“Mustard seed faith”

Pentecost 7 - 27^th July 2014

Revd Andrew Bain 

Readings:

Romans 8: 26-39 - who shall separate us from the love of God?

Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52 – the mustard seed, the tiniest of all seeds…

These readings we’re having from Romans are just bringing us Paul’s wisdom, one life-giving insight after another, so much that you almost want him to slow down so you can take it all in.

This week: The Spirit prays for us in sighs too deep for words; all things work together for good to those who love God; who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? It’s like sitting through the Messiah – the whole Gospel’s here.

But you could be forgiven for challenging Paul and saying: Ok these are fine poetic words, but what have they got to do with my struggles? I find prayer really difficult, sometimes it’s boring, sometimes I feel like I’m getting nowhere and God’s gone off on holiday somewhere.

The writer CS. Lewis knew that experience, in spite of having written some of the most powerful books on Christian faith of his generation – he knew that experience when his wife, Joy, died. Romance had come late into his life, and they were married as Joy lay in her hospital bed, dying of cancer. How cruel to have her snatched away when they’d only just found each other. In a little volume called “A Grief Observed” Lewis writes of just how prayer felt in those early days of loss: “But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

Most of us know something like that experience at some time in our lives. God seems far away and our troubles and our sadnesses just seem to overwhelm us. So what would Paul know about that? Well, quite a lot in fact. When Paul wants to show his qualifications as an apostle it’s his sufferings he lists as his validation, his authority for saying anything about anything: “Five times forty lashes at the hands of the Jews, three times beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked (you really didn’t want to go on your holidays with St Paul), a night and a day adrift at sea, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, hungry and thirsty, in cold and exposure”. And quite apart from that, he tells the Corinthians, I had to put up with you lot! Paul has been about as roughed up by life as you could get, and yet still he prays.

And now he writes to the Christians in Rome, knowing that he daren’t make light of what they’re going through. In the very heart of darkness the infant Church is daily in fear of its life. Like the Christians in Mosul last week faced with three terrible choices: convert to Islam, pay protection money, or leave (or a fourth choice – die), the Christians of Rome had choices and dilemmas every bit as tough. Do you make sacrifices to the Emperor and acknowledge him as a God, or face the consequences of persecution, imprisonment and even the arena, and die as entertainment for the mob?

So in no way are Paul’s words just pretty poetry. Paul’s under no illusions that every day and in every way we’re all getting better and better or that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. We fight against principalities and powers, BUT, and this is the fulcrum, the turning point of the whole of human history and every human situation: The Cross of shame, the Roman Cross of shame, is now the Cross of Glory, Christ’s royal throne from which he reigns – so Caesar watch out, and all the powers of darkness, watch out; and all the darkness in me and in you as well because Jesus is risen.

So when Paul is weak, when he’s imprisoned for his faith, he knows that it’s the Spirit of the Risen Jesus, living in his friends whose names we know – it’s the Spirit of Jesus in his friends that strengthens his own faith, carries him when his own faith and his own praying might seem like mission impossible. How can you pray when life is so hard? I think you’re carried by Jesus in your friends and in their praying for you.  Because prayer isn’t so much what we do, but what God does in us, and in our brothers and sisters. It’s that tiny mustard seed of faith of people who pray, people whose hearts are moved towards us, bringing us the moments of resurrection that we need.

           

The writer and priest, Donald Nicholl, records the story of a man who was lying desperately ill in hospital. He writes: “He was almost out of his mind with terror and confusion induced by the drugs administered to him. Nothing of his true self seemed to remain except a tiny particle the size of a grain of mustard seed. Outside that particle all was chaos and darkness. Suddenly he heard a voice from the nearby corridor: “I’m that bloody lonely I could cry”. It was the voice of an old miner who was in hospital for the first time in his life and had been left in a wheelchair in the corridor.

The old miner had cried out because he was overwhelmed by the impersonality of it all. Hearing the terror in the old man’s voice the desperately ill man in the neighbouring ward, from the pit of his own terror, said to himself: “I’ll go out and sit by him if it’s the last thing I do.” And so he did. And from that moment his own terror began to lift. A process of healing had begun in him, so that soon he was more whole than ever before in his life. In the voice of the old man he had heard the voice of God calling him to wholeness and holiness. You can begin anytime, anywhere, even if you are only a tiny grain of mustard seed lying in a pit of terror”.

This is the tiny mustard seed of faith inside all of us because in all these things, we are, together, “more than conquerors, through him who loved us”.

“Of such is the Kingdom of God”

Pentecost 6

20^th July 2014

Revd Andrew Bain

Romans 8: 12-25 – the glorious freedom of the children of God

Matthew: 13: 24-30, 36-43 – the righteous will shine like the sun

“Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children”.

This is one of those weeks when the original sermon, which I’d written earlier in the week, has had to be abandoned because events have overtaken us: The shooting down of that Malaysian airliner and what’s happening in Gaza - terrible events, the results of human wickedness, costing hundreds of lives and most unignorably, the lives of children.

Eighty children in the airline tragedy, scores in Gaza – four boys killed by an Israeli missile, while playing on a beach, many more dying in their own homes or as they flee – hurried along, hand in hand, looking for safety, shepherded by distracted parents who have no idea where safe actually is.

These are the little ones whose angels, Jesus tells us, always appear before the throne of God. These are the children we have to be like if we want to have any hope of seeing the kingdom of God. These are the “mere children” to whom wisdom is given when the wise and powerful are blind to it.

The sight of little rucksacks bought for summer holidays, lying amidst the smoking debris, of maimed and terrified children lying in hospitals in Gaza, should move a whole world to repentance. We need to pray that these horrors will move some hardened adult hearts to turn away from violence, because the adult enemy you have in your sights when you launch a missile, in Gaza or Ukraine or anywhere else, and whichever side you’re on, is someone’s child, and God’s child – always.

This is creation groaning in travail, awaiting the glorious liberation of the children of God. But at the end of all these things, Jesus says, God will sort the evil from the good, sin from righteousness. His own resurrection is God’s seal on that as a promise to all of us: he will raise us up, beyond all our crucifixions, whatever burdens we groan under today, all that evil we don’t want, but we do it anyway. He’ll raise us up; there’ll be an end of it.

But for now, we need a wisdom that enables us to live in this world and still see the sunshine through the clouds. The fact that Israel and Palestine are locked in a one-sided war, that Ukraine, Iraq, Syria are all bent on tearing themselves apart, the fact that family relationships sometimes break down and they don’t heal, none of these – even then - make our world an evil place. Goodness breaks out still – like the story I saw this week of a young American Jewish boy who’s gone to Israel to protest on behalf of Palestinians, and say: “Not in my name!” And there are still childlike stories of joy to give us hope, like in a story I watched on Youtube this week of a Downs Syndrome boy, Tim, who’s opened his own burger restaurant, called Tim’s Place, advertising the best hugs in town. He says to camera: Food is just food, but hugs... Unless you become as a little child. The wisdom of mere children. The foolish wisdom of the Cross.

This is the wisdom Jesus teaches for surviving this world and not despairing, the wheat and the tares.  Yes, we groan; but we laugh too. Yes, we’re sad, but we rejoice as well. God loves this world of his enough not to just see the weeds, those choking sins both of nations and individuals – your sins and mine. Those tares amidst the wheat. God sees all this infestation of unhealthy growth in his world, but he loves the world enough not to do what he did with Noah’s flood or the Tower of Babel and sweep us all away, pull up all us weed infested human beings, which would presumably leave him with a very peaceful but very empty, planet.

It’s not that the weeds don’t matter. Tending the garden of your own soul, striving for goodness and love – he loves us into wanting to do that. Working for justice in our world, the same. Justice matters. We daren’t walk by on the other side. But living in this world for now; living with other people and with myself for now, this needs wisdom. It’s the wisdom of the little child who sees the world with fresh eyes and without either cynicism or  despair.

And so I’ll share what was destined for my original sermon because it still holds true: One of my favourite bits of simple wisdom comes from an American book called: “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”, by Robert Fulgham. He writes: ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. These are the things I learned:

Share everything; Play fair; Don't hit people; Put things back where you found them; Clean up your own mess; Don't take things that aren't yours; Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody; Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.  Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love, ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together”.

The weeds matter and there will be a judgement for us all, for our standing aside and not caring enough or even praying enough (we should be praying for our world from the depths of our hearts every day) – but, God’s judgement is always filled with mercy, because we’re children, his children, and he knows our hearts and he sees the good in us always. Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children – which means, to us. 

Pentecost 5

“To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace"

13^th July 2014

Sermon by Peter Davey

Readings:

Romans 8: 18 – 23

Matthew 13: 1 – 9

Do you ever listen to a reading from one of Paul’s letters and think to yourself, “Now what on earth was all that about?” This is particularly true for me, I find, when the reading is taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Did you know that Martin Luther considered the Letter to the Romans to be the most important book in the New Testament. In his well-known Preface to his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans he writes, “This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian’s while not only to memorise it word for word, but also to occupy himself with it daily as though it were the daily  bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious  it becomes and the better it tastes” Now I suspect that if I asked for a show of hands of those of you who have memorised Romans or meditate upon it daily, I somehow doubt there would be many hands raised!

Part of the difficulty of understanding a short extract from Paul’s Letter to the Romans is that without the previous explanation of various terms that Paul uses, it all seems very theological and complex. For example, in today’s reading from Romans 8, Paul uses terms like sin, flesh and law, but he has explained what he means by these terms earlier in the Letter. The fact is that Paul was not writing to fellow theologians, he was writing to ordinary Christians like you and me. For this reason Paul explains the words he uses in simple terms that we can understand. Let us take the word sin for example. Nowadays the word sin is felt to be rather old fashioned and theological, but in Chapter 7 verse 19 Paul explains what sin is in one brilliant sentence. He writes, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” This is not a theological statement, but a psychological statement about the human condition which we can all relate to. How often do we do say or think something out of anger, irritation, envy, small-mindedness, greed, lust  or just plain selfishness, and regret it immediately? It is as if something came over us and we couldn’t help ourselves and we just came out with it or thought it. Well what came over us was what Paul calls sin. What Paul is saying in today’s reading is that we are a slave to this sin as however hard we try, we cannot stop ourselves doing, saying or thinking  these so-called evil things. “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do”. 

Every time we say,  do or think  something unpleasant, we resolve not to do it again but only to do, say or think good things. But so often we fail. This is because they are engrained in us in our unconscious mind through habit  and try as we might, we cannot change them. We are slaves to our habits. In other words we are slaves to our own sense of self and we cannot stop ourselves being selfish. So does that mean there is nothing we can do? Well this is the good news that Paul is telling us! There is nothing we can do, but Christ Jesus is the one who can liberate us from ourselves. It is only the Spirit of Christ that can set us free. There is nothing we can do but let go of our sense of self, and the Spirit of Christ will act for us and through us. Only the Spirit of Christ in our hearts can truly love others and allow us to be patient and kind and gentle and good. .

So how can we practically allow the Spirit of Christ to live in us? I would like to share with you a vlittle technique that I find very useful. When you feel yourself getting angry or irritated or envious, just take 3 slow breaths and be aware of your breath in your body and that your breath is the Spirit of Christ dwelling  in you. This has the affect of stopping that unwanted thinking  before any action or speech can take place. You will, of course, not catch yourself every time but over time this technique can help us overcome our unwanted habitual thinking. As Paul puts it in today’s reading, To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace”. By setting our minds on the breath of Christ in us, we can find peace and the true life of freedom from self.

But why is this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans coupled with our Gospel reading? Well in our Gospel reading this morning Jesus himself put this same insight in the form of the parable of the sower sowing seed. In the parable Jesus tells us that it is not enough to hear the word, to enter the Kingdom of heaven we have to let go of all our selfish desires and ambitions, all our sense of status  and intellect, and allow the seed of Christ’s Spirit to dwell in us and transform us from within. The seed must be sown in our hearts  and we must feed and water these good seeds so that we can bear fruit, some 100 fold, some 60 fold and some 30 fold.

And Paul tells us that it is essential to remember that we cannot bear good fruit at all if we rely on our self. The self must die to allow Christ to bear fruit in us. We must say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me”. As Paul writes to the Christians at Philippi, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,being born in human likeness, and being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient the point of death, even death on a Cross”.

So let us meditate on the cross every day, taking up our cross daily as jesus himself directed,  and so remind us that we have died  to self, are dead to sin, and now live in Christ Jesus. Life in the Spirit sets us  free to bear the fruit of the Spirit and so love   everyone we come in contact with in the way that Jesus loved. This is the purest gospel that Martin Luther spoke of. In Paul’s words in our reading, “But if Christ be in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”

Peter and Paul

Sunday 29^th June

I can’t think of anyone who more deserves that term “pillars of the Church” than Peter and Paul. Both of them shared the experience of prison; both paid the price of drinking Christ’s cup of suffering to the dregs. But in other ways they couldn’t be more different: Peter is the big fisherman, a bit rough and ready, often too ready to speak – as when heoffers to build tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the Mont of Transfiguration, sometimes too ready to go back to the old rough ways – like when he gets out his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and cuts off someone’s ear.

But Peter is also the one with the big heart: he’s the first to say: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God; Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”. He’s the first to leap out of the boat when the Risen Jesus appears on the shore with breakfast ready: “It is the Lord!” He’s wonderfully complex. The rock on which the Church is built, but a rock with a crack in it, deep flaws, flaws that Jesus loves. He’s Peter the betrayer, but he’s also on that same seashore, Peter the forgiven, Peter to whom the care of the sheep and the keys to the kingdom, both are given to him.

Knowing what we know of Peter, it’s enough to make you ask: Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Lord? Do you really know this man? But of course, he does.

And he knows Paul too. Saul when we first meet him, holding the coats of those who stoned Stephen, then breathing threats and violence against the saints and persecuting them with a zeal that has terrifying resonances with persecutions going on today. Killing people in God’s name? Saul didn’t flinch. So it’s no wonder that when the converted Paul is first introduced to the Christians of Damascus they’re deeply suspicious – like bringing a wolf to meet the sheep. Are you sure? they ask. Haven’t you heard about this man?

But Paul converted is just what the Lord needs. The mind of a lawyer, but the heart of a poet – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love I am a noisy clang or a sounding cymbal; so faith, hope, love abide – these three - and the greatest of these is love”. And Paul will use any means to get the Gospel out there: Roman roads, Roman shipping lanes, sometimes even appealing to Roman Law (although under Roman Law he’s killed in the end); taking the Gospel right to the heart of intellectual Athens and debating with the philosophers on their own terms and even quoting their own poetry. He says: "I make myself all things to all men, so that by any means I may save some". Would Paul have used Facebook? – you bet. And Twitter too, no doubt, although I doubt if he’d have got his great Epistle to the Romans down to 140 characters.

Paul can, of course, get a bad press over some things that are very much of his time and context – notably that women should keep their heads covered in worship, not be permitted to teach, and be subject to men – although you have to balance this by the clear evidence that women were among Paul’s closest friends and fellow labourers for the Gospel, and that men are firmly instructed to love and respect both their wives and their children – everyone submitting to each other in love. But the greatest gift Paul gives us quite simply is Gospel.

If he hadn’t argued it out with Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem, pleading to be allowed to extend the Gospel to the Gentiles, we might none of us be sitting here. Peter may be the Rock on which the Church is built, but Paul is the visionary, the far-seeing one. It’s significant to know that the very first Gospel we have is the Gospel according to Paul. His letter to the Galatians predates our earliest written copy of any Gospel by at least twenty years.

And this is what he tells the Galatians: the first written proclamation by any Christian that’s come down to us – “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery”.

These two imprisoned men, know that grace has set them free. Could you have more to live down, more to regret than either of them? Peter with his three denials, Paul with his hatred and violence, his past as a bigot with a mission. And Jesus sets them both free. Both would know miraculous jail breaks involving angels – no need for a key hidden inside a cake or a bar of soap if you’ve got angels around. But the real liberation is the one they preach and their voices echo right into this place, this time and into our hearts. Peter, who self-deprecatingly says he can’t compare with Paul’s learning (and actually sometimes doesn’t understand him – which is comforting) is in fact every bit as much of a poet as Paul is. Why? Because he’s in love: I have this to tell you, he says, “and you would do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and Christ the morning star rises in your hearts”.

Set that alongside Paul’s “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Set these words of Peter and Paul side by side and you have Good News – and millions have been touched by the witness of these flawed, but beloved and grace-filled men.

Two men who could not be more different, but the same love claimed them – and the love that claimed them claims us too. This Jesus who loved them into being more than they ever dared dream of will do the same for us. Paul says: For freedom Christ has set you free; Peter says, and he should know, This truth – this Jesus - is a lamp to shine in any dark place.

SERMON FOR TRINITY SUNDAY

14^th June 2014

Rev. Margaret Raven

Isaiah 40:12-17,27-31 - those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength

Mathew 28: 16-20 – in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit

“The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”               Isaiah 40: 28b-31

You would expect the disciples to collapse from stress, depression –maybe even post-traumatic stress disorder wouldn’t you?!  Over the last 6 weeks,the readings here in church have catalogued their experiences:  the betrayal, death, resurrection appearances and ascension of Jesus followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit………The Holy Spirit described variously as flames hovering over the disciples’ heads, peasantdisciples suddenly fluent and speaking inthe foreign languagesof countries all around the Mediterranean Sea and, finally, Jesus appearing out of nowhere to breathe peace on the men and women huddled together, praying, in the upper room.

What must it have been like to have lived through all that?!

The disciples have had to live through God’s idea of what needs to happen to bring in the kingdom of Heaven on earth. It turns out God’s strategy involved a lot of personal stress and a series of mind-boggling events. Considerable attitude-adjustment was needed!

Now Isaiah in the passage Douglas just read says that God’s“understanding is unsearchable”. So it has proved: The events the disciples have just lived through show a pattern and strategy beyond all expectation; one unexpected thing after another. No wonder Jesus, prior to his betrayal at Gethsemane asked for them to have an enhanced prayer life with God- one very like his own…..and no wonder the resurrected Jesus told them to stay together as a group and wait where they were. ……Isaiah also says “those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength”……...  Stability and routine are restful and conserve emotional energy. Staying in the familiar group builds on learned, mutual relationships. Praying together provides mutual support, intimacy, intuitive understandings and, enhanced trust. 

So, for the disciples those weeks have meant one emotional trauma after another: shock, grief, terror, mind-boggling experiences, hiding from Temple and Roman authorities ,being stranded in the big city, dependent on friends of Jesus  who are willing to risk hiding them at their house, sole responsibility for the group of faithful women who have been with the disciples and with Jesus since the beginning….never knowing whom to trust. People are living through this kind of abrupt polarization of society right now in Syria or Ukraine. People compelled to live their emotional, religious and political life underground in Burma, Iran, Egypt, Libya or anywhere where there is mental oppression…..such people live on their nerves and become exhausted very quickly. They lose resilience.

“Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”.

The disciples had their upper room provided by friends, their prayer life with God, the companionship and compatibility of their group as well as the instructions provided by Jesus to do nothing – to wait until the Holy Spirit was sent to them as Comforter. They had a common understanding, a structure and a discipline. They did not “faint and grow weary”. instead they renewed themselves and their strength so that when the Holy Spirit came in its many and bewildering forms they were ready and able for the next exertion…..the next leap into the unknown. As Isaiah had understood it they were able “ to mount up with wings like eagles”. In concrete terms they now became public speakers able to present coherently the new understanding of past prophesy and salvation history to Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles. They healed. They could hold their own with learned men as they explained the Jesus Way and the meaning of the events they had experienced. They had become apostles capable of taking these understandings to the Mediterranean world and beyond.

In time the Jesus Way became the Jesus Movement. The Apostles died. The other eyewitnesses died. A canon of approved writings became essential.

It emerged around 180 AD. It is our Bible. It contains the Old and New Testaments as we call them…  Core Jewish Scriptures  plus a deposit of the legacy of memories of Jesus – 4 gospels, the story of the Acts of the Apostles, some hymns and set speeches for explaining the content of the Christian faith, the writings of Paul, apostle to the Gentiles and, key apostles’ responses to  the inevitable fractious controversies that took place in the cities, ports and towns of the Mediterranean world as Christian communities established themselves and grew. Inevitably the letters and the new groups of emerging Christians had to deal with the growing pains of local community group and a religious movement!..... we know all about these don’t we:  internal scandals, inter-ethnic disputes, cross-cultural issues, organizational problems, conflicting theologies and, personality clashes …..

Remember also, the Mediterranean world was a sophisticated place: there were challenges to emergent Christianity from philosophy, science …the whole intellectual world……and from differing worldviews.

In essence the challenge to simple witnessing to experiences of Jesus as seen and heard by disciples and apostles became:Who, Why, What, When, How, Where is this God you proclaim?It took almost 350 years to hammer out a sophisticated answer to that question. It’s complicated. We will parse it out in a few minutes when we say the creed together.It’s complicated.

Thanks be to God the Apostles who walked, talked and ate with Jesus identified and used a simpler formula earlier. We hear it clearly coming down  over 2000 years: the witnesses’ experience& understanding of God: as Father, as Son Jesus and, as Holy Spirit: all equal, all God , all having distinct functions,  communicating among themselves. A mysterious Trinity of three in one and one in three. 

2 Corinthians 13:11-13 written much closer to the apostles’ time already has the content of the faith worked out and communicated pithily - in shorthand – easy to memorise - for our benefit: “Put things in order, listen to my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord JesusChrist, the love of God and the communion/fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with all of you”.  

God’s strategy and plan for bringing in the Kingdom to this world as well as for our personal salvation: Grace; Love; Community. A blessing in every sense of the word.

Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost

8th June 2014

Peter Davey

Readings:

Acts 2: 1-21 – And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit

John 20: 19-23 – He breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit…

Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”

I don’t know about you, but for many years I had a problem with the 3rd member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. I got the idea of the Father- the Creator of all that is. And the son, Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent to redeem the world. But where did the Holy Spirit come in?

It is clear from our reading from Acts that the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost marked the birth of the Church when the Spirit fell on all the believers and they started speaking in other languages and with great confidence and authority. The apostle Paul writes extensively about the Spirit and When he writes to the Corinthians he makes it quite clear that every member of the church is baptised in the Holy Spirit and being baptised in the Spirit is more or less a definition of what it is to be a Christian. It was not, however, until I read and meditated upon the Gospel of John at our monthly Taize services  that I realised the true significance of the Holy Spirit.

At the beginning of John’s Gospel we read John the Baptist’s account of seeing the Spirit descending on Jesus like a Dove and at the end of the gospel we read that Jesus said, “Peace be unto you” and he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. As you read through the gospel you realise that Jesus is constantly referring to the power of the Spirit that dwells in him  that allows him to perform miracles - giving sight to the blind, raising the dead - but above all what it is to actualise union with the Father. But not only that, but that the heart of Jesus’ teaching to his followers is how they too can actualise union with the Father through the Holy Spirit. In other words, Jesus was teaching his followers how to become him!  Jesus was not asking his followers to copy him or be like him, he was teaching them how to be him. The only difference is that he was one man while his followers were many.

Once I realised this fundamental insight, the whole Gospel became clear. So when Jesus said, “I am the light of the world” he was also telling his  disciples, and therefore us, that when he is no longer in the world, they will be the light of the world as through the power of the Spirit they will be him! Similarly with all the “I am “ sayings in John’s gospel.   Through the Spirit we can know what it is to be one with the Father, one with Jesus and one with each other.  As Jesus prays the night before he died, “That they all may be one: as thou Father, art in me and and I in Thee, that they all may be one in us- that the world may believe that Thou hast sent me”. And again, “that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” 

But how do we realise this consciousness of being one with Jesus and the Father? Well when you read the Gospels  you find the reassuring fact that the disciples didn’t get it either? The problem is that you cannot change your consciousness through your intellect. We can believe something in our heads but that doesn’t change our consciousness. But is it so surprising that the disciples didn’t get it? They were just ordinary men and women with largely no religious background. Most of them couldn’t read or write. Imagine you were Peter, or Philip or Mary or Martha and Jesus told you that you could know what it was like to be one with God just like him! And yet Jesus again and again says that their becoming him is the whole point of his life and teaching.

Do you remember the encounter Jesus had with the devout Pharisee Nicodemus? Nicodemus wanted an intellectual discussion between 2 teachers. He says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher come from God for no man can do the miracles you do except God be with him”. And bang! Jesus socks it to him with, “Very truly I say to you, except someone be born again, they cannot see the Kingdom of God” and  “Except someone be born of water and of the Spirit, they cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”  To be born again, born of the Spirit,  is another way of saying we must change our consciousness and only the Spirit can do that.

So if only the Spirit can transform us, does that mean we have to wait for the Spirit to change our hearts and minds? Now many of you may well have experienced this transformation of your consciousness already, but I would like to talk about my own experience here. I think that so long as we are open to being transformed by the Spirit, then the Spirit will begin to change our consciousness. Remember in our Gospel today “Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. The word that Jesus would have used for Spirit in his native Aramaic would have been Rucha which is also the word for breath. Jesus would have used the words, “Rucha de Kutcha”  or Holy breath. The breath of Jesus is the Holy Spirit. After the reading of today’s Gospel at the Taize service last month I used a guided meditation which I have found extremely powerful. It has helped me to begin to transform my consciousness. It involves becoming aware of our breath, our Rucha, and then inviting Jesus to breathe in us. By allowing Jesus to breathe in us we begin to realise the Christ consciousness that Jesus himself realised and experience the peace that Jesus gave us in the Gospel reading. I shared this meditation with Andrew last year and I know he found it very powerful also. If anyone would like to experience this meditation with me please let me know and we can arrange it.

And how do we know when the Spirit is transforming us? Well in 1 Corinthians Paul talks about the gifts of the Spirit such as wisdom, tongues, prophecies, teaching etc.  These gifts were clearly in evidence on the Day of Pentecost. But in another letter he speaks of something even more important than the gifts, and that is the fruit of the Sprit. It is the bearing of this fruit that above all is a sign to ourselves and others that we are being transformed by the Spirit, the Rucha of Jesus. Paul writes to the Galatians,

“But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Jesus manifested this fruit in abundance and then gave us his breath, the Holy Spirit, so that we can manifest this fruit in the world. Only if we abide in him and he in us can we bear fruit. And then, with his breath and spirit within us, he says to us, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”.

Easter 7 Ascension

“Holy Father, protect them”

Rev. Margaret Raven

Readings:

Acts 1: 6-14: “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”  

John 17:1-11: “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.”

I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly reassuring that right before going out of the door to go to the Garden of Gethsemane…tohis arrest and to his death by crucifixion…Jesus is thinking ahead to the short and long-term needs of the disciples…the massive challenges they will have to confront in the next hours, days and weeks….without him there beside them.

John’s gospel shows us Jesus identifying what is going to be necessary. 

Then Jesus asks God for just that - he prays for it, confidently… explaining the situation and the reason for his request: first,he tells God the disciples are now a Godly group: “..they have kept your word…..and know in truth that I came from you……I have been glorified in them”; second,Jesus identifies the disorientation, grief and leaderlessness the disciples will have to face alone, far from homein very high stress and always life-threatening situations ….” And now” he reminds God,  “I am no longer in the world but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.”; so, finally, he petitions God to allow the disciples the same open, mutual, loving relationship with Godself that he, Jesus, has learned to rely on during his mission on earth. He knows the disciples will need this so he specifically requests it from God on their behalf:

“Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me,so that they may be one as we are one.”

What a huge gift to give to the disciples!   These days we call it Assurance.  Blessed Assurance.

Jesus has anticipated normal human frailties.The intimate and united team of disciples he has trained up could easily collapse in shock and mistrust once they witness betrayal, arrest and realize they are now leaderless. It must not happen.Exposed to menace fromtemple police and Roman militarypersecution they might scatter, hidefor personal safety and never, ever meet up again. The Godly group needs assurance and protection in order to survive. There is going to be an extended leadership vacuum. There will always be opposition to the Gospel. Much reliance on prayer as a way of life is the only sure way to survive intact and move forward. After all, this Jesus Movement post-resurrection must consolidate itself, must thrive and must grow in order to continue the work begun by Jesus…..

Now you have all worked in charities, businesses, small and large organisations and volunteer groups. You and I, we are familiar with the power-struggles, the ideological battles,the strategy disagreements, the tempestuous resignations and threats to resign…along with the inevitable personality clashes which bedevil fledgling organisations and leaderless groups.Jesus anticipates that an enhanced, personal trust and prayer relationship with God is essential both to protect the disciples as individuals and as Godly group as well as to enable them to get beyond interpersonal disagreements in order to continue to function as an effective team with shared values, goals and beliefs. In fact he asks for them to be given the same prayer-relationship, trust-relationship and support- relationship with God that Jesus himself relied on during his earthly mission.

What an awesome gift!   To become somewhat like Jesus in their relationship with God?!  You know that gift is available to us too don’t you! “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one”.

It is no wonder then that as we move from the pre-resurrection and pre-ascension account given by the writers of John’s gospel to the post-resurrection and post-ascension account given by the writers of the Acts of the Apostles we find the early church is now calling the disciples “apostles”. A disciple is a trainee and a follower of a holy person. An apostle is a messenger of God, a leader, a preacher, teacher and evangelist – trusted and anointed by God as a pioneer leader in their own right. The disciples transformed into apostles are so important to early Christianity that they are all named  (quote Acts 1:13,14). The Godly group is not only identified but described as “constantly devoting themselves to prayer” just as Jesus had requested of God…not acting but praying, thinking, discussing, meditating, sharing, listening to each other carefully in those early days post –resurrection and post-ascension.

However, the narrative makes it clear there are limits on the role and function of the apostles - God is authority in history and in space-time….

So, the apostles are to have nothing to do with secular power-political groupings ……all the nationalist, revolutionary, apocalyptic and millenarian movements drawing on the rhetoric of kingdom of God, Israel, Jews or Israel as chosen people of God……”It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” says Jesus just before the ascension. In other words: Forget about a date for the coming in of the kingdom of God. “Your task is to be my witnesses”. Do not use your power for other purposes.

The apostles are to witness to Jews and Gentiles. God is for all people. The gospel is for the whole world, for all nations and ethnic groups. The role and function of the apostles is to be witnesses for and of Jesus“in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” The Holy Spirit will come and give you power to fulfill this task says Jesus to the apostles…. and to us.

If we are willing to move out of our culture of self-protecting privacy into the greater intimacy of getting to know others on their terms….trusting them to the point where we are willingly sharing our story with others……  We can pray and ask for this.