Abraham and Isaac - the sacrifice of a child?!

Genesis 22.1-19 - Abraham goes to sacrifice Isaac.

To watch this sermon, please click here https://youtu.be/g2U-07V11gQ        

        Once upon time there was a cave woman, who lived in cave...as cave-women did in those days. Outside her cave was a tree. And verily, it came to pass, that Cave-woman noticed that when it rained, the tree seemed to come alive. She also noticed that at certain times of the year, if conditions were just right, the tree produced delicious fruit that she could gather for food.

Now Cave-Woman had a cave-husband - who wasn't especially interested in fruit. He preferred his food to have been running around before he killed it and ate it, fresh. Cave-husband used to go off with his mates to hunt animals. Sometimes they would be gone for days at a time...and when they returned home, they would talk about the hunt, around the campfire. They wondered why each hunt was so different. Could it be that someone, or something, was affecting how each hunt went?  Cave-woman would listen to these stories around the campfire. She saw similarities between the hunters' talk about the hunt, and her own observations about her tree.

One night, Cave-woman said to Cave-husband, "I wonder whether there are forces that interfere in some way with my tree, and your hunt". "Hmm," replied Cave-husband, "perhaps you are right." That would explain why every hunt is different. I wonder if there is a way to persuade these forces to do what we want them to do for us?"  Cave-woman thought for a moment. "Where do you think these forces might be?" she asked. "Well," replied Cave-husband, "I reckon they must be up in the sky...looking down on us. After all, that's where the big burning yellow thing is. And that's where the rain comes from. They must be sent by these forces".

"I know!" said Cave-woman "What if we were to put some of my fruit, and some of your last hunt up on the top of that hill...and maybe set fire to it? Then the forces will smell the smoke from our food, and will know that we are grateful to them, and sorry for anything we’ve done wrong.  Maybe then they will help us to find more food?" "Great idea," said Cave-husband. "Let's do it!"

And so burnt offerings were made to the forces in the sky...forces that came to be known as 'the gods'. There were gods for everything. Gods of fruit, gods of rain, gods of the hunt, gods of the lake. One of my favourites is the god of beer!

But, over time, people began to puzzle over why the gods didn't always respond to their offerings and prayers.  Larger and greater sacrifices were offered, but the gods seemed deaf.  Then, around the camp-fire, some bright spark suggested “Perhaps we have to sacrifice one of our very own children?" There was initial horror at this suggestion, of course. But still the rain didn't come. Eventually, one family, unwillingly, desperately, for the good of the people, agreed to let one of their children be sacrificed.

And the day after, the rains came. That did it. That unhappy co-incidence meant that now people thought they understood what the gods wanted. And so all sorts of horrific sacrifices began...human sacrifices, child sacrifices.  Children's bodies were built into the walls of houses - to protect the house from evil. Children were carried up to mountain-tops, at key points of the year, and sacrificed to bring the Spring.

Into that kind of world, the Bible tells us that Abraham came. He was a traveller. He explored the world around him and as he travelled, he became convinced that all these small gods were, at best, pale manifestations of one Supreme Being who bound the universe together.  For a while, however, he still imagined that this one God had the same bloodlust as all the small gods. And so when, in great old age, he unexpectedly became a dad, he thought that his duty was to sacrifice his new son to God.  So, he set off for a nearby mountain-top, to carry out his duty.

But when he got to the mountain-top, he had a mountain-top experience!  "Why," he thought, "would God give me the wonderful gift of this son, just to have me kill him as a sacrifice? It doesn't make any sense. Surely there is another reason why I have been given a son at such a great age?"  At that moment, he noticed a ram, with its horns caught in the bushes on the side of the mountain. He saw this as a sign...a sign from God that indeed, the sacrifice of children was not what God wanted. Joyfully, he caught hold of the ram...and sacrificed it instead, as a substitute for his son. A new day had dawned in the world's understanding of God.

Over the centuries that followed, Abraham's descendants slowly began to change the world's understanding of what God was like. Abraham's many-times great grandson, Moses, wrote a book of laws that limited the sacrifices to something rather more reasonable. A dove, a sheep, a bull - a simple transaction that enabled the penitent sinner to walk away, assured of forgiveness.  

However, even this limit on sacrifice wasn’t enough for God. He sent prophets to the people who said, "Don't bother any more with your sacrifices of animals. God isn't interested in you trying to earn his love...he loves you anyway.  Learn his wisdom and follow his ways.  Just ask for God’s forgiveness and favour, and it will flow!"  Their words were written down for us...we can read their frustrated cries in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. But, they were still ignored. After all, the leaders of the people had grown very wealthy on the system of sacrificing. Until, that is another man entered human history...

Jesus of Nazareth was a man like no other. He talked to God in a startlingly new and intimate way...as a heavenly Father.  Instead of demanding blood sacrifices of the people, this Jesus offered his own life as an ultimate sacrifice for the whole world.  God didn’t want human sacrifices; and to prove it, God was willing to sacrifice himself instead! The writer to the Hebrews makes this clear, in chapter 9, when he explains that after all the centuries of blood sacrifices, Christ “appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself”.

Then something wonderful happened.  Somehow, the sacrificed Jesus came back to life. He appeared again to his followers, and promised them that he would always be with them, in Spirit...leading them ever onwards into a deeper and deeper understanding of who God is, and who they are as his children. 

That in a nutshell, my brothers and sisters is the history of our religion.  We worship the God who leads us across the ages from ignorance towards wisdom, from fear towards love, from the blood sacrifice of animals (and even children!) towards the willing, living sacrifice of our own lives.  Amen. 

Man plans, God laughs!

 Text:  Ezekiel 17.22-24 and Mark 4.26-34

Watch this sermon by clicking here: https://youtu.be/bx5S7nEacXk 

Clare and I count ourselves extremely blessed to be custodians of one of the larger gardens in this parish – a garden that I hope we will be able to use for a Strawberry Tea, or a parish barbecue before too long.  In a recent Chronicle poem, Marian Porter reflected on the sheer variety of plants contained in the 200 yards of border planting we look after – including a surprising number of ‘mahonia japonica’ – far more than our fair share, in fact!  I am frequently amused by horticulturally-minded visitors to the garden, who love identifying strange and rare plants among our borders.  But I have to confess, I usually have little idea how they got there. 

Clare and I are lucky recipients of the efforts of previous Rectory occupants.  Trish Jones and Susan Gibbons before her spent many hours labouring to create the lovely garden we now have, for which we will be forever grateful.  Because, frankly, neither Clare nor I have a clue what we are doing.  Most of our attempts to plant anything at all have ended in complete failure.  The Rectory garden is now where all new plants go to die!

But when they die, wonderful things happen.  New, wild seeds blow in upon the wind and establish themselves where the latest expensive, cultivated marvel has slowly died its death.  In place of the expensive garden-centre plant, which showed so much promise, wild flowers now bloom.  Slowly, year by year, with each new season of our gardening incompetence, Mother Nature is asserting her creativity and her inevitable dominance.

This is an all-to-familiar pattern to the Kingdom of God, as well.  We human beings strive and struggle to build the Kingdom of God.  We embark upon initiative after initiative, desperately hoping that our latest wheeze to establish alternative forms of ‘emerging church’ will bring new believers crowding to our door.  Messy Church, Café Church, Pioneer Ministry, Wild Church, Men’s Groups, Women’s Groups, FaithTalk, God in Art – they all have value, and they all have their place – just like the professionally grown plants we buy from our garden centres.  But God, we find, has God’s own unique way of working out God’s purposes, and building God’s vision.   Like Mother Nature in the Rectory garden, God just keeps on building God’s kingdom in God’s unique way. 

“The Kingdom of God”, says Jesus in this morning’s Gospel reading, “is like a mustard seed”.  It’s often a tiny little seed, but it has the potential to grow into the greatest of shrubs.  Through Ezekiel, God promised the exiles of Israel that it would be God who would replant the Nation back on Israel’s own mountain, after their 70 years of captivity.  God’s activity is wild and unfettered.  The Spirit blows where it wills, and is constantly at work in the lives of all God’s creation. 

Often, I find, it is not my clever new initiative that draws new believers into the Kingdom.  It is God himself, working unceasingly in all human life, which causes that potential new believer to take the first steps of faith.  It is the person who wanders into church, seeking shelter, or comfort, or answers, in whom the Spirit of God is already working.

Am I implying, therefore, that all our endeavour for the Kingdom is meaningless?  No, I’m not.  But let me remind you of the last verse of the opening hymn we sang today: 

“All are efforts are nothing worth

unless God bless the deed;

vain our hopes for the harvest tide

till God brings life to the seed.”

 Here at St Faith’s, we have a Mission Plan.  Following the example of Lenin and Stalin, we’ve called it our five-year plan!  This week, your PCC will receive a report on our progress towards meeting the goals we set ourselves back in October, when we presented our Plan to the Annual Meeting.   It’s a plan which we firmly believe is in line with God’s mission to the people of this parish.  But little did we know, when the plan was being drawn up, that a world changing event was galloping around the bend.  None of us saw (when the plan was first in motion) that a pandemic would sweep across the world.  Many of the things we planned have been put on hold as a result.  Many of the professionally cultivated flowers we had bought have withered and died, while the wild Spirit of God has blown in all around us. 

If you had told me, even 18 months ago, that more people would be attending our services via computer than in person, I would have laughed at you!  Some of our online services now attract more than a thousand viewers.  Hundreds of people are reading our homilies, history and humour every week via the Chronicle, and responding to the deeper, more thoughtful contributions in a variety of ways.  New members and friends who live hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away are signing up to support our work financially and prayerfully.  Some of the deepest and most profound faith conversations I now have take place on Facebook, or via email.  If you had predicted any of these things to me only 18 months ago, I would have wondered at your sanity!

You see, as our opening hymn proclaimed – “God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year”.  There’s an old Jewish proverb, which is reflected in the Scriptures (especially some of the Psalms) and it goes like this: “Men plan.  God laughs!”

Here’s a final thought.  It is an arresting moment when we realise that the Church does not have a mission.  Rather, the mission of God has a Church.  We, the Church, are a part of God’s plan.  Jesus established it, and proclaimed that he would build it.  We are co-operators with God, and with God’s plan.  Our mission has to be, and must be, God’s mission – otherwise, all our efforts are nothing worth.

Amen 

Ordinary Time?

Texts:  2 Corinthians 4:13-5.1 and Mark 3:20-35

To watch this sermon, please click here: https://youtu.be/-IvZg0lZOZ0

So, my brothers and sisters, here we are in Ordinary Time, once more.  Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Trinity and Corpus Christi have passed, and we slide into the week-by-week contemplation of the everyday teachings of the Scriptures.  Our gaze shifts away from the dramatic narratives of the great feasts that have inspired us, and we settle into a period of diligent study, and quiet effective practice of our faith.  Ordinary Time.

Which is perhaps why the Lectionary gives us, this morning, such a smorgasbord of theological ideas to pursue!  As a preacher, my task is to focus on that which I judge to be most useful to you at this time.  And this morning, I have quite a lot to draw from.

Perhaps, we could consider the debate between Jesus and the Scribes, who accused him of casting out demons by the power of the devil?  It’s certainly a fascinating topic – and it leads to Jesus announcing that there is one sin, and one sin alone, which can never be forgiven.  He means the sin of ‘blasphemy against the Holy Spirit’ – which often puzzles many people.  

I could, perhaps, remind you of the importance of ‘context’ in understanding any biblical text.  The context here is that the work of healing is ascribed not to the Great Healer (the Divine Spirit of God) but instead to the Devil.  That indeed is blasphemous talk.  It would be like saying that the Devil is the author of Love.  Or that God is the author of disobedience, hatred and war.

We need to hear this stern warning of Jesus.  To describe anything hateful, violent or evil as the work of God is indeed a heinous blasphemy.  Anyone, for example, who believes that God approves of, or instigates war, or sickness, is treading on dangerous ground.

It’s fine to say that religions are the cause of many wars, because, regretfully, there is truth in that statement.  But to suggest that God either approves of such conflict, or worse still that he desires it, or even foments it, is blasphemous indeed.

It’s fine to wonder why God does not always answer our prayers for healing from sickness or disability.  But to suggest that God causes it, or that it is perhaps a direct punishment for our sins is blasphemous stuff.

But you know all that.  We’ve covered such ground many times before.  So what else, as a preacher, might I focus on from today’s readings? 

Perhaps I should focus on the idea that a house divided against itself cannot stand – which, of course, Jesus talks about in relation to the crazy idea that his ministry somehow stems from the Devil. This is, of course, one of those great ‘Truisms’ which we hear (and don’t ponder) because it is so plainly obvious. 

If we were the kind of church in which there were different theological factions arguing against each other; or if our PCC was divided over some great policy issue; or if half our choir was threatening to walk out because of the Rector’s choice of hymns – then perhaps this would be a good text for us to consider in depth, together.  But, I have to tell you, I have rarely encountered such a harmonious, kindly, co-operative group as Christians we have here at St Faith’s.  So I’d really be preaching to the converted.  Wouldn’t I?

So, perhaps we should focus on the little story at the end of the Gospel, in which Jesus widens the scope of what the word ‘family’ means.  He says, ‘Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’.  He invites us to look beyond our narrow, human understanding of what the family is.  He invites us to see each other as not just fellow-worshippers, or even fellow travellers on the road to faith, but as actual family.  A few weeks ago, we sang ‘Brother, Sister let me serve you’ (which is why I didn’t chose it for today).  But it conveys something of the depth of the relationship which Jesus calls us into:

I will weep when you are weeping,

When you laugh, I'll laugh with you;

I will share your joy and sorrow

Till we've seen this journey through.

But you know all this.  When you care for one another, with phone calls to the lonely, or by meeting up for friendship’ sake, or by holding one another in prayer, or supporting the needy through the Discretionary Fund, then you are living out exactly how Jesus calls us live.  When you welcome to our family table those who are not like you, those who are of a different race, or a different sexual preference or gender identity, or a different intellectual ability, or even a different understanding of God, you are being exactly the kind of real family that Jesus is talking about.

So, perhaps there is little from the Gospel reading that we desperately need to consider this morning.  Perhaps I should just shut up, and sit down….

…Or….perhaps we could just take a few final moments to contemplate the words of St Paul, written to a church community not unlike our own, which we heard in our first reading.  Paul wants his readers not to lose heart.  He knows how much has been achieved by those early Christians, battling against the forces all around them to bring the Kingdom to fruition.  He wants to encourage them to press on, to keep on living as Christ has called them to live.  He wants them, by God’s grace, to keep on extending that Kingdom to more and more people, so that there may be even more thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

And that’s my prayer for us, at the beginning of this ‘Ordinary Time’.  Let us keep on loving one another, my sisters and brothers.  Let us keep on inviting others – even very different others - around our family table.  Let’s keep on weeping with those who weep, and laughing with those who laugh.  Let’s keep on proclaiming and demonstrating the radical, life-changing Love of God!  And perhaps, then, we will discover that Ordinary Time is not so ordinary after all!  Amen.

 

The Meaning of Holy Communion

 To watch this sermon please click here: https://youtu.be/tt2W1HCF5SI

As is so often the case, we have a medieval woman to thank for the feast of Corpus Christi.  Juliana of Liège, was born in the early 1190s in Liège, Belgium.  In that fine European city, there were groups of women dedicated to Eucharistic worship. They lived together, devoted to prayer and to charitable works.

Juliana developed a special veneration for the Blessed Sacrament.  Like all such faithful people, she took great comfort from the celebration of Maundy Thursday, or the Feast of the Institution of the Eucharist.  But, as we often observe here, she noted that the Maundy Thursday celebration had many layers, including the washing of the disciples feet, and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.    As a true devotee of the Eucharist, Juliana longed for a feast day outside of Lent in its honour.  This desire was enhanced by a vision of the Church under the appearance of the full moon with one dark spot, which signified the absence of such a singular focus in the Church’s year. She had this vision many times over the next 20 years but she kept it a secret. When she eventually relayed it to her confessor, he relayed it to the bishop.

At that time bishops could order feasts in their dioceses, so Bishop Robert ordered in 1246 a celebration of Corpus Christi to be held in the diocese each year thereafter on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.  The first such celebration occurred at St Martin's Church, Liège, in the city that same year.

The rest is history. The feast of Corpus Christi became rather a rallying point for the different Christian perspectives on the Eucharist.  The feast was intended to celebrate the true presence of Christ in the bread and the wine of Communion.  As it grew in importance, the elements were paraded around churches, and then around whole cities, in an ever more devoted display of faith. At the High Mass of the day, the bread itself, placed in an elaborate holder called a monstrance, was used to bless the assembled congregation.

But as the debates of the Reformation took hold, many considered such displays of the Eucharist to be idolatrous. For those who considered the Holy Communion to be no more than a memorial of Christ’s death and passion, it was too great a leap to believe that Christ himself could be present in the bread and the wine.  By 1548, the Church of England had abolished the Feast altogether, although traditional Catholic worshippers would still celebrate it in secret.  The 39 Articles of the Church of England specifically forbade the ‘carrying around’ of the Eucharist for people to ‘gaze upon’.

And so, for centuries within the Anglican Church, the feast of Corpus Christi has always felt a little bit ‘naughty’. To celebrate it with full pomp and show stands directly in opposition to the intentions of the Reformers of the church – and it continues to be a topic that divides opinion among priests and people of the church.

For my part, I think this feast still has value.  It is an opportunity for us to focus entirely upon the meaning of the service we do together every week – but without the possible distraction of focusing on other texts or issues.  It is an opportunity for each of us to ask ‘what does the Eucharist mean to me?’  What is the Service for?!  What is its fundamental purpose?  Why do we do it, and why should we continue doing it?

Surprisingly, one of the most profound answers that I've found to these questions comes from an atheist. The philosopher Alain de Botton has written a description of what he calls 'the Mass', which is well worth hearing.  (It’s part of his book "Religion for Athiests: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion").  He argues that Atheists need to learn from the Church.   He praises the Mass for the way that it brings people together in community around a meal. 

de Botton points out that with declining church attendance we have seen an exponential rise in restaurants.  But, he says, restaurants fail to "introduce patrons to one another, to dispel their mutual suspicions, to break up the clans into which people chronically segregate themselves”.  The focus is on the food and the decor, and on the people we’ve chosen to meet.  It is never on opportunities for extending and deepening connections across the whole community.

In contrast, de Botton says of the Mass that... “Those in attendance tend not to be uniformly of the same age, race, profession or educational or income level; they are a random sampling of souls united only by their shared commitment to certain values"

The Mass, says de Botton, "should inspire visitors to suspend their customary frightened egoism in favour of joyful immersion in a collective spirit - an unlikely scenario in the majority of modern community centres"

Of course, the Holy Communion is much more than a gathering of disparate souls into one body.  But it is at least that.  For me, it is also the chance to focus, for a while, on something other than myself, my needs, my desires.  It is a chance to be drawn outwards from my fragile ego, and into the life of the Eternal Trinity.  It is an opportunity to be fed, spiritually, by the source of all life, so that I may be empowered and inspired to live my life for God and for others.

What does the Eucharist mean to you?

Amen.

 

The cost of being a disciple...

 John 15.9-17

To watch this sermon, please click here: https://youtu.be/6SXRKLJpkj0 

Last week, we heard the first 8 verses of John 15, where the focus was on abiding in and with Jesus, so that we can be well-grafted onto the Vine of faith.  You’ll recall, I hope, that I suggested this requires a bit of effort on our part.  ‘Pray more, worship more and give more’, was the strapline I proposed.  This week, we move on to the next section of this really important bit of teaching from Jesus.

Abiding in Christ remains a focus, but now Jesus expands on his theme to include the topic of love.  He says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love…”.  He goes on to encourage his disciples to ‘love one another as he has loved them’, and goes still further to say that he no longer thinks of his disciples as servants, but rather as his friends.

Wow!  Let’s just pause and think about that for a moment.  Jesus, the Lord of the Universe through whom all things were made wants to call you and me his ‘friends’!  Isn’t that mind-blowing?  What’s more, he wants to introduce us to his Father!

These concepts are SO far beyond what believers of the time were taught to believe.  They would have struggled to even grasp the concept.  For the vast majority of religious people at the time of Jesus, God, any god, was a remote, distant, unknowable mystery.  The Jewish understanding of God placed him at a marked distance from human beings – either up a mountain, or behind a great curtain, living in the Holy of Holies – a place which even the High Priest could only enter once a year.  And now, here was Jesus, God’s son, saying that he sought not just servants, but friends.

But here we need to sound a note of caution.  This is God, through Jesus saying he wants to be our friend – but there are some conditions to that friendship.  “You are my friends,” he says, “if you do what I command you”. 

There is a tendency in some quarters of Christianity to regard Jesus in rather familiar terms.   Some of the worship songs of the last century have, in my view, a rather mawkish, almost romantic quality to them, as indeed do some of our most familiar Victorian hymns: “What a friend we have in Jesus”, for example.  Such songs almost (and in some cases actually) sound more like love songs between two human beings.  They are passionate, loving or pleading in tone.  They lay on with a trowel the concept of love between creator and creature – leading some commentators to cheekily refer to them as ‘Jesus is my boyfriend songs’.

But we must not over-sentimentalise what Jesus is offering to his disciples in this passage.  Friendship with Jesus arises out of his gracious offer of friendship.  He, gracefully, mercifully, initiates a relationship of friendship.  Despite all the ways we fall short of his standards and teaching, the Lord of the Universe reaches down to his creatures, and offers us his hand.  But, it is a steel hand, in a velvet glove.  There is a condition attached – the condition of obedience to his commandments.    Jesus offers us his friendship, but we have a stark choice to make.  We can only be his friends if we keep his commandments.

This means, of course, taking Jesus seriously – which is something of what I meant last week when I talked about praying more, worshipping more and giving more.  In some Christian circles, it is possible to get so caught up in adoration, love and worship of the God who offers us friendship, and fills us with his Spirit, that we forget his friendship comes with conditions. 

Because, you see, how we live our lives matters.   If we live with hatred or unforgiveness in our hearts, we are failing to keep Jesus’ commandments.  If we live with greed or avarice, jealousy or infidelity, we fall far short of the standards that Jesus requires of those he calls friends.  If we fail to care for the poor, and the broken hearted, we cannot call ourselves Jesus’ friends.

But, lest anyone should think that I’m saying we can earn our place in the Kingdom by our own efforts, let me be clear.  None of us can ever do that.  None of us, not even the saintliest among us, can hope to be good enough to earn Jesus’ friendship.  Jesus offers his friendship despite our failings, out of his love and his grace.  But, if we accept that friendship, we also accept the obligations that his friendship places upon us.  It’s simply not good enough to say ‘I’m a friend of Jesus’, but then to fail to make any significant changes in the way we live our life.  Jesus may have indeed paid the price, but there is still a cost to being a disciple.  We may even be called upon to lay down our lives, as did our patron, Saint Faith and most of the first disciples.  For "no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends".

The good news, of course, is that Jesus never stops reaching out his hand of friendship, even if the velvet glove conceals a steel hand.  He is always willing to forgive his friends, whenever we fall.  He always keeps his hand held out, for us to grasp and be drawn upwards.  Jesus offers us his love, and his friendship.  He initiates that relationship, by his Divine grace and mercy.  All he asks of us is that we follow him, live like him, and obey his life-giving, world-changing commandments. Amen

Are traditions stifling us?

To watch this sermon, please click here: https://youtu.be/Yfq-IdJL3Pk

Today’s Gospel essentially centres on the theme of abiding in Christ, which I dealt with in some depth on Sunday.  So, if you’d like to explore what ‘abiding’ really means, I encourage you to read that sermon in this week’s Chronicle, out today.

Instead, let’s focus on the first reading we heard, from chapter 15 of the Acts of the Apostles.  The reading was part of the record of the first Council of Church leaders, in Jerusalem.  We don’t know the exact date of this important conference, but it took place somewhere between 15 to 25 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus.  By this time, as the Acts of the Apostles tells, the Good News about Jesus had spread to many countries outside of Israel and Judea.  Paul and Barnabas had been especially determined to spread the Good News – travelling into Syria, and over to Cyprus, for example. 

As a result, a lot of non-Jews, known as ‘Gentiles’ had become converted to faith in Jesus.  They had become followers of The Way, and the title ‘Christ-ian’ was beginning to be used, at first as an insult by the enemies of Jesus’ followers.  But all these new converts were being brought into what was still regarded (in most quarters) as a Jewish sect (following the famous Jewish Rabbi called Jesus of Nazareth).   Some of the early Christians present at the Council of Jerusalem were also Pharisees.  Under any normal rules of Jewish sects, any man who wished to become a Jew had to go through circumcision – which had always been regarded as a sign of God’s Covenant with the Jews and Israelites.  The Pharisees were especially keen on this rule – as Pharisees tended to be!

Of course, for Jews this rather painful procedure was carried out soon after birth, and completely forgotten.  But for an adult convert, it was another matter altogether!  The early church was discovering, unsurprisingly, that there was a fair amount of resistance to the idea of circumcision, from potential converts!

So the Council of church leaders was called to work out how this difficult situation could be resolved.  In all likelihood, this was one of the most important decisions that the early church would ever make, if the Good News of Jesus Christ was to travel to the ends of the earth. 

St Peter had already had to confront the issue of whether or not to include Gentiles in the faith.  God had given him a vision of ritually clean and unclean food, and commanded him to eat them all, while God said to Peter, effectively, ‘who are you to decide who is in or out of the Kingdom of God?’.  So Peter was already convinced that Gentiles needed to be included in the Kingdom.  He therefore searched the Scriptures for evidence that this was indeed God’s plan too.  In the writings of the prophet Amos, he found these words:

After this I will return and rebuild David’s fallen tent.

Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,  even all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things’

This was a promise from God through Amos, that David’s Tent (a metaphor for Jerusalem), rebuilt after the Exile, would be a place for all peoples, Jews and Gentiles, to seek the Lord.  At the Council of Jerusalem, Peter used this passage of Scripture to underpin what God had already shown him:  that the Kingdom of God was for all people, not just the Jews.

Of course, Peter also had his own direct experience of Jesus’s ministry to underpin his argument.  He had witnessed how Jesus opened his arms to everyone.  Jesus had spoken lovingly to a Samaritan woman at the well.  He had preached all around the non-Jewish areas of Tyre and Sidon.  He had healed the child of a Roman Centurion, and commended his faith.  By his lived-example, Jesus showed, again and again, that the new Kingdom of God embraced everyone!

Thankfully, for our sakes (especially for the men among us!) Peter won the day at the first church council at Jerusalem.  Peter had the grace to recognise and argue that Jesus’ Kingdom was meant for the whole earth, not just the chosen nation of Israel and Judea.  Thankfully, he was able to persuade the rest of the Council of his view – and the rest, as they say, is history.  Followers of the Way, Christians, began springing up all over the known world, drawn by the promise and the message of new Kingdom of God, being established. 

And so ends our history lesson for today!  The question for us is whether there are aspects of our rules, our traditions, which stand in the way of new Followers of the Way being invited into the church of today.  That’s a question with which church leaders of today constantly wrestle.  Could it be that robes and cassocks are a barrier to new people joining us?  Could it be that our choice of music is too ‘out-of-date’?  Perhaps our use of 17^th century English at this Thursday service is just too much for some people to stomach?

I wrestle with these questions a lot.  Take music, for example.  Some of you will know that I have a history of playing rock and roll, blues and soul music in my spare time.  Personally, I love music played on electric guitars and with a heavy drum-beat.  But if I were to start playing such music on a Sunday morning, while ditching our traditional hymns, would it really bring a lot more people into the church?  What if I were to stop wearing robes, and stand here in jeans and a T-shirt instead?  It’s a question I often ask – and frankly, I’m not sure what the answer is.  During my ministry, I’ve led small churches which use drums and guitars, as well as large ones which use traditional music.  It’s never an easy decision to make.

The best, I think, that we can do is to always stay alert.  We must always ask ourselves whether anything we do could be a stumbling block to the growth of the Kingdom of God here in Havant.  I believe that we must keep asking that question, just as the first Council of Jerusalem did.  And we must remain genuinely open to hearing God’s answer.  Amen.

  

"Pray more, worship more and give more!"

 John 15.1-8

To watch this sermon, please click here: https://youtu.be/HBFYVIObFZw

“Abide”.  It’s a lovely word, isn’t it?  A quick search of the etymological dictionary tells me that is rooted in an old English word – abiden or gebiden – which meant to remain, or to wait.  My New Testament Greek isn’t good enough to parse the meaning of the original word used by Jesus, which we translate as ‘abide’.  But translators over the centuries have routinely stuck with ‘abide’ as the best rendering of what Jesus meant.  ‘Abide in me’.  Or deeper still, ‘abide in me as I abide in you’. 

Incidentally, it’s not the word which Sydney Carter chose when writing the Lord of the Dance – as we shall see when we sing it shortly.  Carter went for ‘I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me’ – but probably because that fitted the line of his poetry.  But ‘abiding’ is a much more complex idea.

There’s a richness to the word, which goes beyond simply ‘staying’ with Jesus, of hanging around with him.  The word ‘abide’ is linked with ‘abode’ in Old English (which meant a place to stay, to remain).  If we are abiding in Jesus, and Jesus abides in us, then, we are doing much more than hanging out with the Messiah.  We are living with him, staying with him, waiting for him, remaining with him – as he does with us.  There’s a deep closeness to the relationship.  Indeed, like grapes on a Vine, we are connected to him.  We draw our very life, energy and sustenance from him.

I wonder how many of you have experienced the Taizé style of worship which we offer from time to time in the evenings.  Taizé is a method of praying through song, in which a short phrase is repeated, and repeated, until it sinks into your very soul.  There’s one Taizé chant which always challenges me.  It is centred around Jesus’ rebuke to his disciples who fall asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane:

“Stay with me.  Remain here with me.  Watching and praying.  Watching and praying’. 

I say that this chant challenges me because whenever I sing it, I feel guilty for finishing it and moving on to something else!  The chant, and Jesus’ word, encourage me to remain, to abide, and not to go off searching for the next experience, or the next bit of sensory input.  In many ways, this one chant should be enough, in a whole Taizé service, to teach us to abide.

Because, let’s face it, we’re not very good at abiding, are we?  I wonder how many of us have a to-do list in our heads of all the things we need to get done immediately after today’s service.  For example, I understand that quite a few of you can be found wandering the halls of Waitrose after church – I’m told it’s like a post-church social club over there!  No doubt most of us will be thinking about what to cook for Sunday lunch.  Then there will be the need to do a bit of gardening, or to go for that walk, or meet up with those friends.  Then there will be some absolutely vital episodes of Line of Duty to catch up with.  But there won’t be much abiding going on, will there?

Please don’t think I’m being critical….my own to-do list after this service will be just as crammed.  I’ll spend some time on the ol’ interweb, uploading this sermon, and responding to comments and queries on our web-pages.  I’ll no doubt have an inbox of emails to answer, I’ll have some diary-planning to accomplish, I’ll have next week’s sermons to start researching.  I won’t be doing much abiding, either, if I’m honest.

So what shall we do, friends?  How shall we abide in Jesus – so that we can be so grafted on to him that when we pray, we will seek only what he wills for the world, and then see our prayers answered?  How shall we do this?

There’s an old adage which I learned 20 years ago in my training for the priesthood.  A wise old tutor at my college said that all preachers need to be wary of settling into a predictable pattern.  He said that there’s a real danger that all sermons can be boiled down into three points, which are ‘pray more, worship more, and give more – preferably to the church!’.   My wise old tutor encouraged us to think more widely, to embrace poetry, philosophy, and theology in our sermons – because our listeners will pretty soon give up listening if all they hear is a constant nagging to ‘pray more, worship more, and give more’!   The task of the preacher has to be to encourage, enlighten and build up their listeners…not to weigh them down with guilt about what they are not managing to achieve.  It was good advice, and its advice which I hope you’ll agree I generally follow.  But….

…at the end of the day, doing more of what we already do, in varying degrees of depth and commitment, is really the only way that any of us can ever truly abide in Jesus. 

·       If the only attention we pay to God is the one hour we devote on a Sunday morning, then we will never really know the deep joy of abiding in him. 

·       If the only time we pray is when we cry out for favours from God in times of crisis, we’ll never know the joy of uniting our wills to God’s will:  we will miss the joy of praying with him, and through him, and in him, for the things that delight God’s heart.

·       If the only money we ever give is the minimum we think we can ‘get away with’, then we’ll never know the real joy of giving sacrificially, and seeing God’s kingdom come powerfully to pass amongst us. 

In other words, truly ‘abiding’ in Jesus takes time.  We are in charge of how we use our time:  God has given us that gift, and that ability.  If we are to remain grafted to the Vine, if we want to truly abide in Christ, then how we choose to use our time, and indeed our money, is critical. 

‘Pray more, worship more, and give more’!  My old tutor was right to warn me against over-using that concept.  But from time to time, perhaps we all need a little encouragement:  to take the next step of commitment towards the goal of truly abiding in Christ.  Amen