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”