St Peter & St John Wivelsfield 2nd before Lent 16th Feb 2020

All we’re about as Christians harnesses energy. It harnesses the energy that presses creation forward. Let no one be deceived into thinking Christianity is a loss of energy, even if tasks in the life of the Church fall heavily on your shoulders!

As we heard in our readings from Genesis and Romans God who brought all that is out of nothing has the creation waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. 

He brings us moment by moment in Christ the irrepressible power of the Holy Spirit. It is the same energy at work in the Eucharist that is at work bringing sun, rain and storm and pushing the grass and trees upward.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin Our Lord reflects in the Gospel I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 

The same Lord Jesus Christ is our clue to understanding that energy that has brought not just the lilies but each of us here into being and would carry us forward from this day into a joyful eternity. He whose power rolled out creation acted powerfully upon the Cross to reconcile sinful humanity and is powerfully present with us this morning.  He is both the power that bought all things into being and the one who gives power to all who believe in his name.

To know God in Jesus Christ is not something esoteric but something that touches the wellsprings of human life. You and I are here in this Church this morning, held together in our physical being by God.

God who brought all that is out of nothing brings us moment by moment, in Christ, the power of life. More than that he fills hearts open to him with his own life, the life and power of the Holy Spirit, through word and sacrament.

Our Church tower is fashioned as pointer to this truth: all of life comes from God, is sustained by God and would be directed by God to his praise and service.

I say ‘would be’ because the creation of a world apart from God has led to the necessity of faith for mortal beings to be one with him, to choose intimacy with him, and to overcome the consequences of that apartness from God in the evil consequences of human wrongdoing, made possible by that apartness of the creation from God. 

We name the second person in the Godhead Jesus Christ because the world apart from God began to fall apart through human sin and only through the gift of his Son, revealed in taking nature of a Virgin in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection could it be brought together again.

The great Anglican theologian Austin Farrer has this summary of how creation links to redemption and the making holy of our lives: We believe in One God, One not only in the unity of his substance but in the unbroken wholeness of his action. All the work of God is one mighty doing from the beginning to the end, and can only be seen in its mind-convincing force when it is so taken. It is One God who calls being out of nothing, and Jesus from a virgin womb, and life from the dead; who revives our languid souls by penitence, and promises to sinful men redeemed by the vision of his face, in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

A Celebration of Faith p62

I am hopeful for the Church because I know there’s a link between the supernaturally revealed truth of Jesus Christ and the truths of the world’s evolution established by science. Not just a link but a dynamic!

Just to illustrate, it is the Lord’s Day. Every Sunday we celebrate three dynamics. The first day of the week is a reminder of God’s creation on the primeval day. It is also the memorial of the new creation given on Easter Sunday. It is thirdly the memorial of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit empowered the Church. This dynamic is encaptured in Victorian Bishop William Walsham How’s hymn for Sunday:

This day, at thy creating Word first o’er the earth the light was poured; 

O Lord, this day upon us shine, and fill our hearts with light divine.

This day the Lord for sinners slain, in might victorious rose again:

O Jesu, may we raisèd be from death of sin to life in thee.

This day the Holy Spirit came with fiery tongues of cloven flame:

O Spirit, fill our hearts this day with grace to hear and grace to pray.

The truth behind Sunday is the same truth behind creation – the truth of a God who, in Farrer’s words calls being out of nothing...Jesus from a virgin womb, and life from the dead; who revives our languid souls.

A last thought on how we better lay hold on this truth.

Imagine yourself up a ladder replacing a light bulb. You are concentrating your attention on loosening the bulb and suddenly your mind switches to ponder how securely you’re placed on the ladder (no doubt if in Church your two named ladder holders will be down below you).

Your inner questioning ‘how securely am I placed’ undermines the operation until you pull yourself together and get on with the job.

Do you get the analogy? When we try to analyse our faith it feels shaky. When we attend to God it is convinced. 

Believing in God is a practical matter beyond human analysis.

As Austin Farrer says elsewhere: God can convince us of God, nothing else and no one else can: attend the eucharist well, make a good communion, pray for the grace you need, and you will know that you are not dealing with empty air.

Let’s do just that - attend the eucharist well and make a good communion!

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! 

Lent 2 24th February 2013 I believe in Jesus Christ

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.  

How could God who’s everywhere become one man?

Universals lead to particulars cf a lifetime of 33 years, a teaching ministry of 3 years and a passion of 3 days climaxing in 3 hours.

• Contemporary for galactic and subatomic realms show some sorts of connection between the macroscopic and the microscopic
• Thomas Merton expresses this in a famous analogy: As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the ray of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man.
• Chaos theory: The emergence of God at one point, to show us his face and his love, is in harmony with scientific truth, as much as the emergence of a beautiful rainbow on a stormy day.

What does it mean that Christ died for us?

• substitutional view where Jesus is seen to die in our place.  Example of a law court where judge goes to back of court to pay fine of poor mother of three imprisoned for theft.
• sacrificial view of atonement the blood of Christ provides the sinless victim who alone can expiate sin. Christ loved [us], giving himself up for us as an offering and a sweet smelling sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5v2). Cf eucharist.
• exemplarist view that Christ’s example of love effects atonement just in revealing God’s love. When a tree is felled you see the beautiful rings within its trunk.
• triumphant view of Christ who leads believers in his victory procession: Thanks be to God who always gives us in Christ a part in his triumphal procession (2 Cor 2v14). 

Where’s the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus?

Christianity is the only religion refusing to talk of its Founder as a past figure.  Buddha and Mohammed have graves but Jesus…

• The change in the disciples from Gospel accounts to Acts: fearful men and women end up confronting authorities
• The strangely matter of fact and reserved accounts of the resurrection in NT.  The disciples don’t recognise Jesus.  Would that have been relayed if the resn were invention?
• Would the role of women as witnesses, controversial in those days, be included in a constructed tale?
• The Christian church changing its weekly holy day from the Jewish Sabbath to Sunday, that being the day of Christ’s rising.  What a change for pious Jews! 

Why should we believe in judgement of the living and the dead?

• God’s investment in the human race.  He is due to get a return on that - history has this purpose: to prepare a holy people for God’s possession. The church is this, a bride being prepared without spot or wrinkle (Eph 5v27)
• Ultimate righting of wrongs vindicating God’s justice.  In Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov two brothers argue about the evil in the world focussing on the suffering of children and whether there is ultimate justice. Jesus’ suffering shows us the judge of the world isn’t aloof.
• How can judgement be possible?  As sure as a computer memory contains a million records, so the memory of God! Christian tradition distinguishes an individual judgement at the moment of death and a general judgement which at the Lord’s return. After death scripture speaks of two ultimate destinies, heaven and hell.
• Mercy As the video of my life is prepared for showing on judgement day Christ has power to edit out the unacceptable points if I give them to him.  
• Hope To believe in Jesus Christ who will come to judge the living and the dead is to face the future with an infectious hope. If faith shows you that the whole world is in God’s hands so is its future. All will come right in the end!