more
important….Your primary ministry should be in the
area of your shape, but your secondary service is
wherever you’re needed at the moment….No special
talent or gift is required to stay after a meeting to pick
up trash or stack chairs. Anyone can be a servant. All

it requires is character.’
Character or the attitude of a true servant’s heart.
John writes in his gospel in ch13: 3-4 of the example
we have of a true servant’s heart from Jesus: (pto)

‘Jesus knew that the Father had given him complete
power: he knew that he had come from God and was
going to God. So he rose from the table, took off his
outer garment, and tied a towel round his waist.’
‘Jesus knew that the Father had put all things
under his power, and that he had come from God
and was returning to God; so he got up from the
meal, took off his outer clothing and wrapped a
towel round his waist.’

Then Jesus washes his disciples’ feet.
The creator as foot washer, nothing was beneath him
because he came to serve.
A damning report into the NHS care of the elderly
came out this week. Discussing the report on Radio
4 the presenter asked what could be done to address
the seeming lack of care and compassion amongst
nursing staff, a Professor of behavioural sciences
observed that ‘…we are a society that values
glamour, what is the least glamorous thing one can

do? Be a care giver. We need to reassess our values
as a nation’

True humility, the attitude of a true servant heart, is
to focus on others not on ourselves. As Rick Warren
puts it.

‘When we stop focussing on our own needs, we
become aware of the needs around us’.

We can be compassionate towards the world around
us.
And in becoming compassionate, by allowing
ourselves the freedom of God’s service, we can be
released from worrying about the worlds criticisms
and opinions of us, we can stop worrying about the
worlds demands on us to chase status and success,
to value glamour above care giving….
We may feel that we are happy to humbly serve
God, we are happy to stack the chairs but we have
no confidence that we have that unique God given
shape or gift, that we are any good at anything in
particular.
Rick Warren suggests that
‘If God only used perfect people nothing would ever

get done’.
Paul writes to the church at Corinth encouraging
them 1Cor.15:58

‘So then, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm
and steady. Keep busy always in your work for the
Lord, since you know that nothing you do in the
Lord’s service is ever useless.’
‘Therefore my dear brothers stand firm. Let
nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully
to the work of the Lord, because you know that
your labour in the Lord is not in vain.’

We are shaped for serving God and he will make use
of that service.
Our parish aim as you can read every Sunday on the
service sheet is
‘..in God’s strength, to bring Jesus to the centre of
our lives and to the heart of our community.’

By his Grace, He has given each one of us a unique
gift to use in his service, the wholeheartedness of our
service, the attitude of our servant’s heart reflects his
love to the world and our love to God.
We don’t have to worry about any opinion about

our service but His, or worry whether we’ll be good
enough to serve, because we serve with his power
supporting us and we serve because we follow the
example of Jesus who came to earth to save and to
serve.

If we look over the wonderful words of this morning’s
reading during the week I hope we’ll all be
encouraged in our service for God, that we will gladly
use the shape he has blessed us with in our own
Purpose Driven journey through life, with Jesus.
As Paul writes in v 15 of today’s reading;
‘The peace that Christ gives is to guide you in the
decisions you make; for it is to this peace that God
has called you together in the one body.’
‘Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since
as members of one body you were called to
peace.’

So, in the shape we were made for, may we continue
in peace, to love and serve the Lord in the world he
created, till he calls us home.
Amen

Sermon 13th February 2011

2011-02-22T12:23:00.003Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our lessons on The Purpose Driven Life.

Created to be like Christ

(Purpose Driven Life)

“Created to be like Christ.” That sounds a tall order

doesn’t it? How can we dare to imagine that we could

be like Christ? That’s the challenge that Rick Warren

sets before us in his book, The Purpose Driven Life.

This is the fourth sermon in a series on this book,

The Purpose Driven Life, which Cameron started last

month and will continue until the end of Lent; we’re

also hoping many of you will want to read it during Lent

this year. So far we’ve looked at the first two purposes:

Planned for God’s Pleasure, and

Formed for God’s Family.

And today it’s the third purpose – Created to be like

So, how do we begin to meet this challenge of being

like Christ? I’m going to start at the beginning of the

Bible, for Genesis 1 tells us that we human beings are

created in God’s image. That doesn’t mean that we

are God’s equals in any way; God is the creator and

we are his creatures. But yet the truth remains – God

created us in his image.

That sounds great – that God created us in his image.

Unfortunately things soon began to go wrong. One

aspect of being created in God’s image is that we

human beings know the difference between right and

wrong. Genesis tells us that humans rebelled against

God, they chose wrong, and so the image of God in us

has been distorted. We are capable of good, but we

are also capable, each of us, of doing great harm.

The winning Australian captain in the 1999 Rugby

World Cup was called John Eales; he was an

exemplary character both on and off the field. His

nickname was Nobody, because “Nobody’s perfect”!

And of course that is true. Nobody is perfect..

And yet we are made in the image of God – God

who is perfect in every way. It’s hard to grasp –

that we are created in the image of God who is all

knowing, all powerful, eternal and perfect. God is

way beyond our understanding, as much beyond our

comprehension as we human beings are beyond an

ant’s comprehension. But we have help. For the Bible

tells us that Jesus is the image of God. Colossians

1:15 tells us that Jesus is the image of the invisible

God. If we want to know what God looks like, we

look at Jesus. And it’s God’s goal for us to grow up

spiritually and to become like Christ.

To become like Christ. As I said at the start that

sounds a tall order, doesn’t it. But what a wonderful

God, think some of the great passages in the Bible, for

example in ! Corinthians 13 where St Paul describes

love. He starts, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does

not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” And he

finishes, “Love always protects, always trusts, always

hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”

Wouldn’t it be marvellous if those words were true of

us? And the more like Christ become, the greater our

love for God and for others will be.

It’s a slow and difficult process, becoming more and

more like Christ. Fortunately we’re not on our own.

We don’t have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps;

that’s impossible. We have the Holy Spirit to help

us. Now the Holy Spirit isn’t going to transform us

magically overnight. We can’t sit back and expect to

become Christ-like without any effort on our part.

Christianity is based on faith, not good works. We are

saved by God’s grace, by the mercy God has shown

to us even though we don’t deserve it. God sent Jesus

to die for our sins, and it’s through our repentance and

belief in Jesus that we are saved – that we are put

right with God. But that’s only the start. The process

of becoming Christ-like is something that will go on

for the rest of our lives. We shall have the Holy Spirit

helping us, but we need to work hard at it.

How, then, do we grow, become mature spiritually

and more Christ-like? Rick Warren suggests it’s

through a combination of people, God’s Word and

circumstances.

In some religions those who are regarded as the most

holy are those who isolate themselves and live in

deserts and on mountain tops. Now, monasticism is

a worthy calling, but a minority one. Being part of a

community is, for most of us, a vital part of becoming

Christ-like. Part of becoming Christ-like is learning to

love people the way Jesus loved people. And we may

find certain people easier to love in their absence, but

that’s not Jesus’ way. Jesus said to his disciples, “My

command is this: Love each other as I have loved

you.” (John 15:12)

If we love one another as Christ loved us, we become

more like Christ. We can’t become Christ-like in

isolation; we need other people to be part of the

We also grow more Christ-like by studying God’s

Word, the Bible. As Rick Warren puts it – we are

Transformed by Truth. The underlying assumption

is that the Bible is authoritative – it’s trustworthy

and reliable. So, is the Bible reliable?. Believing

in its reliability is not intellectual suicide; there are

good reasons for believing in its reliability based on

historical evidence. And if you want to know more

about the Bible’s historical reliability, you can do the

Alpha course starting in the spring, where one of the

sessions covers this issue.

The Bible isn’t just a history book, though; it’s authority

for our lives. The Bible isn’t a simple book. There

are difficulties of interpretation. But these difficulties

should not be an excuse for ignoring its message. It

contains many essential truths about which there is

little argument. Loving God with all our heart and our

soul; faithfulness in relationships, concern for justice,

compassion for those in need. These are all truths

about which there is little argument.

Through reading and studying the Bible we become

more Christ-like. And that’s hardly surprising, is it? If

we spend a lot of time reading the newspaper, we’ll

know a lot about the news. If we spend a long time

practising a musical instrument, then we’ll become

better players of that instrument. If we stop practising,

we may remember how to play for a little while, but

soon we’ll lose our ability to play the instrument well.

If we spend time reading the Bible, we will get to know

Jesus better; it will help us to become more Christ-like.

And if we don’t, or if we stop, then inevitably we will

There are many ways of reading the Bible. One

option this coming Lent is to follow the studies in

The Purpose Driven Life. If you don’t feel that’s

for you, there are plenty of Bible notes that are

available; if you want more information, please feel

free to ask Cameron, Gill or me. And if you want the

encouragement of others, then why not join one of our

People help us to become more Christ-like. So does

God’s Word, the Bible. And so can circumstances;

we can also be Transformed by Troubles and Grow

through Temptation. God uses troubles to draw us

closer to himself. Rick Warren writes, “Your most

profound and intimate experiences of worship will likely

be in your darkest days.”

It’s very easy to sound glib when saying that God uses

suffering to bring us closer to him. But as a Parish

I think we’ve moved beyond the glib stage when it

comes to suffering. Many of us will remember last

year’s sermon series based on Lazarus in which those

who spoke offered personal reflections on the nature

of the suffering they had been through or had been

part of. Cameron, Adjoa, Adrian and Gill all spoke very

movingly and challengingly last year, and if you want

to read the talks, they’re on the Parish blog; you can

find them in April and May last year, or instead you can

ask the Parish Office for a copy.

In the light of what we heard last year, I’m hesitant to

say things that may sound glib. It’s easy to create the

impression that if God is with us, everything will be

alright. Mary and Martha went through great sadness

when Lazarus died, but their sadness turned to joy

when Jesus brought him back to life. But we know that

isn’t a universal experience. Christians are not immune

from tragedy – a young mother dying leaving children

behind, a parent losing a child. Bad things do happen,

and it’s in that light that I’m offering these thoughts;

in full awareness that healing will not always happen

in this life, we’ll have to wait for the resurrection life to

God wants us to become Christ-like, and if we are

to become like Christ, we’re going to experience

suffering. Jesus did. Indeed, the Bible tells us that

Jesus “learned obedience through suffering”, and that

he was “made perfect through suffering”.

Remember ICJO from Gill’s sermon a few weeks ago?

Instant Complete Joyful Obedience. If Jesus learned

obedience through suffering, then certainly that’s also

a way we’re going to learn obedience.

As well as being Transformed by Troubles, we’ll also

Grow through Temptation. Jesus was tempted, During

Lent, we remember the 40 days that Jesus spent in the

wilderness when Satan tempted Jesus. And if we’re

going to become more like Jesus, then we’re going to

face temptation, - and we’re going to defeat it. It’s not

a sin to be tempted. Often we can’t stop the thoughts

coming into our minds, but we can choose not to dwell

on them or to act on them. Yes, we are going to be

tempted, and so need to face up to the dangers of

temptation and not be intimidated by them.

Temptation comes in many forms, though often

money, sex and power are at the root of it: temptation

to fiddle a tax return; temptation to cheat on one’s

spouse; temptation to take the credit for a colleague’s

good work in order to gain a promotion. These are all

common temptations, and none of us are immune. We

must recognise our vulnerability.

How do we defeat temptation? A lot of it is common

sense. Diversion is a very good strategy. Temptation

begins in the mind. The thought pops in, “Why

don’t you do X?” X being something wrong. “If you

think, “I must not do X, I must not do X...”, the more

it consumes you, the more it takes you over. Instead,

focus on something else. Ignoring a temptation is a lot

more effective than battling to resist it.

Sometimes the best way of dealing with temptation is

to leave a tempting situation. Turning the computer off

or walking away from the bar isn’t cowardly; often it’s

The Bible is also a vital shield against temptation.

When Satan tempted Jesus, Jesus replied with a

quote from Scripture. When Satan said to him, “If

you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become

bread...” Jesus didn’t reply, “I’m not hungry.” Instead

he answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread

alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of

Again, there’s a risk of making it sound too easy. It

isn’t; it’s not often that we’re going to defeat temptation

overnight. Philip Yancey, another Christian writer

whose books we’ve often recommended, has written

a lot about people battling with addictions. He once

wrote, “Although an alcoholic may pray desperately

for the condition to go away, very few addicts report

sudden, miraculous healing. Most battle temptation

every day of their lives, experiencing grace not as

a magic potion, rather as a balm whose strength is

activated daily by conscious dependence on God.”

Created to be like Christ. Christlikeness is our eventual

destination, but it’s a very long journey – a journey

that will last a lifetime. Being part of a Christian

community will help us, as we learn to love others

as Jesus loved us. God’s Word, the Bible, is also an

invaluable resource. As we face troubles and suffering,

we shall grow. Similarly, we shall grow into maturity

by overcoming the temptations we face. But it’s not

going to be an easy journey, and at times we will feel

discouraged. I’ll conclude with some words from Rick

Warren; “Remember how far you’ve come, not just

how far you have to go. You are not where you want

to be, but neither are you where you used to be. Years

ago people wore a popular badge with the letters

PBGINFWMY. It stood for “Please Be Patient, God

is Not Finished With Me Yet.” God isn’t finished with

you, either, so keep on moving forward. Even the snail

reached the ark by persevering!”

Father, Thank for sending us your Son. In the power of

Sprit, may we face up to the challenge of this life and

become more like Him. Amen.

Sermon Sunday 6th February 2011

2011-02-11T13:26:00.003Z

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Adrian Parkhouse, preaches based on the reading from Ephesians 1: 1-10.

The Purpose Drive Life: Formed for God’s Family:

“To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus.” Eph 1:1

1. This talk is rather like a detective story. So see how you do with the clues.

The date: 4th April 1968. The time: just after 6pm. The scene: a small motel. A man has emerged onto a first floor balcony. He is evidently killing time, waiting for a friend still inside their room. The noise? Perhaps a car back-firing in the nearby street?

2. This is the third of our series of sermons which prepares us for our Lent studies later in the Spring. Then, as a Parish, we are invited to join together in following the discipline of reading and considering each day of Lent the 40 short chapters of Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Drive Life - in which we are challenged to identify and examine what we regard as the reasons we live as we do – what drives us. The book suggest 5 reasons, 5 drivers, 5 “purposes”, for the Christian’s life and this introductory series is intended to provide a brief and personal comment on each of these purposes. Today my task is to speak on Purpose No.2 “You were formed for God’s Family”.
3. The city: Memphis, Tennessee; the motel: the Lorraine; the man on the balcony: Dr Martin Luther King Jr; the noise? No, not a car back-firing, but a shot from a Remington 760 sporting rifle. Its bullet has entered Dr King’s throat, pierced his spinal column and before the hour is out he is pronounced dead.
4. My regression into childhood continues: a few years ago, in my late-40s I could excuse the purchase of the Scaletrix I had never had; in much the same way, a little later, the miniature railway I had always craved; but a recent fascination with remote-controlled helicopters which crash constantly did begin to cause me some concern; and now, as if to confirm that the regression is something serious, I find myself reading late at night, under the bedclothes. Or at least the modern equivalent, plugging in my iPod and being read to.
One of the books downloaded is Selected Speeches and Sermons of Dr Martin Luther King. Why? Partly because I realised that part of one of his speeches was probably one of only two talks in my life that had lodged in my memory (except for odd phrases of Churchill) and yet I knew very little about the man.
And so now I know a bit more. How this son of a Baptist minister was a teenager who questioned his father’s faith, who went on to study sociology before going to theological college; how his first appointment to a church in Montgomery, Alabama, brought him into the centre of the increasingly active movement for civil rights for the black people of America; how he helped organise the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 (Rosa Parks), leading to a court ruling ending segregation on public transport in that city; how then he lead the new Southern Christian Leadership Conference which, under his influence, adopted the tactics developed by Ghandi against the British in India, non-violent protest; and how boycotts and strikes and marches and speeches by Dr King became an increasingly frequent occurrence in the years of the late-50s and early-60s as black people challenged the racist laws of the southern states and began too to question the history of the nation that had freed them from slavery but left them in poverty. How he became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (1964). And I know how he was threatened, his home fire-bombed, regularly imprisoned and, once, stabbed; how his message of rational but implacable criticism of the status quo won him enemies in government, while his commitment to non-violent means won him enemies among black-led groups wanting more definitive action.
And I listened to the speech I thought I knew, the “I have a dream” speech delivered to the crowds attending the mass “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” in August 1963. And as I listened to more, I realised that there were certain themes which occur again and again in the sermons and speeches. I mention two that are relevant this morning: Dr King’s conviction that segregation was wrong was founded on the belief that we are created by God, not only to be equal before Him but also to be dependent on one another. Again and again he quotes John Donne, “No man is an island...”. And second that “dream” theme crops up often in his teaching – “the American dream” and then the Washington speech is given in various forms before the big march. But the reason I have laid this trail of clues is to lead us a “dream” sermon he preached on the 3 March 1968 – that’s a month before his assassination: a sermon with a poignant, prophetic title: “Unfulfilled Dreams”; a sermon based on the story of David and the disappointment at not being the one to be building God’s Temple in Jerusalem; a sermon delivered – and this is important for this morning – at Dr King’s “home church”, Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, surrounded by people he had worshipped with and shared with for much of his 39 years (his parents included); and a sermon which is a confession, not of failure in his cause, but of the battle in his life between good and evil. It is an emotional sermon and he reaches his crescendo as he says: “I don’t know about you, but I can make a testimony. You don’t need to go out this morning saying that Martin Luther King is a saint. Oh no. I want you to know today that I’m a sinner like all of God’s children. But I want to be a good man. And I want to hear a voice saying to me one day “I take you in and I bless you, because you try. It is well that it was within thy heart””. - “You don’t need to go out this morning saying that Martin Luther King is a saint”
5. And more briefly, may I pick up another clue laid earlier: the other sermon which has stayed me was, oddly, on the same sort of theme. In about 1980 I listened to Rev David Prior, then Vicar of St Aldgates in Oxford, preaching on the tricky passage from Acts 5 concerning the lies told by the new church members, Ananias and Saphira. The message I took away from that sermon was revolutionary to me: that the Church was in business for sinners and was made up of sinners. Our “sainthood” – the saints to whom Paul wrote in the opening verse of our passage today – is – like rest of the blessings and plans which Paul sets out in his letter to a community that he knew well and loved dearly – our sainthood is a result of the grace of God. Not us but Him. The same message as in MLK’s “Unfulfilled Dream”.
6. So at last we are ready for the final scene – the denouement in the drawing room. Is everybody here? My admission of regression into childhood we can ignore as a red herring; and the dramatic opening we can treat as window dressing intended to attract attention. What you may not yet have fathomed is the link between that confessional sermon of MLK (and the message I have carried from my time at college) and Rick Warren’s second purpose – our being formed for God’s family. Or is it obvious? That the Church, God’s family is made up of you and me and people like us, people who are far from perfect, do not see ourselves as “saints” and for whom, as Warren describes it, a “place to belong” is the more important; especially a place which he explains can be a place where friendships can be honest and authentic, where sympathy, mercy and forgiveness are the common currency, together with honesty and confidentiality. He has more to say about practising “being church”, but his words on these matters encourage me to encourage you to the conclusion, if you had not already reached it, that, no matter what your history, looking at yourself with critical eyes, there can be no reason to conclude that you are not formed for God’s family - to be one of the saints.
Elementary? Amen.