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 helping out in the parish I’ve a sense of being used in that way – to be there for you and God trying my best not to get in his way.
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.
Capturing this thought 14th century Catherine of Siena, whose feast we kept on Thursday, prayed ‘Eternal Trinity… mystery deep as the sea, you could give me no greater gift than the gift of yourself. For you are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being’.
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 caused by the dispersion of moon light through ice particles in earth’s atmosphere. 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.
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.
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. We might well look for ways we can build such skills, not least by reading a book. In the wake of the success of my walk book - I have copies this morning - I am shortly publishing a book called ‘Elucidations - light on Christian controversies’ with a Foreword by the Bishop of Lewes. I hope it will draw some of those who have bought Fifty Walks’. This second book attempts to clear misconceptions of the truth that is in Jesus, the authority of the Bible and the trustworthiness of the Church in a society with increased religious illiteracy. In it I attempt to condense down thinking on controversial topics ranging from self-love to unanswered prayer, Mary to antisemitism, suffering to same sex unions, charismatic experience to the ordination of women, hell to ecology and trusting the Church, a total of twenty five essays. End of advert - forgive me - but giving answers or at least clarifications on issues such as these is an urgent necessity. You and I are on the front line as interpreters of Christian faith. Finding words, as Philip did when asked in the first reading, is helped by intellectual formation in the faith. Such words may not go very far without the loving kindness recommended in the second reading.
The gospel tells us how we get motivated to do both of these – to share best words and best 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.
‘Abide in me, as I abide in you’ (John 15:4). 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 has been compared by Bishop Rowan Williams to such sunbathing, a matter of receiving from above - but getting there to pray, to abide in Christ, is in practice a disciplined struggle. Take mental distractions!
One great aid to overcoming such distractions in minds that get overheated at times is the inward repetition of the Jesus Prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner. This 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 the Jesus Prayer 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.
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, including elucidating our faith to others. 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.
