Easter 5 10th May 2009

In the Holy Eucharist we offer ourselves as Christ offers himself.

We consecrate ourselves for whatever God wants in the coming week and the rest of our lives.

We also seek his guidance so that we’ll not only be there for God but not get in the way of what God’s doing.

Just look back at that first reading from Acts Chapter 8. It’s the story of how one man, Philip, having offered himself to God, finds himself in just the right place at the right time. The conversion of Ethiopia to Christ traces back to a court official reading the bible who needed an interpreter and the fact deacon Philip was there to help him.

Who knows how many of your friends and mine are awaiting an interpreter of Christian faith? What are you and I doing to get skilled in this?

Philip was led by an angel to encounter the Ethiopian eunuch. He did his bit and passed on, ‘the Spirit of the Lord snatched him’ away we’re told intriguingly.

A stitch in time saves nine. A word in time saves nine.

Sometimes people are stuck in their lives like a beached boat. They’re surrounded by just enough tide to be released to sail ahead – but they need a word of advice or encouragement to be launched off the beach.

By saying our prayers, reading and digesting the bible and offering our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice in the Eucharist we make ourselves available for God’s possibilities to be realised not only in our lives but in the lives of those around us.

As I’ve been trying to get around visiting you all and prayed at times with you, I’ve a sense of being used in that way – to be there you and God trying my best not to get in his way.

C.S.Lewis wrote of a lady who devoted her life to other people and you could tell who the other people were by their hunted look! God spare me from hunting parishioners like that.

That’s a few thoughts on the first reading. The Psalm, sung so beautifully for us, picks up the missionary outcome of the Acts reading: all those who seek the Lord shall praise him.

The second reading builds to my thinking on the first because it reminds us that Christianity spreads through loving communities. We have an individual role, like Philip, to engage with people and be there for them and for God but ultimately the best witness for Christ is a loving, intriguing community. People are brought to the Lord by a team in effect.

No one has ever seen God but if we love one another God lives in us. People see God in communities of the self forgetful. Actually the Blessed Trinity is himself a community of the self forgetful: the Father forgets himself for the Son, the Son for the Father and the Spirit is their self forgetful go between.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.
Perhaps God made the world to make himself a halo. You know that sort of crowning halo which can surround the moon at night. Could we see the love of the saints as like such a halo reflecting the giving and receiving of love from Jesus by his holy ones?

When churches on earth get that sort of intriguing, holy love they can draw people.

I was talking to a neighbouring priest last week. He was convinced that the occasional kindnesses of church members are the best draw for non members towards Christianity. Just as Philip responded to a request in the first reading from Acts, the second reading from the first letter of Saint John is a call to more active loving kindness in which we don’t just respond to requests but actively seek to give people what they need.

Those who say ‘I love God’ and hate their brothers and sisters are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

If you’ve got a heart for other people you’ll recognise their needs. With occasional God given imagination you’ll be able to show them acts of kindness that touch them deeply as if from God. My family have felt some of this in the 10 weeks we’ve been living here.

The first reading calls us to be interpreters of Christian faith. We need better skills here, in so called Christian apologetics. This means offering an ‘apologia’ or reasoned defence of our faith. I’m looking for ways we can build such skills. The evening on The Shack is a starter – The Shack, I remind you, is a Christian book among international best sellers which looks at betrayal and trust from a spiritual angle. We want to use it as a way of helping people discuss deep things in our community, so we’ve booked the British Legion Club for 4th June.

The first reading calls us to be interpreters of Christian faith. The second reading calls us to loving kindness. The gospel tells us how we get motivated to do both of these – to share best words and deeds.

I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

As a vine branch gets life from the sap of the vine so Christians gain life from Christ.
It’s not a matter of working up our faith but of resting in what Jesus has done for us.

In the Eucharist Christ takes wine and makes it his life blood and ours. This passage from John 15 echoes the earlier passage on the Bread of life in John Chapter 6. When we receive Holy Communion it’s a renewal of our grafting into Christ, of our covenant relationship. To believe in Christ is to draw life from him rather than from worldly ambitions.

In the Holy Eucharist we receive a revitalisation, just as we consecrate ourselves for whatever God wants in the rest of our lives.

Security in this world isn’t difficult. It’s as difficult as sunbathing. To abide in Christ is to rest on the rock of Christ in the sunlight of the Father and the energising of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer may be like sunbathing, a matter of receiving, but to pray, to abide in Christ is practically a disciplined struggle.

Take mental distractions! One great aid to overcoming such distractions in minds that get overheated at times is the Jesus Prayer. Its aim is precisely that expressed in today’s gospel, to serve abiding in Christ and gaining energy to speak of him and love for him. The Jesus Prayers is an Eastern Orthodox devotion in which you repeat continually some variant of Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. It’s said formally at set prayer times and also freely as part of the unceasing prayer invited by scripture

This gospel prayer expresses the good news of Christianity. It affirms both the coming of the Saviour and our need for his salvation. Based on incidents in the life of Our Lord it combines Peter’s act of faith in Jesus – You are the Son of God (cf Matthew 16v16) – with the cry of the Publican – have mercy upon me a sinner (Luke 18v13b).

The Jesus Prayer is a wonderful servant of the aspiration of today’s gospel: abide in me and I in you. It exalts the name which is above every name (Philippians 2v10b). You can’t repeat that name, the name of Jesus with a good intention without touching his person, God’s person. It’s really a form of Holy Communion without bread and wine and it effects an extension of our sacramental communion week by week. The Name of Jesus, present in the human heart, communicates to it the power of deification…Shining through the heart, the light of the Name of Jesus illuminates all the universe. Bulgakov

To pray the Jesus Prayer is to centre your life upon the good news of Jesus with the faith and prayer of the church through the ages. It’s a way of settling your life repeatedly back on the rock of Christ since the recollected repetition of the holy name of Jesus is found eventually to convey his close presence.

In the Eucharist we offer ourselves as Christ offers himself and we receive Christ afresh to carry him out to share him in word and deed.

We consecrate ourselves for whatever God wants of us in the future. This consecration continues inasmuch as we continually abide in Christ by saying our prayers, maybe using the Jesus Prayer, reading and digesting the bible, confessing our shortcomings and preparing the regular offering of our souls and bodies as a living sacrifice in the Eucharist.

God’s possibilities are waiting to be realised in our lives, just as they were waiting in the Ethiopian court official. God’s love is waiting to be poured out from us, through us as we read today in John’s first letter.

I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

May the Lord settle us into a fresh, deeper abiding as we celebrate this Holy Eucharist.