Sunday 29 July 2012

Trinity 8 (17th of Year B) 29th July 2012

The Olympics are here and the whole world is coming to London.

They’re coming either by plane or London’s going to them by satellite.

International travel has its moments as many of us will know.

Pity the Japanese tourist who took the train to Heathrow for a flight to Reading.  She asked in broken English for Turkey and they put her on the night train to Torquay. The police found her wandering along the sea front of Torquay in the early morning looking for the Church of Santa Sophia on the Bosphorus. She thought she’d gone through the Channel Tunnel to Turkey!

We should never minimise the implications of miscommunication. Just one mistaken word for this lady took her dramatically off course.

How about communicating what we stand for as Christians?

I think the two main things we need to get across are these: God is good and the Church is OK.

Let’s take God’s goodness first.

Deep down people want to believe there’s a good God. It’s when they encounter horrid things and horrid people that faith crumbles. To use my story as an analogy, they get misled from Christianity and head for Torquay not Turkey – apologies to the West Country!

I have regular conversations with people in the village who question God’s goodness in the face of evil. They run, say on the Oregon cinema shootings, ‘what a waste of life – how can God allow it?’

No full answer can be given but, given chance, I would say I saw God’s goodness in the young man who gave himself for his girl friend by throwing himself over her to die in a hail of bullets.

If you condemn the Creator for the wickedness in the world you’re mainly condemning him for granting human beings the freedom to make their own choices.

70% of all website ‘hits’ worldwide are to pornographic sites. Would you use that as an excuse to condemn the internet when it hosts so many valuable social networks?

When it generates so much creativity through the sharing of ideas?

You have to take the rough with the smooth and that’s a truth that goes right into the heart of God. The Cross of Jesus shows what wickedness does to God (1 Peter 2:24). Can you look at the Cross and say he doesn’t care about it? In Christian faith we have a God who suffers along with us, and comforts us in our weakness. God uses our suffering, as he did even in that Oregon cinema, to help us support one another in the face of evil.

As Christians we’ll always struggle to communicate to non-believers that God is good. We can argue as I’ve just done but our arguments are often undermined by our lifestyle. Our living a good life counts most in getting God’s goodness over to others. We need ‘to walk the talk’. For that we need God’s help, which is one reason we’re here on a Sunday.

God is good and the Church is OK. Do you believe it? Unless you do you’ll never be an evangelist.
There’s a widespread perception that Christians are hypocrites.

A hypocrite is someone who pretends. I don’t pretend Jesus has the truth or is the truth – I know it - but I try also not to pretend I fall short of him.

It’s hard!

If someone says they believe in Jesus, but his followers are hypocrites, they’re partly right. They’ll need advising that if they follow Jesus they too will get called hypocrites. It goes with the calling.
Jesus gives us a vision. We try to live up to it - and we fail.

Where would we be though without the vision Jesus gives? We’d be heading for Torquay not Turkey! We’d have a wrong aim in life.

Having his standards is like having your alarm clock set half an hour ahead to make sure you’re never late!

Jesus taught things that would keep us on our toes, pressing forwards towards his perfect standard.

Forgive your brother or sister from your heart he says (Matthew 18:35). Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew ). Do not worry about your life (Matthew ).

I regularly confess I fall short. Jesus teaches we should confess. Every church service includes confessing our failings.  Jesus never said his followers would live up to him, but he did say they should strive to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew ).

In the Bible we read how people who cheated other people came to Jesus and were forgiven - people who’d stolen - who’d sold their bodies for sex – all came to Jesus and were welcomed.

Ephesians Chapter 2 verse 4 says God is rich in mercy. If someone tells me they believe in Jesus but Christians are hypocrites I’ll tell them how the mercy of God covers my sins.

I’ll tell them of the God and Father of Jesus who loves sinners and gives them not what they most deserve but what they most need.

If the church falls short of Jesus it’s also true that Christians need the church.

When people complain about the non-Ok-ness of the Church I ask them how I can better get close to Jesus than through the church?

Where else can I hear God’s word expounded? Or encounter the Lord by praying with other believers? Or welcome the promised Holy Spirit?

Where but in the fellowship of the Christian church can I receive the spiritual food of the precious body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion?

A great evangelist had a fireside chat with a young man who insisted you could believe in Jesus without going to church.

Having reminded him that faith in Jesus grows up in a community, the evangelist reached down for the fire tongs and took hold of a brightly burning coal.
As he held it aloft the two men saw it change from red to orange to black. The young man was in church the next Sunday!

Even if there is hypocrisy in the church Jesus is there also, among his people, waiting to warm their souls.

That’s the best answer we can give. It’s Jesus’ own answer. Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them (Matthew )

Here we are - gathered before a good God in a church that’s being made OK by him through what he is to give us this morning in word and sacrament.

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