Pentecost! A good and fine day in the life of the Church

Today is a great and grand day in the church calendar; it is one of the splendid Christian feasts.  It is the day when we celebrate the power of the Holy Spirit present in the Church of Christ.

Last year, it fell on the fourth Sunday of the month, so (at 10.30) we had a Family Service, which involved making ‘flame’ hats to represent the Holy Spirit above the heads of the Disciples.  This year, the family Eucharist falls next week, on Trinity Sunday – I’m at a loss what to do for next week!  It could be fun!

Today is the start of that great season of Pentecost, where we can almost see the rest of the year stretching out before us.  Apart from Trinity Sunday, and some feasts of Saints, we are in the Pentecost Season until the 1^st Sunday of the Kingdom Season in November!

This rhythm of the seasons gives us a steady and solid beat with which to plan the year.  It allows us to prepare, plan and hopefully get things right for the festivals. 

We all love a bit of forethought and preparation – if clergy are able to sit back a few weeks before Easter or Christmas with all their liturgy, sermons and speeches prepared they are happy – there is an air of calm that descends when a sermon is completed – mostly because before sermon writing starts, most of us haven’t a clue what we are going to say.

This sense of all being good, and planning ministry is lovely! But it’s a million miles from what happened to the disciples that day. 

They were uncertain what was going to happen, their world turned upside-down.  A wind blew through the locked room, flames appeared and then they were literally speaking a whole new language, or languages.  The reading from Acts tells us;

And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?

The next line of the reading after the Holy Spirit descending finds the Disciples outside in the streets, they were in the crowd, preaching, showing their faith, being ridiculed and berated – but they were there – DOING THE WORK OF THE CHURCH.

The reading doesn’t even tell us what they said after the Holy Spirit descended…

God had given them a gift too precious to waste.  They are up and out.

We then hear the sermon of Peter, who puts the whole thing in context, firstly by promising that they aren’t drunk!  And then he tells them what the Prophet Joel said concerning these things.  He tells them a horror story of the sun being turned to darkness and the moon to blood.  He tells them of the glory of the coming of The Lord to give salvation to all who call upon his name.

The Acts of the Apostles is an important book in the New Testament because it gives us snapshots of how the early church spread so far, so quickly across the world.

The visitors to Jerusalem took the faith back home with them, and soon there were Christians in Samaria, Ethiopia, Damascus, Sharon, Lydda, Joppa, Cyprus, Phoenicia and Antioch, and, with Paul’s conversion, Europe and parts of Asia.  The faith even came to Wales relatively early in its’ development.

And…just like at the beginning….the message was taken to people in their own language, speaking into their lives, about their worries, troubles, fears and their joys and happiness.  The stories have been transmitted in a thousand languages to millions of people, keeping up the tradition of that first Pentecost – the Birthday of the Church.

I’ve thought sometimes that calling Pentecost the Birthday of the Church is over sentimentalizing the whole event.  The terrifying event surely can’t really be similar to the church of today.

If it resembled the church of today, well, on the Day of Pentecost, there would be someone giving out a bulletin with events for the week, there would be tea and coffee after the service, and the children would have walked in just before the end.

But then again, perhaps it was just like the modern church!  The people who said;

·    “These people are drunk”, well they might have been the Pentecostals. 

·    The ones who disagreed and said “No, they can’t be” well, they must have been the Methodists. 

·    Then there were others who said “what does this all mean?” were the Baptists. 

·    The ones who insisted on making sure that the sermon was available in all languages so that no one was excluded were the United Reformed Church.

·    And then the one who categorized everybody into different nationalities, writing a list and making sure that each person could be categorized, so in the future when people would read what happened, they would understand a little of the history….yes, they were the Anglicans.

Right at the beginning of the church, we had all the usual characters.  Working Ecumenically together if you like.

It would take a few years for committees, organs, Sunday school and church wardens to arrive, but the main components of the modern church were there.

The beauty of Pentecost, is that we can see God tends to do things in a particular order.  The people of Jesus’ day hadn’t really understood what the prophets were telling them. 

That they were being blessed by God, in order to be a blessing to the whole world. 

No wonder Peter quoted the Prophets!

Pentecost expresses what God requires – that we, who are blessed, share in a world-wide mission, without fear, because God wishes to reconcile humanity.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles about the birth of the Church, is a glorious connecting with God.  From their desolation and despair, their trust in the truth of God brought them to the will and purpose of God.  Wonderful Stuff!   For those gathered at Pentecost, it was a leap of faith, a jump into the unknown.  Would it be that we were as brave. 

GOod Friday 2013

After our Lenten preparation, we have entered into the reality of Holy Week, gone are the palm branches and the shouts of Hosanna, gone are the coats thrown in the dusty road to carpet the route of the king, and gone is the donkey.  Today is Good Friday.

Each year it gets harder for me to remember what life was like before my ordination.  However, I do know that I first felt the call to ordination around this time during Lent.

I remember that each year, I finished work on Maundy Thursday in the evening, and when most of my colleagues flew away for a few days, I would go to church.  In those days, we would be given no less than three holiday days, so I wouldn’t return to work until Wednesday.

I would live the Paschal Triduum, (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday) up until the first service of Easter, when the light of Christ was brought into the church on Saturday night, lit from a fire outside the church.  After the great celebration of Easter, I would have two days to reflect and relax, before returning to work.

There was the rather quirky “Easter Monday” with no religious significance, but it was another day off...the Tuesday was just an extra day.

It didn’t take me long to realise that we should have probably have finished work on the Wednesday of Holy Week, and gone back a day earlier, so that we could travel the last hours with Christ to the cross.

I was like a child in a sweetshop – the churches in which I grew up we didn’t really do Holy Week, just Easter Day, and for me, there was always something missing.

One of the standards from the pulpit, is when clergy say ‘There can be no Easter without Christmas, and no Christmas without Easter” merrily going on to unpack that in a thousand or so words.

But they should say the same sort of thing each Holy Week, when the device is much better used.  I’ll have a go…

There can be no Easter Day without Good Friday – no resurrection without crucifixion.  There can also be no proper understanding of Easter without an understanding of Good Friday.

Welcome to Good Friday…

We meet today to recall the important events in the life of Jesus and the history of the Hebrew slaves.  However merely remembering doesn’t do justice to the events of the betrayal and the arrest of Jesus.

Each Good Friday, we are being presented with the story of our salvation so that it might speak to us, in our own lives, in our own city, today.  We are being encouraged to look, once again about the great gift of faith we have.  We don’t do enough remembering, we rarely do enough thinking about faith…

Have a think about this…The EXODUS, remembered by the Jewish people at this time isn’t a faint memory of something that happened to distant relations, but an experience that is shared by each new generation, that shapes the community of faith and each and every family in Judaism.

It will be St. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, who will remind us of this fact.  He writes to the early church because he thinks they have forgotten the link between the death of Christ and the Exodus.

If Paul were writing to the church today, he might well remind us of the connectedness of what we do in church, and how this should affect the lives of the people in the community around us.

The story of GOOD FRIDAY is not a simple tale about humility and service; it is the ultimate act of servanthood.

By virtue of his death, doing for us that which we couldn’t do for ourselves, Jesus of Nazareth radically challenges conventional, hierarchical ideas about leaders and followers. 

No other leader is worthy, never has been and never will be, and we will constantly strive to act as Jesus did. 

This constant striving is in the remembering, and like our Jewish brothers and sisters, this is an experience that should be shared by each new generation, it should shape our community of faith and each family in Christianity.

This is, of course, another example of Jesus bringing a new promise from God that sits perfectly with the promises given in the past.

The Good News of God in Jesus of Nazareth is not merely a theological exercise but it is an explanation, a demonstration, and an experience. At the Last Supper, Jesus shows the full extent of his love, and on the Cross…well….

Today, God is asking us if we can see the importance of sacrificial love in humility.  It is the only love that can save humanity from itself.

I can’t get a bit of scripture out of my mind, it’s like a pop song that is going around my head, and it’s difficult.  It jumps off the page.  Paul writes to the Romans;

“Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.”

And today, the Son of God dies for the good, the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous alike.  He dies for you, he dies for me, and for all people, for all eternity…

How can I understand, comprehend or appreciate that?  Well I try to live up to the standard.  I pray every day and I stand behind the altar and remember what he said.

And so, we are left with the standard.  The standard Christ instituted on this day, and the standard that we should live out in our lives.

Let us, in humility, follow Jesus today and in our lives. 

Easter Day 2013

SERMON - Acts 10.34–43; John 20.1–18

Alleluia Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.  Alleluia

When a young minister was still single, he preached a sermon he entitled, "Rules for Raising Children." After he got married and had children of his own, he changed the title of the sermon to "Suggestions for Raising Children." When his children got to be teenagers, he stopped preaching on that subject altogether.

The Easter stories seem to be all about people making mistakes and not understanding what’s happening. 

·     Mary sees the funeral wrappings and thinks the body of Jesus has been stolen. 

·     Peter sees the wrappings and can’t understand what it’s all about.

 

·     The Disciples had no idea what Jesus wanted them to do

·     And angels then question Mary, and she still doesn’t comprehend, she thinks Jesus is the gardener. 

·     She reaches out to give him a cwtch, as we say in Wales, and he tells her not to.

I can’t remember reading more misunderstandings in a few short paragraphs.  It is as if everyone had no idea what was happening, and no one had taken time to sit and think about anything.

It’s clear that there has to be a point being made here.  The first Easter happened, the tomb was empty, space, time and world history had changed, but the people that witnessed it were the same, their minds and imaginations were the same also.  They weren’t given a cosmic understanding to comprehend the enormity of what was happening.  They seemed to just look on in bafflement.

They were trying to count the grains of sand on the beach really.  The explosive fact of the resurrection left them with a world of possibilities, and no real way of expressing that.

Reading the accounts of the Passion, from all the Gospels, and seeing the bafflement of the disciples, is a mark of the authenticity of the story for me.

A generation later when the stories were written down, if someone had been making it all up,

·     They wouldn’t have had the disciples in such bewilderment,

·     And no one would have bothered to make up the detail about how the folded grave clothes were in a place by themselves,

·     Another thing that jumps out to me is that it is hard to explain how, when the disciples saw Jesus, they didn’t recognise him, either here or on the road to Emmaus.

The first Christians weren’t prepared for what was happening, it was as if they were struggling to describe something they didn’t have the language for.

Ever since then, people have tried to explain the Easter message, with varying degrees of success.

Archbishop Barry is preaching this morning at the Holy Eucharist in Llandaff cathedral on the other side of this city, and he will liken Jesus to Fireman Sam, because they are both in the rescue business and they never let people down.

The Church in Wales Press Office tells me that he will say;

"Anyone in trouble, with no questions asked, so too God responds to everyone in need".

"As his name suggests, Sam is a fireman who rescues people from fires but he is into all kinds of rescue.

"So, whether people are stuck up a mountain, marooned at sea, have fallen off a cliff or their bus has got stuck in a bog, helped by Penny, Tom, Elvis, Station Officer Steel and Radar the dog, based at the fire service at Pontypandy, Fireman Sam comes to the rescue.

"If you wanted to sum up God's work, He is a God who is in the rescue business. That is the root meaning of the word 'salvation' - it means being saved from something or someone.”

We don’t need to be able to explain everything, we can just sit looking into the empty tomb, and be content that it happened. 

The first disciples learned something after the resurrection, and it is that the Easter message is about looking at the product of Easter morning and not fully understanding the details of the day.

Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, in his acceptance letter, wrote;

“The work of the Church of England is not done primarily on television or at Lambeth, but in over 16,000 churches, where hundreds of thousands of people get on with the job they have always done of loving neighbour, loving each other and giving more than 22 million hours of voluntary service outside the church a month.”

That is a product of Easter morning!

[He then goes on to call Parish Priests, the great unsung heroes of the church – so I think he’s great!]

The Christian church is still the largest provider of Health Care throughout the world, Christians have called for civil liberties, peace and justice for all people.  Christians founded the Red Cross, Save the Children, Action for Children and the Children’s Society.  They have called for change to legislation to protect people, to empower people and to support people. 

Baroness Warsi, coined the rather nice phrase;

People who "do God, do good"

She added to the figures quoted by Justin Welby, adding that as the economic downturn has taken hold, Christians have increased their giving by a third to social action projects, in money and also in time!

That is a product of Easter morning!

In another lovely report, we are told that  ‘Half of Anglican parishes run services such as food banks, homework clubs and even street patrols.’

This is the product of Easter morning!

I’m not suggesting that the history of the church is all light and joy, the darkness has slipped in and flourished in some places, but for me the proof of the Resurrection is the product of Easter morning, that continues to bring people together for;

·     Support

·     Social action, and

·     Spirituality

The leading Theologian N.T.Wright tells us that;

Easter is what it is because, together with Jesus’ crucifixion, it is the central event of world history, the moment towards which everything was rushing and from which everything emerges new.

The Gospel, says Paul in Colossians, has already been preached to every creature under heaven; which must mean that with the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth a shock wave has rattled through the world, so that despite appearances the world is in fact a different place, full of new possibilities, previously unimagined.

We should take these opportunities to build a new future as a product of Easter Morning.

I’m not sure whether Fireman Sam is really like Jesus, I would have thought he was more like Arnold Schwarzeneger, after all in the Terminator, he said I’ll be back.

And on that note,

Alleluia Christ is risen, He is risen indeed Alleluia!

For the morning of Easter 2

Acts 5. 27-32;

Revelation 1.4-8;

John 20.19-31

DOUBT!  What a thing

THOMAS doubted, but so did they all.

It’s fairly clear that all the accounts of the Resurrection are full of how incompetent and disorganised the disciples are.

We hear of Thomas’ doubt today, forgetting all about the how the disciples dismissed the women’s tale of an empty tomb as nonsense (Luke 24.11).

It was just Thomas’s bad luck not to have been there when Jesus appeared to the others. But, even if his doubts were no deeper than those of the rest, Thomas will always remain “Doubting Thomas”.

For those of us who find it all very difficult, and make a lot of mistakes…he will always be our patron saint.

“I never have had one doubt,” wrote John Henry Newman, reflecting on the “perfect peace and contentment” he had enjoyed since his admission into “the one fold of Christ”

Evangelicals make much of “assurance”. “Blessed assurance,” they sing, “Jesus is mine.” The same Evangelical confidence rings out in Timothy Dudley-Smith’s great hymn, “Thine be the glory”. “No more we doubt thee, glorious prince of life” we sing, and while we sing it, we mean it!

Some of my more earnest friends tell me that I shouldn’t have any doubts.  They tell me that it will make me unstable (it’s a bit late to warn me about that). 

So there appear to be TWO ways to live faith – either in the belief that I won’t have any doubts at all, or in the belief that doubt is bad and damaging.      

There is, however, another way!  From this perspective, doubt is not the enemy of faith. Certainty is the enemy.  It is all about holding both your beliefs and doubts with integrity and in a balance.

The prophets of this third way were two poets, Tennyson in the 19th century and R. S. Thomas in the last. The profound insight of Tennyson’s In Memoriam is that uncertainty and religious commitment are not incompatible. Doubt and faith can and do coexist.

Tennyson knew that “calm despair and wild unrest” can be “tenants of a single breast” – as he said.

 There lives more faith in

 honest doubt,

 Believe me, than in half

    the creeds.  (he said that as well)

It is impossible to be certain, but it is possible, as Job did, to turn in the right direction.

 I stretch lame hands of faith,

 and grope,

And gather dust and chaff,

and call

 To what I feel is Lord of all,

 And faintly trust the larger

      hope.

For R. S. Thomas, faith and doubt are inseparable. Prayer becomes:

 . . . leaning far out

 over an immense depth, letting

 your name go and waiting,

 somewhere between faith

     and doubt,

 for the echoes of its arrival.

       “Waiting”

Thomas also questioned whether prayer actually works

 He is that great void

 we must enter, calling

 to one another on the way

 in the direction from which

     he blows.

            “Migrants”

Back to Doubting Thomas — In the reading we hear he is granted, as were the others, the opportunity to see and touch the risen Lord.

Jesus says to him: “Be unbelieving no longer.” (Thus, correctly, the Revised English Bible; the New Revised Standard Version’s “Do not doubt” is a mistranslation.)

This is an invitation to trust and obey — not a promise of certainty. Thomas’s response is to worship the risen Lord. Does that conclude his doubting? Possibly, but if we are half as complicated creatures as it seems we are, maybe, on many a Monday morning, he is still “Doubting Thomas”.

And on this second Sunday of Easter, we can see the aftermath of the great festival of Easter – it took weeks to arrive, and it departed quickly – but do we REALLY understand what it really means?

I read in the newspaper that the press officer at a major supermarket chain got in trouble in Holy Week for getting the theology behind her company’s seasonal campaign a bit mixed up.

The unfortunate employee first put out a press release saying that the supermarket’s range of Easter eggs and other seasonal products was part of the traditional celebration at this time of Christ’s birthday. She quickly amended it to say that the eggs represented Christ’s rebirth, before a final version vaguely guessed that it might have something to do with death and resurrection.

To be fair, of all the Easter mysteries we observe this this one may be the hardest to unravel: why we commemorate the death and resurrection of the most important figure in human history with bunny rabbits that lay chocolate eggs in spring gardens.

To be fairer still, despite the stick she took for it, her changing explanation was not such a bad stab at interpreting the significance of the Easter story. Of course Christians believe the central point about the Triduum — the three sacred days that began last night with the Holy Thursday commemoration of the Last Supper and conclude triumphantly on Easter Sunday — is that it marks both a death and a rebirth.

And just as sure as you can’t have Easter Day without Good Friday, you also can’t have a Christian Festival without a great deal of confusion.

As the world marches onward to a more secular understanding of the mysteries of faith, Christians are being left behind in the struggle for a platform to explain the importance of our faith.  No Wonder Christians doubt!  If only I could persuade them that doubting is not the end of the world (or even the end of faith), it is merely part of the journey!

DOUBT!  What a thing

If I had one wish, I don’t think I would wish to have ‘no doubt’.  I don’t think I would wish to get a letter from God, explaining everything about life, love, war, justice, relationships, money, greed, guilt, happiness, hatred and all the other things. 

I think that part of the Technicolor journey through life is all about looking for certainties, and not actually finding them.  It is all about us considering, thinking, praying, hoping – these are the processes that have given us the greatest music, art, literature and poetry in the history of humanity.

So what about St. Thomas the Apostle?  Well, many of the ancient texts are attributed to him.  It seems that after a shaky start, he really set about moving forward in the ‘building the church’ stakes.  It is reported that he witnessed the assumption of Mary into heaven; he then left to spread the Gospel.

Reports have him evangelising Syria and Persia, then he travelled as far as Western India, then to Southern India.  Indeed the various denominations of modern Saint Thomas Christians ascribe their unwritten tradition to the end of the 2nd century and believe that Thomas landed at Maliankara in AD 52

In great controversy, it is held that St. Thomas then travelled to Paraguay, Peru, and Ecuador to evangelise the Mesoamerican civilisations there. 

I couldn’t even begin to speak about the writings of Thomas, and the generations of Christians who have grown up in all corners of the world in Churches and Traditions dedicated to St. Thomas.

If this is the product of DOUBT, then I will be praying for more doubt for myself…

Evensong Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

Almost every story in the Bible has meaning that has been lost over the years, things that didn’t get taught and things people thought was unimportant.

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus is no exception to this.

Emmaus was a famous place – In 169 BC Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria besieged and captured Jerusalem.  It was three years before the Jews could regroup; but, under Judas Maccabaeus, they launched their fight for freedom.  In 165 BC the Syrian commander detached 5000 infantry and 1000 cavalry from his main forces to travel by night and to ambush the Jews.  Judas found out and marched against the main Syrian camp at Emmaus - Judas said to the troops. “Remember how our ancestors were saved at the Red Sea when Pharaoh was pursuing them.  Now let us call on heaven, to remember his covenant with our ancestors and to destroy this army confronting us today.  Then all the Gentiles will know that there is one who ransoms and saves Israel.”  Judas’s army won the day.

The two disciples, heading for Emmaus, were heading for the site of the ancient victory.  Perhaps Luke imagines a glimmer of hope in their darkness?  Where God had acted before, he might do the same again. 

The disciples linked Jesus with Moses, and Moses was linked to Maccabaeus – In their minds he was from the same stable.   In Luke it says that Jesus was “a prophet mighty in word and deed….and we were hoping that this was the one who was to ransom Israel”. 

This is also how the trouble started in Holy Week.  You probably remember me saying before that it is difficult to understand why the crowds turned from the “hosannas” of Palm Sunday to the “crucify him” of Good Friday.  And why Jesus rode into town on a donkey and not a horse.  With the benefit of hindsight, I suppose they could have seen that this was a statement to the people – Jesus is saying “I am not Judas Maccabeaus”  He was not bringing political liberation, He was bringing the better liberation, salvation.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus have hope.  They wait for things to be better in the world.  Despite all that Jesus had told them their hopes of a political kingdom endure – a sort of King Jesus in the palace idea.  They had been told that the Kingdom of God (according to Luke) cannot be watched for, and they won’t be able to say “here it is” or “there it is”, it will be in them and amongst them. 

On the evening at Emmaus, they were still in the dark until Jesus broke bread with them – in that moment they see who Jesus really is.

Perhaps they understood what they must do, and why the last few days seemed to be terrible.

It’s strange that as soon as they understood, they went about their work and had huge success.  From the few disciples we are now significantly bigger as a church – some say as many as 2.1 billion people in 34,000 separate Christian groups.

So what about this journey from Emmaus for people of faith?  After the crucifixion and the resurrection, we have re-grouped taken the message to the world.

For me this means that we are living in the world, but we are also apart from the world.  Looking at things differently, and proclaiming our faith in many ways.

We need to be different in what we say and do – caring for the poor and the outcast as Christ did. 

So how do we look different?  How do people recognise us.

I always like to see people wearing crosses, crucifixes and other symbols of faith, because I like to believe that they are ‘standing apart’ from the crowd – making a declaration that they are one of the army that re-grouped in Emmaus, and marched on the world.

The truth is though, that most people who wear crosses aren’t religious, I don’t mind.  I like to pretend that they are ‘one of us’.

I read the church times a few weeks ago, the question was asked “Why do clergy generally wear black and not bright colours?” I waited patiently for the answers from well meaning clever clergy to be printed, and I was disappointed with the first few results, speaking about sin, denial and being miserable.  Then to my delight and surprise, The Revd Paul Wilkin from Essex gave the best answer.

He wrote that the late Johnny Cash the American Country singer-songwriter (and Christian) known for wearing only black said;

“Well, you wonder why I always dress in black.  Why you never see bright colours on my back, and why does my appearance seem to have a sombre tone.  Well, there’s a reason for the things I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he’s a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read, or listened to the words that Jesus said, about the road to happiness through love and charity.  Why?  You’d think He’s talking to you and me.”

Johnny Cash was saying that he needed to live in the world and still be apart from the world.  He was saying that all our lives need to be a statement about those who have no voice.

Whatever the world does to us, we will still be part of the unstoppable force that regrouped after the resurrection to plan for world domination – not in the name of power, profit or ideology, but in the name of that great liberation, that excellent freedom – salvation.

Whether you wear black to remind yourself and the world of the poor and downtrodden, or whether you wear a crucifix or cross, a dove a fish or a if you have a multicolour tattoo, wear it with pride, because it speaks of your belonging to the church of God, the army of the Prince of Peace.

I was looking for some modern quotes about Christianity, and I found one that was quite interesting.

Sam Pascoe said;

"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it moved to America and became an enterprise."

I would like to be able to add – and it came to Wales and started another worldwide revolution of justice and peace.  I might be a dreamer, but if we don’t think big….well, it might as well never have happened.

`

Morning Sermon for Easter 3

As Saul went along the Damascus Road (Acts 9) he was breathing threats and murder against anyone connected to Jesus. But as he walked he was struck down by a bright light and he heard a loud voice,

‘Saul, Saul. Why do you persecute me?’ And Saul replied, ‘Who are you, Lord…’

There is no question that Saul was a driven man, his life’s work was to wipe the memory of this break-away sect, from the face of the earth.

This was Saul, a man committed to the murder of Christians was now confronted by the awful truth he had sought to bury.  His old life was over, and it was time for changes in his life. His life, even his name, would never be the same again.

Looking at the readings as a whole, they are all about vocation (ahem! two weeks before Vocation Sunday – where they might have been a better fit)

Two of the readings that are oft quoted by ordinands as part of their calling, discernment and formation as priests and deacons, the Acts reading, about feeding lambs and sheep, and the conversion of Saul, all speak directly of the God who calls.

This is the transforming power that God can exercise in the lives of people. The transformation that calls people to radically evaluate what they do or think or say, in the light of the presence of Jesus in their lives…listening and responding to God.

God speaks in all kinds of ways to us – it may be in words that we can clearly understand in our own minds, or it may be through the words of others, or it may just be in the events of that day that are happening all around us.

In today’s gospel reading (John 21:1-19), the risen Lord, the Messiah, the Saviour of the world, is making breakfast for his disciples.

It’s an incredible account because of its simplicity. Jesus should surely have been marching on the Temple, showing the wounds of crucifixion, and just showing that he was alive to the authorities. Surely he should have been strolling around the city of Jerusalem, with a smile of victory, approaching all of those people who shouted for his death… Surely he should have just been gloating in his triumph over death…

But maybe those would be our actions – Jesus had no such thoughts. He bore no malice, no hatred, no resentment… There was no need for any revenge or hostility. In his victory over death he had merely accomplished what he had come to do, and now it was time for breakfast.

It’s a strange incident that is reported in the Acts of the Apostles.  Throughout the Bible time and time again God is giving people second and third and fourth chances to come back to him and enjoy a relationship. God gives us the freewill to make up our own minds about where we put God in our lives. Painful as that answer may be sometimes for God, he would have it no other way. 

Jesus made those disciples breakfast because he still had something to teach them. Three times he questioned an increasingly frustrated Peter, ‘Do you love me ?’ Three times Peter said that he did – just as three times he had rejected Jesus prior to the crucifixion. But whilst Jesus repeated the question he also gave him something different each time as well. First Jesus told Peter to ‘Feed my lambs’, then he said to ‘Tend my sheep’, and the third time he told him to ‘Feed my sheep’.

I love this story of simplicity and friendship, because that’s what it is.  The Lord, the Son of God with his friends, giving them the strength and belief they need to go into the world themselves and ‘feed and tend the sheep’.

Sometimes, however, I wish God would zap some people, like he zapped Saul, turning him into Paul.  However, I know that that isn’t the way that people can come to love and trust God.

The real answer is for us to be with others, sharing the best God has given us, as a testimony to what God has done for us.

We should never give up on God, because he never gives up on us.

Lent 3

A vicar parked his car on double-yellow lines a large city because he was short of time and couldn’t find a space.
Then he put a note under the windscreen wiper that read:

“I have driven up and down this street 10 times. If I don’t park here, I’ll miss my appointment…Forgive us our trespasses.”

When he returned, he found a ticket from a traffic warden along with this note:


“I’ve walked up and down this street for 10 years. If I don’t give you a ticket I’ll lose my job….Lead us not into temptation.”

It’s right to be thinking about temptation in Lent, and indeed our trespasses.  Next week is Laudate Sunday, or Mothering Sunday, it is that brief moment of respite in Lent when we can relax a little.

But today, it’s all about repentance.

“Repent.” In the gospel today (Luke 13:1-9) we hear Jesus saying, “unless you repent, you will all perish”

The word REPENT has some rather scary connotations.  In my mind, it is associated strongly with some of the non-conformist preachers of the past, and the image of them banging their fists on the pulpit, with a terrified congregation below.

But actually repentance doesn’t need to be like that at all. What repentance is, is a turning away from the things we have done wrong, the things that have hurt God or hurt other people, or things that we have failed to do which we should have done, and saying sorry.

It is a commitment on our part to accept our failures, and try and improve our lives. In fact therefore, repentance is actually a great gift from God. It is the chance to say sorry and begin afresh. It is a chance for us all to get closer to God.

That sense that God will give us a clean slate, if we are earnestly repenting, is something that continues to mystify me, and has done so since my childhood.

So, it was good to think more deeply about this particular mystery for this sermon.

REPENTANCE is best understood in stages, and the first stage is to recognise the areas where we are failing or have failed.

There is nothing that God can’t accept, there is nothing that he isn’t willing to accept in our pasts, as long as we are recognising that what we have done or failed to do was wrong, and we are sorry.

We are always suspicious of anything that is free, but this is free.  Sometimes we may not be able to forgive ourselves, but God can forgive us.

The second stage is to realise that just because forgiveness is free, repentance needs work, lots of work. 

Being sorry, really sorry about something, is the hard part.  God forgives us, and that might make it worse.  We know that to be really sorry we need to change the way we are, how we see others, and sometimes being sorry means changing a lot.  God makes no unreasonable demands about repentance and forgiveness, we do that to ourselves, and others do it to us.

It all seems very easy, but I’m sure we’ve all tried saying sorry at some time and found it very difficult.

There are a whole host of reasons why;

·     There may be the feeling that actually we did the right thing, maybe in the wrong way

·     The person we shouted at got what was coming to them, the insurance company we were less than honest with have taken plenty of our money in the past

·     The person we gossiped about gossips about us, and so on.

But, as Christians we can find no such justification, Jesus offers us a gospel which talks of accepting that people will hurt us but still loving those people.

It was particularly poignant, when Bishop Dominic said in his first Lent talk that he wished he had loved his parishioners more when he was a parish priest. 

I think that’s true of us all, spending more time with people, and not with books, praying with people, and not just for people.

Another reason why we may find it hard to seek repentance, is that we may have gone too far down a particular road. The mistake has got bigger and bigger and we are too proud to say we have been wrong all along.

Again, of course, it’s no excuse. Carrying on with something just because you’ve always done it is sheer stupidity if you now know that thing too be wrong.

Again, it is important to stress that God is not interested in our pasts, whatever they contain, as long as we are looking to do better in the future, and commit our lives to him. We cannot allow pride or anything else to get in the way.

So, it is important to recognise the areas that are damaging our lives and our relationship with God, too much time worrying about the past ruins the future.

The American philosopher, Mortimer Adler, before he was eventually converted to Christianity he was asked why there had been such reluctance in the past. He replied that he had been close to accepting Christianity on a number of occasions but didn’t do it. He went on to say,

“If one is born a Christian, one can be light hearted about living up to Christianity, but if one converts by a clear conscious act of will, one had better be prepared to live a truly Christian life. So you ask yourself, are you prepared to give up all your vices and weaknesses of the flesh.”

This is a bit daft , although I understand what he means.  There is no difference really.  The reality is that the standards Jesus calls for are very different from those so often seen in the world today, and as Christians we must follow and proclaim Christ’s standards whatever the cost to ourselves. As we go through Lent we reflect closely on the journey Christ took for us, it is quite sobering when we think of how little we are asked to do for him, we don’t do a lot to wear the badge of the Christian do we?

What do we do then?

We come to church, we are the gathered church, the people of God together.  Whatever particular tradition, whatever language we use, wherever we are, it is what we are called to do

The Bible tells us that we should pray at all times.  Again it isn’t something God needs from us to make him feel better, it is a gift to us a way of getting closer to him, a way of asking for help and guidance, a way of giving thanks or confessing, and it’s a way of listening to God it is also a way of joining our prayers with others, to make a real difference.

Community is essential as a Christian, John Wesley once said that the New Testament knows nothing of solitary religion. We are not intended to worship alone. Yes, there will be times for private prayer and Bible study, but we are also called to support and care for one another. 

If Christianity is to be taken seriously then we must live out the Gospel in our everyday lives...we will be judged by the world for the things we say and do, and that reflects on the church. And Christ too is judged by our actions.

So there you have it, repentance is not only desirable, it is necessary.  It won’t bring quick answers to all the questions of life, it never is an easy road, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we will never make the same mistakes again, but we are called to be repentant, we are called to put things right, we are called to live our lives in love for others.