Orjan Borgen & Courtney Jiskoot marriage blessing St Mary, Balcombe 3.9.22

This is a remarkable coming together set within a weekend of celebration for Courtney and Orjan. We come to rural Sussex from rural Norway and many other places, some less beautiful than this, to see Orjan and Courtney ‘present their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God’, to Him and to one another.

It is my privilege to celebrate their love before God and bless their aspirations in the presence of their families and friends joined by their marriage.

They met as they worked together at Schlumberger oil field near Orjan’s home in the little Norwegian town of Os near Bergen. In working together to harvest gifts from below the earth they paved the way for reaping a harvest from heaven, where Christians believe marriage is prepared. Today they welcome the anointing of the Holy Spirit from heaven. Previously as Christians they have each welcomed the anointing of the same Holy Spirit in baptism, confirmation and Holy Communion. Today they seek that anointing to bless their forward journey in life together.

Courtney grew up near here in Tunbridge Wells where she was involved in St John’s. Church, spent time volunteering and was part of the youth group. After studying Geology at the University of Bristol she spent a year studying abroad in California which broadened her vision and led her on to work in oil in Malaysia and then Norway, where she met Orjan who worked at the same company. To quote Courtney on Orjan: ‘Kind and charitable…when we did start dating, I don’t think it took me very long to realise this was the man I wanted to marry. There’s never been anything left unsaid between us to fester, we address issues quickly, partially out of fear that this might take away from our sense of intimacy... Marriage isn’t something either of us wanted to enter into lightly, but see it as the next challenge and commitment to each other’.

Orjan describes himself as being a sports and nutrition fanatic throughout his youth. He joined the military for a year (Norwegian National Service). After that, 13 years ago, he started working for Schlumberger and met Courtney around 6 years ago. I quote Orjan: ‘I’m looking forward to marriage, it’s the love of my life who I want to be with forever. I want our marriage to be our commitment to each other throughout the darkness and light, using communication and honesty’.

Both Courtney and Orjan are inspired by and deeply grateful for the example of their parents’ marriages: Mark and Jodie for 35 years and Nina and Leifgunner for 36 years. As in the first reading they chose, they seek their young love to develop in beauty into that sort of old love, held ‘in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part’.

The couple’s aspirations are also expressed in the scripture they chose from the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans Chapter 12 especially verses 9-13: ‘Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers’. 

As Orjan and Courtney join their lives before God today, they seek a special anointing from the Spirit to build more of his outgoing love within their lives. 

A Christian marriage is designed to be a beacon of unity in a divided and disarrayed world, a place where God's universal purpose is revealed in the joining of two people of his making. 

Christian marriage as a sacrament is a sign of something very beautiful and far reaching - God's purposeful drawing into unity of all things.

Thank the Lord however that Christian sacraments are not just signs but effective signs. Today God promises Orjan and Courtney help to effect the harmony marriage is called to become. 

No way in human terms can husband and wife achieve that total love and unity the Bible speaks of. They need - and on their wedding day receive - an open line to the Lord himself, a special account of grace that can be drawn upon when the going gets rough. This is the grace that is given in the sacrament of marriage, something Courtney and Orjan have lacked up to this day and something that will develop in significance according to their faith.

Like many couples before them they will discover that prayers are answered, like "I can't bear with this, Lord, anymore, but please, since you can, you bear with this through me. I can't forgive - you forgive through me. I can't be patient, you be patient in me by the gift of your Spirit."

In this way couples draw on the account opened for them today with the Lord, so to speak. It is always sad to see a husband and wife giving up at a human level when they have the supernatural resources of the sacrament of marriage at hand - if only they had faith, as a sort of cheque book, to draw on this account. St. James is right when he says in Chapter 4v2 of his letter "you do not have because you do not ask".

May Orjan and Courtney not go without God's richest blessings. May their marriage be a truly effective sign of unity in a divided world ‘extending hospitality to strangers’ becoming a shelter to many from the storms of life. May they live to see their children's children and a world growing more into the unity which is God's purpose.

Let’s reflect for a minute or so on God’s word to us before we proceed.

Churchill Gardens Estate, Pimlico Pentecost 23rd May 2021

 

On Pentecost Sunday we celebrate the Holy Spirit’s vital and vitalising role.

He is God in the present moment bringing all that Jesus has done for us into play here and now. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. This was so that right there in Jerusalem and right now in Pimlico the love of God might be communicated mind to mind and heart to heart.

Christianity is a seizing with exhilaration upon the wonder of God seen as never seen before in the coming, dying and rising of Jesus Christ.

It means if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If God had a wallet, your photo would be in it.

God loves us so much that though he can live anywhere in the universe he seeks to live in a place only you can allow him to live – in your open heart.

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into the complete truth Saint John writes. That truth is of our making by God, our redeeming by the Son of God and our being made holy by the Spirit of God.

As Pascal said, holiness is the church’s greatest influence. When God gets into people’s lives it makes them holy enlarging their hearts and it shows. It brings our humanity into its right mind as the Holy Spirit rights what’s wrong in us.

God, who gave us life, loves us so much, with all our shortcomings, he wants to give us his life, to dwell deep within us, for that is why we were made. 

The truth of God and of ourselves is this – God loves us and loves us just as we are – but he loves us too much to leave us that way and so he offers us the Holy Spirit to dwell with us and in us.

Pentecost as Feast of the Spirit is a Feast of truth-telling as we heard in the reading from the Acts. The Holy Spirit brought the truth of God’s love into all those national groups, Parthians, Medes, Elamites and so on by his miraculous translation through the gift of tongues.

Holiness and truth communicated with love and power.

This truth of God’s desire to fill every human heart with holy love, according to St Paul, already infects the universe, as he writes in Romans 8 verse 22 We know that 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.

I have seen and met on occasion people whose godliness contained a force it was hard to resist. There’s something of this around in Churchill Gardens – would there were more - since holiness is indeed the church’s greatest influence. 

So today, and always, our prayer should be Come Holy Spirit and kindle in us the fire of your love! Or, as in the Psalm set for today, Psalm 104: Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth and holiness. He’s also the power of God. At the eucharist we speak in the Creed of Christ’s incarnation being accomplished from the Holy Spirit. We pray that by the power of your Holy Spirit the gifts of bread and wine may be changed. Send the Holy Spirit on your people we pray. 

And sometimes send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory. The Holy Spirit is into application – making God take flesh, making bread and wine God’s vehicles, taking us out into the world as those first disciples went so that in [their] own languages [they] hear [us] speaking about God’s deeds of power.

So how can we make Pentecost more applicable in our own lives and in our community this morning? 

Each eucharist is meant to be a mini-Pentecost, each Holy Communion an individual Pentecost, set within the Spirit sealed communion of the Church whose birthday we mark today. 

Whatever grand spiritual aspirations we make, the Holy Spirit is closest to us when we are about our neighbours, sorting out our destructive attitudes, putting love in where there is none, recognising the humanity of those who are somewhat blind to ours.

This is the humble work of Jesus’ redemption being applied to our lives and through our lives to others. It starts in us here as by the power of the Holy Spirit the gifts of bread and wine are taken and given so that sent out in the power of the Spirit we might live and work to God’s praise and glory.

Living in his holiness and truth communicating his love through his empowerment!

Come Holy Spirit and kindle in us the fire of your love! Send forth your Spirit, O Lord, and renew the face of the earth – starting with me!

Picture: Ardingly College Crypt Chapel

St Augustine, Scaynes Hill Trinity 12 (22A) 30th August 2020 Love Romans 12.9-21

I’ve been spoiled these last few weeks attending or celebrating Sunday eucharist because my favourite book of the Bible is the letter of St. Paul to the Romans, and we’ve been following that epistle on Sundays for the three months since Trinity Sunday, with Christians across the world, as decreed by the universal lectionary. 

Why is Romans so exciting and important? I think because, unlike other letters, you really find the whole gospel within it, both in principle and in application. 

You start in chapters 1 to 3 with the downward spiral of the human condition and its crying out for salvation summarised by Paul in chapter 7:19: ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do’. You then move on in Chapters 5-11 from our need for help to the good news of Christianity of God’s loving provision in the accomplished work of Christ’s death and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit by which God’s love is poured into our hearts. After a little excursion in Chapters 9 to 11 on how the Christian good news is good news for the Jews as well the letter moves to its conclusion, like any good sermon, by turning to application. 

This is the background to today’s reading from Chapter 12 I would entitle sincere love.

How should the good news of the gift of God’s love show out in the Christian life?

I want to look with you at our passage on Christian love under six headings: love, like Jesus himself, is warm-hearted, inspired, hospitable, humble, extravagant and lastly militant.

I invite you to turn to the passage if you can access it from your bible or your phone starting with  verses 9 and 10 of Chapter 12. 

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. 

At the beginning of the hinge chapter 12 in Romans there is the key word: Therefore…

The first part of Romans reminds us that Jesus Christ is God’s gift of love covering our sins to be accepted by faith and sealed in baptism. ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’ Paul writes (1:16)

The second part of Romans teaches that since God has given us Christians salvation we need to live it out in love. Chapter 12 starts Therefore…I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship…it continues with our section from verse 9 Let love be genuine.

We pass from what Jesus has done for us to what Jesus wants to do with us and most of all he wants our sincere love – or in the Greek original our anhypokritos or literally unhypocritical love.

What is meant here? When I was a child I was accused of showing cupboard love, affection to my parents to get a biscuit out of the cupboard. Love that’s genuine has no pretensions. It comes from the heart. Later in 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 when Paul says to give your body to be burned means nothing he’s saying love is to be warm-hearted if it's to be anything at all. 

Christian love is, like Jesus himself, warm-hearted. Then secondly it is inspired - reading on in the passage.

Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. 

If Christian love is from the heart it’s also inspired from beyond our situation. Earlier in Romans Chapter 5:5 Paul said ‘God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us’. 

The spiritual fervour of Jesus is meant to reach right inside of us, deep down into our hearts. When I was an undergraduate fifty years ago up at Oxford I stumbled into St Mary Magdalene’s which unknown to me had a fervent priest called Fr. Hooper. I remember going to tea with him one Sunday. At length he asked me if I’d ever considered going to Confession. I had no good answer! Somehow the spiritual force of the man hit me – I had to go to Confession, the fervour, the warmth of the Spirit of Jesus Christ was in him and inspired me. I never looked back from then, although Confession has not always been so easy for me. By the way, if you ever want to make your Confession don’t be shy of approaching any of our visiting priests to make an appointment. The Anglican saying on confession is all may, none must, some should.

Let’s read on, what are verses 13 and 14 of Romans Chapter 12

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 

In Romans Paul teaches Jesus the author of Love and how we might imitate him.

His love is warm-hearted, inspired and thirdly hospitable.

When Jesus comes to us he is in our lives but he mostly seeks not to get in the way of our lives.

He’s not like the lady C.S.Lewis once described as so wanting to do good to others you could tell the others by their hunted look!

When the warm-hearted love of Jesus inspires us it makes more space in our relationships. It is not a pushy love but a convivial love. Surely the church needs more natural, convivial living for it is there that Jesus finds himself in good company and there, in good company that Jesus can be found.

Christian love is a practising of hospitality which might mean not talking about God too much with not yet believers. More can be achieved to spread the faith by patient hospitable friendship coupled to intercessory prayer than we sometimes imagine. Let’s read on:

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 

If love is warm-hearted, inspired and hospitable it’s also humble.

‘Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly’. One of my Christian heroes is Henri Nouwen who wrote books about the spiritual power that abounds in the community of the intellectually disabled.

Associating with the intellectually disabled like associating, living and working, with children is both a sign of loving - and a tonic to loving. 

Both children and intellectually disabled people live in the present moment without the frustrating agendas and future plans that burden most of us.  To love effectively we need to be free from the grip of past regret and future anxiety to live in the present moment. To love with Christ is to seek humility so that we see our lives as part of a whole and not the centre of things including what is going on around us and its timing.

In his many books Nouwen writes about the struggle to make himself present and vulnerable to other people in the L’Arche handicapped community when his preference was to run to his computer and write books!  I know that feeling - I am a writer too!

So often though the world of computers can subtract from our loving by taking us away from people!

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord’. No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed him; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads’.

How should the good news of the gift of God’s love show out in the Christian life?

With a love that is warm-hearted, inspiring, hospitable, humble and, fifthly, extravagant.

What extravagance to heap love on your enemy! As Paul reminds the Romans earlier in Chapter 5:8 ‘God demonstrated his own love for us in this: while we still sinners – his enemies – Christ died for us.

At the heart of Christianity is a God who has no favourites, not even his friends, and who calls us to be similarly extravagant in love. The extravagance to an enemy that’s like heaping burning coals on his head! 

Falling off her horse into the mud one day St. Teresa of Avila once shook her fist at God and said ‘God if that’s how you treat your friends it’s not surprising you have so few’. In a better state of mind, reflecting on God’s extravagant love for her and for all she wrote after years of Christian service: ‘We should forget the number of years we have served him. The more we serve him, the more deeply we fall into his debt.’

How many years have you served Christ? Are you more deeply in his debt? Does anything you have achieved do anything more than reflect back upon God who’s given you life and health and strength to do it – as well as the heart to do it with love? 

He wants more extravagant service from you and I, believe me!   The last verse.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Our love is to be warm-hearted, inspiring, hospitable, humble, extravagant and lastly militant.

Love is in battle for the soul of the world. The war has been won by the decisive battle on Calvary and our Sunday worship is a living memorial of this. We come as living sacrifices to eat the living Bread and be made afresh into living hope through offering the eucharist.

Since the world so lacks hope we come with a militant love! Isn’t that a contradiction? No - because Christ’s perfect love drives out fear (1 John 4:18). All our Christian loving is meant to be militant overcoming evil with good. It raids the kingdom of fear, not least the fearfulness of those who oppose the church. We counter fear and apathy by good humour, warm-heartedness, God’s inspiration, hospitality, humility, extravagance and militancy.

Soldiers of Christ arise therefore and put your armour on this day! Armed with God’s word, united as a living sacrifice to Christ and fed by his living Bread go forth into battle knowing in the great words of the letter to the Romans that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (8:37).

Trinity 21 29th Week (B) What Jesus does for us - Presentation Church, Haywards Heath 21 October 2018

What does Jesus do for us?

What does it mean for us as he says in today’s gospel that he came to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10.45)?

There are three main Christian doctrines – the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atonement. This morning the readings centre on this last doctrine, Atonement, how God and humanity are made one by what Jesus does for us.

How do we understand this making God one with us that Our Lord achieves?

More importantly how do we not only understand the doctrine but see it taking effect so that we know God not just only as our maker but as our saviour?

These are questions that spill out of all three scriptures this morning.

The Isaiah 53 passage was chosen to illuminate the text I read from Mark 10.45 at the end of today’s gospel. There Jesus makes a prediction of his coming Passion which pours cold water on the arrogance of James and John who thought their Lord was going to take worldly power and wanted part of his worldly glory. No, Our Lord says, my kingdom will be built from suffering service. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.  

Isaiah foresaw the lonely figure on Calvary who would bear the immense burden of sin separating human beings from their maker and how that sin bearing would cost the suffering servant his life like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. The passage hints at the tomb of Jesus given by the rich man, Joseph of Arimathea, verse 9, they made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich. It concludes with a prophecy of the resurrection, verse 12. Let me read on from that passage, Isaiah 53. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Jesus himself gave no explanation of how his death and rising again made atonement other than to point to this scripture. Only after his resurrection did his followers reflect more fully upon what Jesus did and does for us as Saviour.

So we can move on to the second reading by the anonymous author of the letter to the Hebrews. Here in this letter is the best source of teaching in scripture on the doctrine of the Atonement. This teaching centres on the priesthood of Christ by which Jesus takes what he did on Calvary and pleads it for all time in heaven. It’s this his pleading that we join to at the Eucharist.

Today’s small section of Hebrews is from chapter 5. We read: Every high priest chosen from among mortals is put in charge of things pertaining to God on their behalf, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin.

[Priests have a ministry of representing mortals to the immortal God and the immortal God to mortals. The passage goes on to outline how Christ was appointed high priest by God but with full sympathy for humanity. He is the Son of God become Son of Man. In this passage we see graphic evidence of Christ’s humanity. It’s a powerful account actually of the passion of Our Lord that begins with his tears in the Garden of Gethsemane. It provides one of the most moving evidences in the bible of how deeply Jesus engaged with our pain and sorrow.

Let’s read this account in verse 7: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.]

What does Jesus do for us?

Jesus shows us a God who expects nothing from us he’s not prepared to go through. But he shows us much more. He shows us God’s love and holiness, our need of them both and how we can attain to both.

Our Lord brings us atonement. He makes a way for the God of love and holiness to be one with us in our dignity and frailty.

In giving himself he does so in costly love. He does so on account of the requirements of God’s holiness. He does so because only by the Cross and its pleading for ever in the heavenly sanctuary can women and men be won to glory.

When we look at the Cross we see four things.

We see the love of God fully displayed.

We see the holiness of God in his hatred of sin. The Cross shows what sin feels like to God.

We see our dignity because this act of atonement is given to rescue us for eternal glory.

We see our frailty. Where else do we see the terrible consequences of our sin?

The doctrine of the Atonement is an awesome mystery. We will never fully understand the doctrine but that won’t stop us seeing it take effect in our lives so that we know God not just as our maker but as our saviour.

How does it effect our lives?

The Cross is once and for all but Jesus lives as eternal high priest to plead its benefits.  Inasmuch as we repent of our sins and trust Jesus all that he has done for us comes into operation in our lives bringing forgiveness, healing, deliverance and freedom in the Spirit.

As verse 9 of the Hebrews Chapter 4 passage states Jesus has become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. What is salvation other than an eternal relationship with God sealed on his side by love and ours by the obedience of faith.

Yes all that Jesus does for us comes to us as we obey. Faith isn’t a feeling it’s obedience. It has its beginning in baptism, which is our great ‘yes’ to God and ‘no’ to self. It has its end in the vision of God face to face with the selfless adoration of all the saints.

The good news of Christianity is very simple.

God made us for friendship. Sin became a barrier to that friendship. God sent Jesus to lift away that barrier making us friends of God.

Things get between us and God so that we’re not at one. Sin, fear, sickness, bondage, anxiety, death and the devil get in the way. Jesus brings atonement – at one ment literally – because what he did in his coming, his suffering, death and resurrection has established the means to overcome these evils - if we use them. That means that the words we read today in Isaiah he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases come true when we trust his healing power. When we read he bore the sins of many that can become true in our experience when we seek his forgiveness and become one of the many who’re made one with God through Jesus.

Atonement isn’t just a doctrine it’s a way of life. It’s living one to one, heart to heart with God.

This is what Jesus does for us.

St Bartholomew, Brighton Trinity 12 3rd September 2017 Romans 12.9-21

It is a very great privilege for me - I’m Canon John Twisleton - to be back with friends at St Bartholomew’s after my 8 years at St Giles, Horsted Keynes. Before that I served as Diocesan Mission & Renewal adviser when I had the joy of fostering the work of God in this parish.

Now I’m living in Haywards Heath I’ve got the best of both worlds. I have the great choices of going up to Brighton inland (they call it London) or travelling down to London-by the sea!

This morning I exercised another choice celebrants at Bart’s are given between having the Old Testament or New Testament reading before the Gospel. That wasn’t a hard choice since my favourite book of the Bible is the letter of St. Paul to the Romans we’ve been following as an option on Sundays for a month or two.

Why is Romans so exciting and important? I think because, unlike other apostolic letters, you find the whole gospel within it, both in principle and in application.

You start in chapters 1 to 3 with the downward spiral of the human condition and its crying out for salvation summarised by Paul later on as I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do (7:19). You then move on in Chapters 5-11 from our need for help to the good news of God’s loving provision in Christ’s death and resurrection and the gift of the Spirit by which God’s love is poured into our hearts. After a little excursion in Chapters 9 to 11 on how the Christian good news is good news for the Jews as well, the letter moves to its conclusion, like any good sermon, by turning to application.

This is the background to today’s reading from Chapter 12 on how God’s love shines out in Christian life as warm-hearted, inspired, hospitable, humble, extravagant and militant.

I invite you to turn to the pew sheet and follow the passage again, starting with verses 9 and 10 of Romans 12.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour.

Let love be genuine. When I was a child I was accused of showing cupboard love, affection to my parents to get a biscuit out of the cupboard. Love that’s genuine has no such pretension. It comes from the heart. Later in 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 when Paul says to give your body to be burned means nothing without love he’s saying love is warm-hearted if it's anything at all.

Christian love, like Jesus himself, is warm-hearted. Then secondly it is inspired - reading on in the passage.

Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

If Christian love is from the heart it’s also inspired from beyond our situation.

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford I stumbled into St Mary Magdalene’s which unknown to me had an ardent priest called Fr. Hooper. I went to tea with him one Sunday. At length he asked me if I’d ever considered going to Confession. I had no good answer! Somehow the spiritual force of the man hit me – I had to go to Confession, the fervour, the warmth of the Spirit of Jesus Christ was in him and inspired me. I never looked back from then, although Confession has not always been so easy for me. By the way, if you ever want to make your Confession don’t be shy of approaching any of our priests here at St Barts after services. The Anglican saying on confession is all may, none must, some should.

Let’s read on, verses 13 and 14 of Romans Chapter 12

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

Christian love is hospitable - which might mean not talking about God too much with not yet believers. More can be achieved to spread the faith by patient, hospitable friendship, coupled to intercessory prayer, than we sometimes imagine. Let’s read on:

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

If love is warm-hearted, inspired and hospitable it’s also humble.

Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly. Henri Nouwen is one of my favourite writers. He wrote books about the spiritual power that abounds among the intellectually disabled. He speaks of the struggle to make himself present and vulnerable to other people in the L’Arche handicapped community. His preference was again and again to go hide away at his computer and write books!  I know that feeling - I’m a writer too! So often, though, the world of computers subtracts from our loving by taking us away from people! Let’s continue:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written: ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord’. No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads’.

How should the good news of the gift of God’s love see application in a Christian life?
With a love that’s warm-hearted, inspiring, hospitable, humble and, fifthly, extravagant.
At the heart of Christianity is a God with no favourites, not even his friends, who calls us to be similarly extravagant in love. The extravagance to an enemy that’s described as being like heaping burning coals on his head!

Reflecting on God’s extravagance St Teresa of Avila wrote after years of Christian service: We should forget the number of years we have served him. The more we serve him, the more deeply we fall into his debt.
How many years have you served Christ? Are you more deeply in his debt? Does anything you’ve achieved do more than reflect back on God who gave you life and health and strength to do it – as well as the heart to do it with love?

He wants more extravagant service from you and I, believe me!  So to the last verse.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Our love is to be warm-hearted, inspiring, hospitable, humble, extravagant and lastly militant.

Love is in conflict for the soul of the world. The war has been won by the decisive battle on Calvary and our Sunday worship is a living memorial of this but the mopping up operation continues.

All our Christian loving is meant to be militant overcoming evil with good. It raids the kingdom of fear, not least the fearfulness of those who oppose the church. We counter fear and apathy by good humour, warm-heartedness, God’s inspiration, hospitality, humility, extravagance and militancy.

Soldiers of Christ arise therefore and put your armour on this day! Armed with God’s word, united as a living sacrifice to Christ and fed by his living Bread go forth into battle knowing in the great words of the letter to the Romans Chapter 8 that we are more than conquerors through him who loved us and nothing in heaven or earth can separate us from the love of God.