Good news from a good God (4) 8am 27th July 2014 Last of sermon series on the letter to the Romans

We move this morning to the last of our four part sermon series on the letter to the Romans we’ve called Good news from a good God explaining the Christian good news repent, believe, ask receive so today’s sub heading is receive.

Being last Sunday of the month it’s Prayer Book at 8 o’clock and our set reading is actually Romans 6, though our series so far has moved through Chapters 7 and 8 in the Common Worship Lectionary  – no matter, the preacher has to make the best of these contingencies!

Last Sunday we reflected on Paul’s opening up in Romans 8 of how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has rewritten the history of the cosmos bringing us all a purpose for living and a reason for dying. The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Romans 8:21 As Christians we are joined to a body and a cause that will outlive us, God’s forever family, the holy, catholic church which is God’s chosen instrument for bringing the cosmos out of its bondage to decay and into an incorruptible and glorious fulfilment.

The Christian good news is that God has made us for that glory but sin has come into our lives as a spoiler. As we repent of our sin and put faith in Jesus the spoiler goes and we ask for and receive an inextinguishable hope. This is something we need to hold onto. However much we see the church ‘put down’ in our society there is no where else that you’ll find a body so forward looking as the church of Jesus Christ!

‘Church pride’ - this to a degree is what Paul is getting at in calling back disciples to first principles.

Know ye not he says – listen to the man! Know ye not – have you forgotten - that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into his death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)

So much of preaching, so much of Christianity, is reminder. There’s really nothing new in Christianity, only the call to enter more profoundly into the depth of its profound truth.

Jesus died – we must die to our sinful nature.

Jesus rose – we must rise to our new nature which is life in the Spirit.

Paul at the end of our reading this morning speaks of Jesus: Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

Then the twist – the application where Paul moves from speaking of Jesus to speaking of you and I: Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:11)

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

If you read through Romans, or indeed the whole of Paul, you see talk of Christ indwelling us and sin indwelling us. Romans 6 on baptism is followed by Romans 7 on sin’s indwelling and Romans 8 on Christ’s indwelling.

Are there strategies that can help us live more to Christ and less to sin? There’s one I’ll mention and it’s the Jesus prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

This is a prayer people have prayed for 15 centuries and it’s one that priorities Christ within us over sin within us.  It’s beautifully simple, clear and direct.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

When we see temptation to sin rising in us, when we see the unrighteous anger mentioned in the holy Gospel today rising up within – that’s the time to reckon yourself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I am baptised – sin has no place in me! It does in practice, but affirming the principle outlined in that verse of Romans has power, as does the Jesus Prayer, in times of temptation: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.

The continuous recitation of the Jesus prayer is a counter to all the base aspirations in me. It is a form of spiritual warfare as vividly described in these words from 6th century Saint John of the Ladder: Flog the foes with the name of Jesus; for there is no stronger weapon against them either in heaven or on earth.

The use of the Jesus Prayer enables us to flog our spiritual foes. Its use as an arrow prayer helps bridge the gap between prayer in church or alone and the normal activities of life. When I say Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner I am aware of the power that lies in the name of Jesus, especially as it engages with my base thoughts and desires. The prayer helps me receive and implement the aspiration of Romans we’ve been looking at this month: to reckon yourself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The letter to the Romans is good news from a good God who sees and loves us through and through.

Repent, believe, ask receive he says.

Repent – turn to me in away from the inner storm of temptation.

Believe I Jesus am with you and in you.

Ask me to act on your behalf when you feel overwhelmed.

Receive the assurance of my love.

Listen to Paul again on Christ’s love, this time from the end of Romans 8: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Good news from a good God (3) 20th July 2014 Sermon series on Romans Chapters 7 and 8 with baptism of Maia Jeffers

We move this morning to the third of our four part sermon series on the letter to the Romans we’ve called Good news from a good God explaining the Christian good news repent, believe, ask receive so today’s sub heading is ask. It’s Maia Jeffers baptism, a young lady her parents asked for over 9 years which makes today a very special day.

The good news of Christianity thrills through Paul’s greatest letter, his credo, the letter to the Romans. I called it earlier in the series dynamite with two blasts concerning law and history. Reading Romans challenges both that part of us that seeks to earn good will legalistically through good actions and that other part of us that’s deep down lost hope for the future of the world. Such is its power, the power of the Word of God no less, to reset our life and our hope. 

The letter to the Romans says first of all that to reach into a right relationship with God is impossible from our side but that God has reached down to us in Jesus to lift us to his heights. As we heard this morning  If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  It’s God alone by his Spirit who puts us right with him, with one another and with ourselves, helping us to do the good we want to do.  For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  We’re saved ultimately not by following laws but by welcoming grace so we need to repent, to turn to God and believe in him, the very things we’re expressing for Maia this morning at her baptism.

The second blast of Romans is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has rewritten the history of the cosmos bringing us all a purpose for living and a reason for dying as we read later on in today’s passage. Romans 8:21 the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Maia is being joined to a body and a cause this morning that will outlive her and all of us, God’s forever family, the holy, catholic church which is God’s chosen instrument for bringing the cosmos out of its bondage to decay and into an incorruptible and glorious fulfilment.

Hope is faith for the future. Its saying ‘tomorrow also is God’s’ and tomorrow and tomorrow. When we eat this bread Paul says elsewhere and drink this cup we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. The good news send us in Jesus from a good God is of a good purpose for you and me and Maia. Human life isn’t just there – it’s a reflection of its Maker and its destined for its Maker since we come from God, we belong to God and we go to God.

This claim of God in Christ upon our lives is clear to one with faith, for how can what’s made not owe itself to its maker? Those seats have the mark of Maurice Emmans about them because he made them, the big one in Fr David Stonebanks day and the stools in my day. So with Maia, and you and I, we have the mark or, rather more than the mark, of our Maker about us – we have his very image.

Faith is an intuition, a special gift by which you know you bear that image. The image of Someone dependable beyond our sight, who’s been here before, and to whom there’s no unknown human contingency, however harsh it might be. Hope is simply faith as it looks to the future and both asking God to build his kingdom and seeking to cooperate with that work of building of justice, love and peace.

Our subtitle today is ‘God calls us to ask’. Just as Fiona and Anthony asked for and received Maia so they with us are called to pray day by day the Lord’s Prayer ‘hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done’. It’s all in that prayer! 

To be a Christian is to repent of your sins, believe in God who sent Jesus, ask for his possibilities to emerge – as Maia did for Fiona and Ant – and lastly to receive hope and assurance.

You know we don’t fully realise the significance attending worship has in forming up the virtue of hope. As Fiona and Ant gather with God’s people Sunday by Sunday, following in the footsteps of Ron and Joyce especially here at St Giles they will instill hope in their daughter, hope that’s uncharacteristic of an age that lives just for the sensations of the moment.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn was a child in Auschwitz when his father melted the precious margarine ration to light a Hanukkah candle. Hugo protested. His father said, ‘My child, we know you can live three days without water. You can live three weeks without food. But you cannot live for three minutes without hope.’

As Paul puts it at the end of today’s passage from Romans Chapter 8: In hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 

Live in hope. That is, live with an eye to what God is building through even the worst agonies of the world - and we think this morning of Ukrainian air disaster. This building of good from evil is expressed in Romans 8.22-23  which says, as we heard earlier, that we know the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.

Tomorrow also is God’s. This we pray will be true for all the tomorrows of Anthony, Fiona and Maia. Fiona’s yesterdays are so linked with St Giles both through her parents and through her time at our School. At 18 she left the village for Southampton University where she did her nurse’s training. Ant’s work is as an IT infrastructure manager and it’s through his sister Sue, one of Fiona’s best friends from nursing, that the couple came together. They plan to seal their union in marriage. Meanwhile they gather with to celebrate the Christian hope for their daughter who’s full name is Maia Edie Tamar Alwyne Jeffers. The family live close to Fiona’s dad, Ron, one of our home Communicants, in a house they’ve called Joylands after Ron’s late wife,  Fiona’s mother Joyce who was a pillar of St Giles.

Maia’s baptism gains her entry to a second Joylands for that name sums up what I’ve been sharing. To live in hope is to live as you were made to live in God’s image with God’s presence beside you and, as we read in Psalm 16 verse 11 in God’s presence is the fullness of joy.

The Christian good news is that God has made us for that joy but sin has come into our lives as a spoiler. As we repent of our sin and put faith in Jesus the spoiler goes and we ask for and receive joyful unextinguishable hope.

Tomorrow also is God’s – for Maia, Ant, Fiona and all of us. If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  The friendship we have with God through Jesus is sealed in baptism and it sets us on the path of being agents with him of world transformation since through our action and prayer  the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

So be it – live in hope!

Now we reflect for a minute or so on what God’s been saying to us through his word this morning before moving into the baptism service.

Good news from a good God (2) 13th July 2014 A teaching series on the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans Chapters 7 and 8

This morning we move to the second of a four part sermon series this month on the letter to the Romans we’ve called Good news from a good God bringing an explanation of the Christian good news. Our subtitle today is ‘God calls us to believe’ and we’re building from last Sunday’s examination of ‘God’s call to repentance’. We thought then about Paul’s description in Chapter 7 of his letter to the Romans of our knowing what to do but not doing it, an insight from God’s Word that psychology reinforces. We saw how the Christian good news of God’s love offers what psychology will never be able to offer – opportunity  to repent, turn from our inadequacies to the source of grace and holiness which is in Jesus Christ.

In the Sunday lectionary we turn the page today from Romans 7 to Romans 8 which begins with one of the most assuring verses in scripture: There is … no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What a wonderful verse and how much we need to believe it!

Why should we believe it? Why should we believe Christians are saved from judgement? Verses 2 to 4 of Romans 8 explain all. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  

St Paul talks of three laws here – that of the Spirit, that of sin and death and that given through Moses, the Ten Commandments  which are up on the sanctuary walls by the high altar. The first two laws he speaks of set a contrast picked up throughout today’s passage between a way of blessing – that of the Spirit – and a way of disaster, that of sin and death. The third moral law has what Paul calls a just requirement which can’t be properly enforced on we who live according to the flesh under the law of sin and of death. As we saw last week from Romans 7 no way can our lives be made pleasing to God and free from condemnation by our own efforts but only by God’s grace which makes us acceptable in his Son Jesus Christ which is the good news from a good God.

Peake’s commentary on these initial verses of Romans 8 has this helpful summary: Moses’ law has right but not might; sin’s law has might but not right; the law of the Spirit has both right and might. God’s intervention involved ‘sending his own son’ into the human situation dominated by Sin, not to be contaminated by it but to decontaminate it, in a word to expose and overthrow the power of evil in its occupied territory.

I like that quotation. The law has rights over us but sin has might over us – the very conundrum we looked at last week. I do not do what I want Paul said repeatedly in Chapter 7. Now in Chapter 8 he shows great excitement about the Holy Spirit who has both rights over us and might to help us supply behaviour that’s right. As Saint Augustine – himself transformed by reading the letter to the Romans writes – give me the grace to obey what you command and command what you will.

The ongoing decontamination of our lives by Jesus Christ is good news from a good God. I know how far he’s got to go with me, but at least I have knowledge of what they call ‘a Man who can’.  When your computer is contaminated and the anti-virus has failed you have to take it to be decontaminated by ‘a man who can’ in Haywards Heath or wherever. You can’t deal with it yourself. So it is with the tendency to exalt self over God and neighbour and that deep seated pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice and sloth – remember ‘pale gas’, the mnemonic for the seven deadly sins. Our inner contamination requires external treatment through what Jesus does for us, which is spelled out in today’s Romans reading which ends with these words: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Think about those words. Do you believe them? That weekly act of receiving Holy Communion – do you see it for what it is, your decontamination and revitalisation?  This section of Romans 8 sets forth a great divide. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 

There is a great divide between living at a physical level, a life which evidently gets lost in physical death, and living at a spiritual level, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with a quality of life stronger than physical death through the power of Christ’s resurrection.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

The letter to the Romans, like most of New Testament writings, thrills with the perceived consequence of laying hold of the risen Lord Jesus Christ through faith and baptism, Jesus who gives life to our mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in us.

At every funeral in this Church we place the Paschal Candle besides the coffin as a sign of this and sprinkle the body with holy water as a reminder of the truth of our baptism - that the risen Christ’s indwelling gives life to our mortal bodies through his Spirit. How many of these celebrations ring true to the deceased? Inasmuch as our lives are in the orbit of the Church we have the opportunity to engage with Jesus Christ in word and sacrament. He in turn, throughout our lives, seeks to engage and draw forth the opening and offering of our hearts.

O come to my heart, Lord Jesus, there is room in my heart for thee we sing, but too often we are wording Christian faith.

I love this picture. It’s from St Paul’s Cathedral and it’s a call to faith. Holman Hunt’s Light of the world can be found in the north aisle chapel just off the Dome. It shows Jesus Christ standing before a symbol of the human heart, knocking on a door covered in ivy, a door without a handle – on the outside! The scripture text below it from Revelation 3:20 makes plain what Jesus Christ wants from you and I. came on earth it invites. Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me.

The human heart, the centre of our being, is designed to open from the inside. Until it opens Jesus cannot come close nor can his Spirit come in to indwell us. To return to our passage, verses 9-10  you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 

As I invite you to read and ponder Romans Chapter 8 in the coming weeks I am pointing to good news that’s not only believable but transformative! Whenever we welcome Jesus and open the door to him his life pours into us, life that’s immortal and insuppressible for the life of Jesus will never be put down – it will never die.

That life is ours for the taking and it’s to be ours in Holy Communion this morning as we open our hearts to Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to his supper. Lord, I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word, and I shall be healed. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

Good news from a good God (1) 6th July 2014 A teaching series on the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans Chapters 7 and 8

Good news from a good God is the title of a four part sermon series this month on Romans bringing an explanation of the Christian good news. We’ll be looking at the psychological insight of Romans 7 - I do not do the good I want – and the good news from Romans 8 which speaks of how we reach a place of no condemnation, look positively to the future and welcome the assurance that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God. The series will weave in for our application God’s call to repent, believe, ask and receive as four sub-headings.

This morning we read Romans 7.15-25 which began with a profound statement that must have rung true to each and every one of us. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. How is it that human beings know what’s right and are tortured by their failure to do so? I know I must speak well of all people, because all are loved by God and in his image, yet I get seduced into repeating negative assessments about them, what we call detraction. I know my life is animated by God, surrounded by his love, yet I act sometimes as if he weren’t there and didn’t care – and so on.

The letter to the Romans was written to engage exactly with this wretchedness, and the grace from above that frees us from it, the grace spoken of at the end of today’s second reading. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God … Jesus Christ our Lord!

We are talking this morning good news from a good God who knows our plight through and through – has lived in it and through it in Jesus – and whose all powerful goodness can operate in us if we repent and believe in him, ask him in and receive his assurance. This is a scene setting for four weeks of teaching on the basis of Christianity now we move on to look more closely at the letter to the Romans itself which Coleridge called the most profound work ever written.

In the New Testament it’s placed first after the historical accounts of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and before the earlier writings of Paul that deal with particular problems in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus and so on. The letter to the Romans is Paul’s credo written around 55AD to summarise 20 years reflection on the meaning of Jesus Christ. Paul is never an easy read – read through Romans with me in July but not in King James! Use a less poetic but more accessible translation. Be careful though. In reading and getting to grips with Romans you’re handling dynamite! Many who’ve read it – Augustine, Luther and so on – have had to press a reset button on their life.

The dynamite has two blasts and they concern law and history. Reading Romans challenges both that part of us that seeks to earn good will legalistically through good actions and that other part of us that’s deep down lost hope for the future of the world. Such is its power, the power of the Word of God no less, to reset our life and our hope.

The letter to the Romans says first of all that to reach into a right relationship with God is impossible from our side but that God has reached down to us in Jesus to lift us to his heights.  The righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith is banner heading of the letter, Chapter 1:17 saying we’re saved ultimately not by following laws but by welcoming grace.

The second blast of Romans is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has rewritten the history of the world, making the church God’s new Israel so that the very destiny of the cosmos is tied in with that of God’s children and, as we read in Romans 8:21 the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Over the next four weeks the Sunday Lectionary covers Romans 7 and 8 which are the hinge of 16 Chapters on the good news of God’s goodness. Chapters 1 to 8 of Romans are theological – they are about God, the individual and the church and we will be reading Paul’s summary of these Chapters over the next month in Chapters 7 and 8. Chapters 9 to 11 reflect on the purpose of history, how the Church is the new Israel and how the old Israel will yet find a place in his plan. Chapters 12 to 15 are on Christian ethics, that is, on the practical application to our lives of the truth about God, law and grace, history and the church expounded in the first part of the letter.

So – to practical application this morning – with more thoughts on the section of Romans 7 you have in your service booklet. The passage is a profound reflection on our human condition. When Augustine read it he had the school of thought Lord, make me chaste, but not yet. Like us he knew of the good and evil within him and was complacent. We human beings know our worth, know what we can and might be, but we fall short of it and of the desire for it. To speak of our sinning is to speak as they do in archery of a life that falls short of its target. We know we’re made by God for community to love God and the community but with that knowledge comes the deep frustration of   distrust, or even at times hatred, of God and the community. For I do not do what I want, writes Paul in verse 15 of Chapter 7 but I do the very thing I hate. 

How can I please God? We live dangerously when we think our churchgoing or confirmation or ordination is what ultimately pleases him. It doesn’t displease him but its insufficient to give access to him in his holiness. ‘Lord you are the source of all holiness’ the priest says in the eucharistic prayer, going on to ask God in that holiness to make bread and wine holy for us. It is precisely that body and blood of Christ represented in bread and wine which can make us pleasing to God. The letter to the Hebrews says in Chapter 11 verse 6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. What pleases God is to be found in the body and blood of Jesus as Paul says in Ephesians 1:6-7 glorious grace [is] freely bestowed on us in the Beloved… [Jesus Christ in whom] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. The good news of the goodness of God to us is that though so different, awesome, immense and holy he thought to make us in his image so as to be transformed into his glory and be history makers.  To effect that plan for the future of the cosmos he needed to take our nature and provide sinners with a way into his holiness by incorporating us into the body of Jesus Christ that’s acceptable to God.

By uniting us to the sacrifice of Jesus, made present at this and every eucharist, God makes us acceptable in the Beloved, since, in the words of Romans 3:23 all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God [but] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. This earlier teaching in Romans lies behind the end of today’s passage: Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God … Jesus Christ our Lord!

Read Romans 1 to 7 to get more insight into this need for God to take flesh in Jesus and so provide needful sacrifice for sin - but this morning I leave you with God’s call to repentance. You’ve read Paul’s description of our knowing what to do but not doing it, insight from God’s Word that psychology reinforces. With me accept what psychology will not be able to offer which is the call to repent, to turn from your inadequacy to the source of grace and holiness which is Christ in you – Christ who is coming to you in word and sacrament this morning. Repent, turn to him whose power in you is able to alleviate your wretchedness and work within you by his power to make your life pleasing to God who has made you for his glory.

Here’s a taster for you – but do pick up your bible in the coming week – a modern translation – and savour Romans!