Champions!

John 14.15-21 All Age Sermon

• What was all the noise in Barcelona last night? I could hardly sleep with all the fireworks, cheering and car horns…

• Oh, a football match. Who was playing? What was score? What were names of the Barça scorers? (3-1 to Barça, Pedro, Messi and Villa – we’ll come back to them.)

• I’m always on the lookout for sermon illustrations, so I couldn’t help noticing that the team with the devil on its badge lost to the team with a christian cross on its badge (no reflection on members of either club, btw).

• But it is great to be connected with the winning team. We are all connected, by living in or near Barcelona and attending a church in Barcelona. One of our members is more closely connected than any of us. He is the grandson of a Barça player. Guess who? A chocolate euro for the first child to find him … Michael Witty, grandson of Arthur – holding the ball in this 1903 team photo …

• Let’s make some connections with today’s Bible reading. Children, each time I mention the name of one of Barça’s goalscorers, I want you to call out “GOAL, BARÇA!

• At the start of John 14, Jesus talked about his Father’s house having many rooms . So it was bigger than an ordinary house, more like a VILLA (…) in fact.

• So Jesus was saying to the disciples that there is room in his Father’s VILLA (…) for everybody. But that doesn’t mean he wants us to just sit around in our rooms all day, listening to our iplayer or reading books.

• Later in the chapter he makes it clear that he wants his followers to be out doing the same kind of things he did, joining in his and his Father’s work of bringing heaven on earth.

• At the beginning and end of today’s reading (15 and 21) Jesus said that anyone who loves him will obey his commands = live his way, the way he showed us.

• But how can this happen? Well in the first letter of Peter, that’s PEDRO (…) in spanish, it says that all the followers of Jesus are being built by God like living stones into a temple for God to live in and work through. Wow!

• And Jesus says to the disciples that he won’t leave them as orphans – alone and without anyone to care for and guide them. He says he will return to them, but in a different form like a Helper who will live inside them.

• Does this mean we are to be like glove puppets with God’s “hand” inside us making us do the right things (demonstrate)?

• Not a bad illustration, but a better illustration might be a football coach like Barça’s Pep Guardiola.

• Some people in Barcelona seem to think Guardiola is God, but this is not correct!

• However there are similarities between what he does and what Jesus and the Holy Spirit do … He trains the plays every day to make the best of their God-given skills. But when it comes to the game he doesn’t leave them alone, like orphans, he is there with them.

• During the game he signals to the players, guides them, warns them about what their opponents are doing and so on. He calls out instructions and they respond to what he says, enabling them to play better.

• Sometimes it is hard for the players to hear the coach in the excitement of the game and above the noise of the crowd. But when they can hear him, they play better!

• We too are in a contest and we are in the team wearing the cross on its badge, the team which will win, as God saves the world. But we need help and the good news is…

• The same Helper, the same Holy Spirit is available to us, to help us live the way God wants us to. This is amazing, like Pep Guardiola being available to coach your school team.

• So no matter how difficult, how confusing, how complicated, how untidy… how MESSY (…) life gets, we know that we will never be orphans but Champions!

Sermon - John 14.1-14

John 14.1-14

Starts as if Jesus talking about escaping this life to live in a disembodied heaven. But this is a dangerous misinterpretation – could lead to a wrong attitude to this world and our mortal life.

Towards end of passage it becomes clearer that J is talking about the importance of living as kingdom of God people here and now:

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these… John 14.12

How can this be? Because Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. John 14.6

The Way

One of scariest experiences of my life was being the passenger of a blind taxi driver! (Formby to Woodvale 1979). The driver’s reply to my expression of alarm? “Don’t worry, I know the way!”

There are times when all of us wonder about the great questions of life. Where did I come from? Where am I heading? Who am I? What is life all about? Thousands of young people demonstrating in cities all over Spain are asking these questions, as they express their despair and anger at the lack of job opportunities. Everyone from Tolstoy to Freddie Mercury has asked these kind of questions. Not long before he died, Mercury said this:

You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man, and that is the most bitter type of loneliness. Success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds, but it’s prevented me from having the one thing we all need – a loving, ongoing relationship.

He was right to say a loving, ongoing relationship is the one thing we all need. But can any human relationship completely and consistently satisfy that need? Even a perfect marriage dosn’t last forever because one partner dies first. As Christians, we believe that all of us were created to live in a relationship with God and Jesus said I am the Way… Jesus is the only one who can bring us into a relationship with God which goes on into eternity.

Without Jesus, we are a bit like that taxi driver – winding our way along, with no clear picture of what is going on, bumping into things as we go and hopefully getting from A to B without killing anybody! If we follow Jesus as our Way, we see things we would not otherwise see. The meaning of life becomes clearer and we have a purpose. We also become less of a danger to others.

Also remember that the Way we live during our journey is vital – not just the fact of arriving at the detination, but how we live during the journey. This is why the Bible gives us so much information about how Jesus lived his life – partly as a model for us.

Someone recently pointed out to me how almost all the hymns in most hymn books are about the birth, death or resurrection of Jesus. Hardly any are about his life in bertween! I think we need to write some new hymns. Because life is more like a ballet than a taxi ride. The Way that you move to the music, building beautiful patterns with the other performers (guided by the great choreographer!) is the whole point…

The Truth

Secondly Jesus claimed to be the Truth – an extraordinary claim. Now many people today say it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. But this is only partly true. Sincerity IS important and of course arguments about whose beliefs are correct and who is a heretic have led to much of the violence and ugliness of history. But believing UNTRUE things, even if we are sincere, can have terrible consequences.

For example if you believe God will be pleased with you if you strap explosives to your body, walk into a crowded place and detonate…

Or if you believe your race or religion makes you superior to other people…

On the other hand, seeking to believe what is true, seeing things as closely as possible to the way they really are, puts us in touch with reality and helps us become wise and good. It can also make life more meaningful and enjoyable. E.g. If you have a huge inheritance in the bank but don’t believe it is there or if somebody really loves you but you don’t believe them, you miss out. Having belief in TRUTH makes all the difference.

And Jesus doesn’t just talk about the truth, he IS the truth. He is the exact image of God. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”. Surely that makes him the most important person in history to meet, to learn about to believe in and to follow. And this must be true for us and for everyone else too.

God promises to reward you if you earnestly seek the Truth, even if this leads you to question things you’ve been told to believe. I want to make it clear that this is a Church where it is OK to have questions (ask me or your home group leader… join a Roots1 or Routes2 course).

The Life

Jesus said elsewhere (Luke 12.15) that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his posessions. Although looking at human society today you’d think it did!

Jesus said I am the Life, which is obviously a far more bold claim than to say this or that is the meaning of life… but what did he mean? I think he was referring right back to the origins of human life and right forward to the end of time, to the goal of human history. The Adam and Eve story in Genesis teaches that death was never part of God’s plan but that it came into the world as a result of human rebellion against God, human rejection of the simple, open, loving relationship they had initially enjoyed. Human beings made a choice to abuse their free will and live as God’s enemies instead of his friends and partners in creation.

If we fast forward to the end of the Bible we see in Revelation (echoing Isaiah and other OT prophets) that God’s plan is to rid the world of sin and death and restore all things to perfection in a new created order at the end of this era. When Jesus came among us – God in human form – this new era began, the era of eternal life or the kingdom of God.

The resurrection of Jesus proved that the kingdom of God had broken into human history and made it possible for people to live here and now as kingdom of God people, living by God’s values and priorities and working with God in his saving and renewing work.

I’d say the key is to do LIFE ENHANCING things for other people and avoid doing LIFE DIMINISHING things. You can think of your own examples in each situation. Are there things I habitually do which are life diminishing? What can I do instead which is life enhancing?

Conclusion

How seriously do we take the claim of Jesus that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life and how do we present this idea in a world which is highly suspicious of such claims?

If Jesus’s claim is true, as I believe it is, how can we work effectively with him to unleash the potential of his way and help others be part of what God is doing in the world today?

I was struck by a contrast last night between the Sant’Egidio community’s anniversary service in the Cathedral, with the people who are normally out together with some of us, serving the poor, dressed in white and desperately trying not to make a mistake in the very formal service … and the demonstration in Pl Catalunya of young people crying out in despair at the hopelessness of life. They needed to encounter the Way, the Truth and the Life … but we had shut him away in a dark building and a dry ceremony. We (all Christians, all Churches) need to work with God in releasing the potential of the Way, the Truth and the Life, in helping others be part of what God is doing in the world.

A flying instructor of mine (I’ll call him “Joe” to protect his identity) liked to have a few beers at the airfield before driving home. Joe’s argument was that even with 5 pints of beer and a whisky or two inside him he was a safer driver than a sober 80 year old man. Now Cliff may have had a point – especially when I think back to that taxi driver - BUT life is not about getting away with it or being adequate or better than some other poor soul. Life is meant to be lived to the full, abundantly, generously, honestly - as a man, woman or child of God, a citizen of God’s kingdom, living in the way, the truth and the life of Christ.
We end with an interesting and challenging video (Get Service - see previous post) to help us think about putting these ideas into practice. Let’s live it, show it and share it.

Got it?

Sermon - Acts 2.42-47

Acts 2.42-47

Today’s gospel reading (John 10.1-10) ended with the words “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Jesus is both the good shepherd who seeks out the lost, calls them by name and guides them to safety, and also the gateway to a new way of living which he describes as “abundant life”.

In our reading from Acts 2 we learn what that “abundant life” looks like and the community of the earliest Christians is offered to us as a model of what the church should be like. It might be unrealistic to expect a perfect match, but we should be able draw principles which will help us evaluate how we are doing and some ideas for how we can improve.

Devoted learners

As a result of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of Peter at Pentecost, the church suddenly jumped from under 100 to over 3,000 members. This was a huge challenge for this new faith community – teacher/pupil ratios went by the board – and yet the church continued to thrive and grow. The first reason we are given for this is that the people “devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teachings”. They didn’t just have a moving spiritual experience, they used their minds to learn the whole truth from the people appointed by Jesus to teach and reveal it. The Holy Spirit continued to overcome barriers of language, culture and ability to reward these new believers with a growing faith and understanding. Healings and other miraculous signs accompanied the apostles’ teaching, as proof that it came from God.

The principle seems to be that God rewards devoted learners. But does that describe us, or are we more casual and disinterested about our knowledge of what the Bible teaches? Do we want to learn, and are we prepared to listen when the Bible challenges our prejudices and faults?

Loving relationships

The second thing we learn about the community of new believers is that “they devoted themselves to fellowship.” And this went way beyond what we might expect within a normal club, society or community. We are told how wealth was redistributed to improve things for the poor. They still had possessions and homes – but they were in and out of each other’s homes, sharing meals, making sure nobody was hungry or lonely, helping each other to put into practice the example of Jesus and the apostles. Their lives were characterised by gladness, gratitude and generosity. Not surprisingly, this was a community which attracted other people so that they were practically queueing up to join. Again we see God’s hand in this: “The Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Here we see both common ground and a radical difference between Christianity and other ways of life. “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” might be a fair description of how these early Christians live. But that quote is not from the Bible, it is from the writings of Karl Marx, the founding philospher of communism. Marx also famously wrote “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” Most atheists and humanists would agree with these statements by Marx, even though their economic and political ideas might be very different from his. In fact all kinds of people, with all kinds of beliefs would aspire to the kind of society in which wealth is redistributed and the vulnerable are cared for, but would insist that this be done without any reference to God. What’s wrong with that?

Well for one thing, history shows it doesn’t work, not on a large scale anyway, because human greed and selfishness and the corrupting influence of power always gets in the way. Its like trying

to grow a tree with no leaves or roots, no source of life and power and nourishment. The early Christians were able to live the way they did precisely because they had a source of power and life that came directly from God.

Of course even the church falls short of the ideal most of the time. Christians are not perfect and often have mixed motives and divided loyalties. We probably see ourselves as a pretty friendly and supportive church, but reading these verses you can’t help thinking there is another level we need to reach. Evangelism would really be no challenge at all if we loved each other like this.

Worship centred community

If we are serious about wanting to live God’s way, we need to stay connected to God. We are told that the way these early Christians did this was by devoting themselves to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Breaking bread could just be a way of saying they shared meals, but it is likely that a simple form of Holy Communion was already taking place. Certainly there were regular meetings where people were praying to God together.

Without assuming too much, it does seem that they got the balance right between joy and formality, spontaneity and order, and it is clear that whatever form their worship took, it was transforming them and attracting others to want to know this God who was being worshipped.

Again, this should lead us to ask questions about our own services and meetings and it clarifies what we should be aiming for.

Open and welcoming

Finally we notice how open and welcoming this first christian community was. It was easy to join, without having to fulfil onerous requirements or sign up to a set of rules. It was enough to acknowledge your need for God’s mercy, help and love. All kinds of people were welcomed into this growing community, day by day.

To sum up we might notice that all these marks of the earliest Christian community are about relationships:

• To the apostles and their inspired teaching
• To each other in caring, sharing fellowship
• To God in the power of the Spirit, remembering Jesus, joyfully thanking the Father
• To outsiders in friendship, openness and welcome

The Holy Spirit was the life force which enabled all of this to happen and as we look back at the empty tomb of Easter, we also look forward to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. May we be open to that same Holy Spirit’s work in our lives. And may we increasingly grow together in the qualities God desires in us.

Bible Study - Acts 2.42-47

Bible Study – Acts 2.42-47

For background, read Acts 2.1-41.

Q1 Turning to Acts 2.42-47, what do you find most striking in this description of the life of the early church?

Q2 “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” might be a fair description of the way the Christian community lived at that time. But do you know who that quote comes from?

Q3 How does the ideal of Christian society presented in this passage compare with the ideals of (a) communism, (b) secular humanism and (c) consumerism? What important differences are there?

Q4 Each verse in this passage describes an effect of the coming of the Holy Spirit. To what extent do we see each of these effects in our church today? Should we/how could we see them increase? It might be helpful to tabulate your answers:-

Verse Effect Present today? Desirable? Achievable?
42
43
44
45
46
47

Q5 What do you find most challenging about this passage, individually and for the church and society you are part of? What changes would you like to make and what help might be available from God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit?

Luke 24 - A Journey with Jesus

Luke 24.13-35 “A Journey with Jesus”

We are invited to join in a journey with Jesus from Jerusalem to Emmaus and back again. From fear, confusion & spiritual blindness to joy, understanding & new life. Some observations about this journey might help us & our neighbours on our own journeys.

Companionship

Two travel together from Jerusalem to Emmaus on day of resurrection. We find out one is called Cleopas. Other = his wife? Luke himself? Both are shocked, disappointed & confused by recent events, i.e. arrest, trial & execution of Jesus followed by strange report of empty tomb.

Life is often shocking, confusing and disappointing, which is why we need companions on the journey.

Often, as we accompany each other through crises, we find that Jesus mysteriously joins in…

Conversation

As they reflect on and argue about what has happened, Jesus takes an interest in their conversation, joins in and gently teaches them. He guides them to an understanding of the things which had confused them.

Question: I wonder how much real conversation goes on about the significant events and themes of our day? I suspect “not much” is the answer, in spite of the information overload we have.

But God designed us to journey together and to have conversations with friends and with the strangers we encounter. I believe that if our conversations are an honest search for truth, Jesus will join in and bring light and understanding.

Bible

When Jesus joins in the conversation in our story, the first thing he does is to make clear the importance of knowing our Bible, if we want to understand what is going on in the world and the significance of events.

This is why Christians in countries where the faith is discouraged are so desperate to receive Bibles.

In contrast, how tragic it is that in countries lilke Spain and some of our home countries, where Bibles and books which help explain the Bible are so easily and inexpensively available, so little attention is paid to it!

Could this be one of the main reasons the world is in such a mess?

We need to promote knowledge & understanding of the Bible. Unfortunately Jesus is no longer physically here to explain it all, but he has given us the Holy Spirit to “guide us into all truth” and he has gifted some people to preach and teach. These people need to be indentified, trained, encouraged and listened to.

Hospitality

The last feature of the Emmaus journey I want to highlight is the hospitality shown by the travellers at the end of their journey. We notice that Jesus is ready to continue his journey. He doesn’t go into their house until they invite him in. So hospitality is the fourth important feature of this journey, this model journey of faith.

Hospitality is an activity and an attitude which is important all the way through the Bible. For example in Hebrews 13.2 we read “do not neglect to show hospitality; by doing this, some have entertained angels unawares.”

Here at Emmaus it is during a shared meal that the disciples recognise Jesus, their eyes are opened, their hearts and minds understand.

Conclusion

Companionship, conversation, understanding the Bible and hospitality – put them all together and you have Church! If we do these things well, we build Christian community and are able to be salt and light in society.

Jesus joins us and we journey with him. We draw others into that journey by loving,
serving and listening to them . Jesus reveals himself to these others and so the Kingdom of God grows and bears fruit.

May we follow this pattern of the Emmaus Road and may this be our story.

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Drew