Pentecost

Sunday 31^st May – is Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2: 1-21. The essential nature of Pentecost is that the Spirit of God is for all people not for any special group – so the Spirit breaks down barriers between people. To emphasise the point Luke has Peter quote the prophet Joel which emphasises that the Spirit is no respecter of age, social position or gender and the group itself gathered in Jerusalem were from different ethnic groups and languages but in the Spirit could comprehend each other. For me, it recalls one facet of Psalm 42:7 “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls” Psalm 42.7

1 Corinthians 12: 3b-13. The one Spirit manifests himself differently in different constituent people in Christ’s body – the church. Paul mentions some gifts (not a definitive list) but only to emphasise that while there are different gifts there is only one spirit. The gifts of the Spirit are all given to build up the church into a collective whole. The seven-fold gifts of the spirit are traditionally based on Isaiah 11:2 -3 and they are wisdom, counsel, understanding, fortitude, knowledge, piety and the fear of the Lord. These are the gifts that are prayed for at ordination ceremonies.

John 20: 19-23. As a theological counterpoint to the Lukan scheme of how and when the Spirit was given, we have John’s version which has Jesus breathing the Spirit on the disciples on the evening of Easter Sunday. The theological point being made is slightly different showing for one that the Spirit of the Father is breathed through the Son and chronologically tying the giving of the Spirit closer to the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Pentecost has been called the birthday of the church.

In fact I have heard of churches actually having a birthday cake in the service and while I actually think that was a bit twee it does emphasis a point that the church deserves the recognition that its beginning was something entirely new, entirely different and worth celebrating.

It is fashionable to knock the church. And the church has a very imperfect history and has done many mistaken things in its time. That is because whatever else we might be, we are still a collection of flawed individuals who make mistakes and worse but the whole is infinitely greater than the sum of our parts.

It is good to remind ourselves that the church – the people – is a divine body – a building made of living stones – no less than the body of Jesus Christ on earth.

Speaking of the Roman Catholic church someone once said that, It must be divine because the intrigues and scandals and rifts that have plagued the church for 2000 years would have killed off any ordinary organisation ten times over and yet they are still here.

The church understood as Christ’s body on earth, if you write off the church you write off Jesus Christ.

The needful thing of course as the living stones of this building is to consciously try to conform ourselves to the image of Christ. That way we naturally represent Jesus more accurately.

Sanctification is the process of setting ourselves apart for God’s use.

One of the main ways in which we are different from non-believers is that we set ourselves apart for worship. We worship – give worth to - the source of our life, the revelation of God in Christ, and the indwelling Spirit that binds us together and seek to derive strength and guidance from that worship.

Worship orientates our life and guides us in our decision making and strengthens us for life’s battles as and when they arise.

We often say we want to be more Christ-like, meaning more caring, concerned for the poor of whatever, but if you look at Jesus in the Bible one of the ways to be Christ-like is to worship! Christ was often in the Temple, or synagogue or retreating by himself to pray. The Temple was central to his life so if we really want to be more Christ-like we, like him, need to have worship at the centre of our lives.

Whatever else we are say the church may be for or want it to do – we derive our identity and strength from worship which in turn is empowered by God’s spirit, the Spirit that formed us and constitutes us.

So a very happy birthday to the church.

I’ll end with Teresa of Avila’s famous words.

 “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

Spiritual discipline during lockdown

Sunday24th – Easter 7.

Acts 1: 6-14. The time between the ascension and Pentecost, Luke has the Apostles meeting together in prayer, where they are gradually becoming not just witnesses to Jesus but a kind of ecclesiastical council. Judas is replaced by Matthias, immediately after this episode and they assume the equivalence to the twelve patriarchs of old Israel. Mary, the mother of Jesus makes her last appearance here, and James (still unnamed) makes an appearance as one of the “brothers”. By Acts 15, James has evidently assumed some kind of leadership of the Jerusalem church, apparently chairing the Jerusalem council, hearing the testimony of Paul and Barnabus.

1 Peter 4: 12-14, 5: 6-11. The walls of the church are invisible – people are as “living stones” - but the structure of this house need to be strengthened against attack to survive. Evil is the guise of persecution and discrimination batter the walls, windows and doors of this spiritual house. While humbly accepting the reality of the situation Peter advocates resisting evil, casting our anxiety on God, and strangely to many modern readers, rejoicing in our suffering because it brings us closer to Christ. Because we know that what followed Christ’s sufferings was glory and exultation, so discipline yourselves and keep alert!

John 17: 1-11. It is Jesus’ prayer that we may “ascend” with him to know his unity with the Father. And we have a definition of eternal life into the bargain. The content of eternal life can be a present possession as well as a future hope. Eternal life is knowing God and knowing Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. To say that I know God is to have eternal life already. This point of view is particular to John’s gospel and if you’d like to know the fancy theological term for it, it is “realised eschatology”.

Salvation is not something I need to work to achieve, always just out of reach, striving to grasp hold of it,

Salvation is the ground on which I stand. It is the solid rock that the church stands as a whole, and it is this blessed assurance that we witness to in the world.

Accepting and assimilating this truth is liberating and when you realise that salvation, the ultimate healing, attaining oneness with God and all things is what Jesus is praying for in this final discourse is exciting and then when you realise that Jesus is praying for you personally it becomes life-changing.

"Truth only has the power of truth when it becomes true for you."

Salvation is synonymous with eternal life. And John has Jesus saying exactly what eternal life is.

Eternal life is to know and achieve union with the Father, whose very being is revealed in Jesus Christ.

Having this truth gradually underpin and shape your life and perceptions is what I like to call a spiritual “ascension”. We ascend to this knowledge of the truth.

All of us gathered together in this knowledge are called the church and Jesus also prays that the church will be protected, because we are now his body on earth, this house made up of living stones, and just as Jesus was harangued, attacked, misunderstood, suffered, so will we be as his body.

Peter in his letter told us to expect it. He says “Don’t be surprised as though something strange were happening”

We need to be humble enough to accept it as inevitable but also spiritually disciplined enough to resist the world’s attempts to break us.

This current pandemic can justifiably be described as evil because in its effects it is an assault on the nature and being of the church. It will attempt to tear people apart from the church, and I dare say it will have a measure of success.

As each one of us is one of those living stones of the church, Peter says we have to remain disciplined spiritually by praying regularly in whichever way feeds you and engages you. That could be anyway from standing alone in the garden or contemplating the night sky to online prayer resources or liturgical daily prayer. It could mean engaging in spiritual disciplines like the examen, where you go through your day and notice what brought you closer to God and what pushed you away, what pleased you and what angered you and discern how you can learn from your daily experience to better face tomorrow.

You may want to read favourite texts from the Bible that builds you up and strengthens you, or even try writing your own prayers.

In these ways we can remain strong even in our isolation from each other because as St. Paul said. “I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

God is all in all.

17^th May - Easter 6  

Acts 17: 22-31. This sermon by St. Paul is in three parts. The first verses 22 & 23 addresses the crowd and acknowledges their religiosity. This is probably a bit of hyperbole to flatter and butter up the audience. In Verses 24-28 Paul describes the characteristics of God of whom they are perhaps only dimly aware, but all people and cultures have a universal quest. In doing this he quotes a 6^th century BC poet called Epimenides “In him we live and move and have our being”. Only in verse 29 does the preaching become specifically Christian when Paul speaks of a “man” appointed by God and attested to by the resurrection of that man from the dead. Jesus’ name is never mentioned but is at the heart of the sermon.

1 Peter 3: 13- 22. That the saving work of Jesus has universal validity through both time and space Peter talks about what became known as the “Harrowing of Hell” something we proclaim in the Apostle’s creed – “He descended into Hell”. Everyone who has ever died “since the time of Noah” has Christ proclaimed to them, throwing into doubt the assertion I have heard from some quarters that Christ must be acknowledged in this life only to “qualify” for salvation.

John 14: 15-21. The word used to describe the spirit - “paraclete” - is only used in John’s gospel and his first letter. It means “One called alongside” and is often rendered advocate, counsellor, consoler, helper. In John, the spirit seems to be seen also as a teacher who will guide the disciples into all truth. In this farewell discourse, Jesus promises he will come to them, a promise he fulfilled on Easter day, with the Spirit being breathed on his disciples at the same time.

One of the less attractive temptations of following any religion is to think that it is by our religion and our religion alone that anything positive can come. We start to wear blinkers, shutting out the rest of the world or selecting specific verses in islolation from others to prove our point.

Exclusivism is a human fault and effects all religions and can be described in all of them as fundamentalism. We are used to using the term to describe Islamist extremists as fundamentalists but the tendency is present in all religions and the term itself actually originated in Christianity is the early part of the 20^th century.

But our readings today can only be fully apprehended if you understand the basic Christian premise that God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to himself.

That means all creation and all people. We are a faith that believes that we are saving people from something so the natural first question is who is included in this salvation?

Answer – everyone and everything. It is time to take off the blinkers and see the big picture.

Paul sets the scene in Acts by agreeing with one of their own poets who describes all life as subsisting in God. “In him, we live and move and have our being. Remember God is the ground of all being who simply describes himself as life itself – I AM.

In a later letter to Timothy Paul spells out who is included in this specifically Christian salvation. I love this verse 1Timothy 4:10.

“We trust in the living God, who is the saviour of all men, especially those who believe”

In Peter’s letter we read today that even people who have been apparently sent to hell from the time of the flood onwards are saved when Jesus descends into hell to preach the message of salvation, and the souls in prison are released.

In Christianity, All means ALL. Theologically it is the perfectly reasonable hope that all people from all times are saved whether they have ever believed or not.

This is such a liberating message for those who can accept it – it has the mark of truth. The very truth that we are to be led into by the holy Spirit.

In order to fully respect human free will of course we have to harbour the possibility that some may reject God’s grace and choose not to be saved or healed, so we can still believe in the possibility of hell though I think it was a Pope who said. We believe in hell but it is probably empty.

The Yazidi people of Iraq who were terribly persecuted by Isis in Iraq just recently are often wrongly described as devil worshippers because of one of their doctrines that I love. They believe that even the devil is in heaven because he repented, and his tears of repentance put out the fires of hell.

This position is the only logical outcome of a belief in God’s grace. Grace is free and unmerited. And it is by Grace that we are saved. We are not saved by faith – that elevates faith into a just another work we have to achieve to merit salvation. We are saved by Grace and as Christians we have faith in God’s Grace which means that we are richly blessed.

I’ll leave the last word to Paul.

“We trust in the living God, who is the saviour of all men, especially those who believe”

Living stones

Easter 5

Acts 7: 55-60. St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr and the location of his martyrdom is remembered by Christians as near what we refer to as St. Stephen’s gate, a city entrance known by Jews as the Lion gate and by Arabs as the gate of the Virgin Mary. At risk of sounding like a travelogue this is also the vicinity of the pools of Bethesda and St. Anne’s church. Much more pertinently In the subsequent history of Christianity is the verse that says that the man co-ordinating the stoning was a young man called Saul, whose personal journey from executioner of Christians to being the greatest Christian missionary of all time, did more to shape the nascent church than any other individual in history

1 Peter 2: 2-10. A description of the Christian followers of the way as being a household gains extra potency when scholars postulate that it was addressed to readers who were displaced and dispossessed, spiritually, socially, economically. This is your new and real “home”. A single household of “living stones” which takes its character from Jesus Christ – the cornerstone. This new home is set apart from the world (Holy) and is the setting in which we grow and flourish.

John 14: 1-14. A piece read at many funerals has also been used to stress the exclusivity of the church’s claims “no-one comes to the Father except through me”. When you consider the people it was originally aimed at it was probably meant to be read primarily to underscore the church’s distinctiveness rather than exclusivity. “I am” the way means that the way of life made manifest in Jesus Christ is the way to God. In an age when the church has embraced most of the social and political mores of the day rendering us as little different from the world around us, perhaps a message that stresses our distinctiveness will nudge people to contemplate just how we are to be different. What is the way of Christ?

 One of the most memorable spiritual experiences I had in the Holy Land in the year 2000 (Some may know I led a pilgrimage there that year for my church) was in St. Anne’s church, a crusader church standing near the pools of Bethseda and not far from St. Stephen’s gate. It differed from nearly all the other churches we had visited because it was so plain, and not dripping with oriental decoration. While in there a group of American pilgrims started singing “Be still for the presence of the Lord” and gradually the singing spread until almost everyone in the church was singing. It is a moment in time that has obviously stayed with me ever since and the building, St. Anne’s church holds a special place in my heart

Depicting the Christian community as a building, a definite structure with Christ as its cornerstone is a wonderful metaphor that rivals the one about us all being a body for being memorable.

The phrase “Living stones” has passed into our consciousness and our building extends across time and space as well so includes both the living and the dead, who are while physically not of this earth any more are still a part of this building, which is why we confirm our faith in the communion of saints in the Apostle’s creed.

Scholars believe that this letter of Peter was addressed to a people who were displaced and dispossessed socially, spiritually and perhaps literally as well so the idea of the church as a new home which we are all constituent members, because we are ourselves the building blocks, the stones, that make up the building would really resonate.

This is our new and everlasting home from which we can never be displaced and Christ is a part of its structure.

This ties in with the gospel piece about Jesus saying that in God’s house there are many rooms, certainly implying that there is more than enough room for all people, because God was in Christ reconciling the whole world to himself.

This piece, commonly read at funerals is rather spookily the last gospel set before I preside at my Mother’s funeral on Monday.

In this gospel passage, often used to confirm exclusive Christian access to heaven, must be seen in dialogue with all the universalist doctrines in the Bible so as someone who affirms that Jesus died to save us all, I interpret that piece to be saying that whatever people believe about God or Jesus, salvation is an objective fact, a free gift by the Grace of a loving God and so whatever anyone does or does not believe, there is only one God and his will is to save us and that salvation is through the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  

To come to the Father is to know our God, our salvation and our saviour fully so one has to know the God revealed in Christ. Christians are privileged in this way – that we know the God who is the author of our life and our redemption. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free – in this life – a foretaste of the future strengthening us to live and thrive in the present.   

I AM who I am.

Sunday 3^rd May – Easter 4

Acts 2: 42-47. An idealised picture of the life of the early church which sits at odds with the “warts and all” depiction revealed by St. Paul in his letters, shouldn’t blind us to the fact that Acts is supposed to be encouraging and offers a vision of how things could be. It describes a community under Apostolic leadership who broke bread often and joyfully. And there is no way we can attest to the “common ownership” of things, which if it did happen had dissolved by Paul’s time, but generosity to the poor and needy must have been a tremendous draw (and remained so) and boost to the growth of the church

1 Peter 2: 19-25. A very difficult passage for modern Christians. It addresses in verse 18, slaves being obedient to masters (verse 18 is removed by the lectionary compilers). Without going in to the ubiquity of slavery in the Roman world and differences between first century slavery and modern forms, we can discern a deeper message contained within these household rules. In God’s household we are all slaves of God and the slaves can all expect to suffer unjustly. The household of God is where we find security and sustenance. It is not the language we would use nowadays but Paul himself says that we are either slaves to sin or slaves of God. Our example is of course Jesus who bore his suffering without lashing out. Suffering should never be sought, and if it is anything to do with us we should live in peace, but if our faith or way of life attracts opposition we should accept it willingly as a consequence of that faith.

John 10: 1-10. Most people find the “good shepherd” analogy a comforting picture of Jesus but that comes in verse 11 after today’s offering. Less well appreciated is Jesus the “door” or “gate” presented here today. But if you imagine that door open, and yourself as a captive, and that door reveals salvation, the image is immediately more appealing. We may also find that in these days of lockdown, the image of Jesus as an open door leading to freedom might speak more powerfully that it has ever done before.

When faced with such well loved and romantic images as Jesus being the “Good shepherd” or “the light of the world” or the “bread of life” Jesus as the gate or door of the sheepfold fares rather badly.

But I think at a time of lockdown it may strike people as being a more attractive image if you imagine yourself as a captive of circumstances, expectations, or more prosaically in your house and picture Jesus as an open door to salvation or freedom, whose authority ( his voice) you recognise.

In all of the “I am” sayings of course, John is deliberately demonstrating that Jesus’ words are God’s words because I AM is the name of God disclosed to Moses in Exodus 3:14.

“Tell them I AM has sent you”.

So I am the gate for the sheep is like saying “God in Christ is the gate for the sheep”

It is in and through Jesus, the creator of the universe, reveals his will, purposes, and character.

Jesus is the open door through whom all things will pass.

By revealing himself as “I AM” the divine reveals himself as not just another being, except bigger and better, but the source and ground of all life.

I am equals pure being itself so ultimately all life is an emanation of God. Non-dual Hinduism says the same thing, that all difference is an illusion that there is only one reality and that is Brahma.

Where I think (as far as I think I understand all this) we differ from Hindus is that in the afterlife, beyond all reincarnation, is that all difference dissolves into the one great soul, whereas from the example of Jesus, we believe that difference, the essential differentiation of personality survives and is therefore honoured. After all we do believe in “bodily” resurrection

For Christians, individuals matter and our difference is honoured, both in this life and in the afterlife (which are all of a piece).

We are also however communitarian. We are individuals bound together as one people under God. We have chosen this path of faith in Jesus as the unique revelation of God. In the Biblical language they used in the earliest centuries after Jesus, we have freely chosen to be “slaves” of God, which means accepting Jesus as our Lord, our exemplar, our King.

In the Acts reading we have an idealized picture of the early church pooling all their resources and re-distributing to the really needy, which as an economic model didn’t survive very long even if it ever did.

The Eucharistic community broke bread together under Apostolic leadership and were generous with their time talents and money. Jesus is seen as the host of these communities obviously, and as faithful slaves of God sought to emulate how God was revealed in Christ, which meant loving God and loving their neighbours as themselves.

In the end, in the Christian way, everything comes down to Love.