Joy is at the heart

 18/5/25                                                          St. Peter’s                                                              Bible 4

Acts 11:1-18                                                                                                                     John 13:31-35

This morning we come to the fourth sermon in our series on the bible ‘The bible as spiritual authority’

This isn’t the sermon to explore the inevitable difficulties of  looking at an ancient text so I’ve taken as a jumping off point John Stott’s approach to scripture - he saw the bible as authoritative in all God intends to convey - which raises the question ‘what does God intend to convey’. In this Jesus, the word made flesh, is our touchstone. 

I’m going to try and answer 2 questions

The first - a spiritual one is about God intentions - Can we find a constant direction in Scripture?

The second is about what this authority asks of us - what part are we expected to play in fulfilling God’s purposes?

But before we get to our first reading two brief travels through time -The first goes back 2000 years  - a favourite quotation from Rowan Williams

When reading the Gospels you sometimes get the impression that if anywhere in ancient Galilee you heard a loud noise and a lot of laughter and talking and singing, you could be reasonably sure that Jesus of Nazareth was around somewhere nearby. Jesus created fellowship wherever he was. And it is one of the things in the Gospels that is remembered as most distinctive about him, because even then some of his friends were embarrassed by it. The indiscriminate generosity and the willingness to mix with unsuitable people were already, in the first Christian generation, just difficult enough for the Gospel writers to scratch their heads and cough just a little bit about it. But they could not deny it or suppress it. It was too vividly remembered. Jesus sought out company and the effect of his presence was to create a celebration, to bind people together.

The second much more recent. It’s Easter Day and the crowd in St Peter’s square are hearing Cardinal Ravelli read the pope’s sermon — Pope Francis must have known  this was likely to be  his last chance to speak to his people - this is the teaching he most wanted them to take away

From the empty tomb in Jerusalem we hear unexpected good news: Jesus, who was crucified, “is not here, he has risen”  Jesus is not in the tomb, he is alive!

Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness and truth over falsehood. Forgiveness has triumphed over revenge. Evil has not disappeared from history; it will remain until the end, but it no longer has the upper hand; it no longer has power over those who accept the grace of this day.

The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion. Thanks to Christ — crucified and risen from the dead — hope does not disappoint!  That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude but empowers us.

Christ is risen! These words capture the whole meaning of our existence, for we were not made for death but for life. Easter is the celebration of life! God created us for life and wants the human family to rise again! In his eyes, every life is precious!

What both time trips have in common joy in the presence of Jesus. And this joy is at the the heart of our faith. Where Jesus is there is joy, where Jesus is there is celebration, where Jesus is there is the kingdom of heaven - what we know now is only a pointer of what is to come, but even what we can see at the moment of his Kingdom is the truest, most hopeful and healthy thing we can know. It is good news for now as well as the future.

There is a very good hymn that I only remembered yesterday ‘The kingdom of God is justice and joy - this is the direction that scripture is taking us - towards being builders of this kingdom of justice and joy.

One of the earliest promises of the bible - before he made a covenant with Abraham, whilst Abraham was still called Abram, before he’d taken a single step of obedience God said to him, ‘In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’  

Abram could have had no idea what this was going to mean  but in our first reading we see the promise being fulfilled.

Immediately before our first reading God has overcome all of Peter’s reservations about gentiles and has taken him to the house of Cornelius where the whole household become christian and are baptised.

In our reading Peter is dealing with the fallout

‘The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised him  and said, “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

But Peter explained ‘I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.’  So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

God’s grace is available to everyone. God’s joyful kingdom is a place of welcome. All the families of the earth shall be blessed.

And we have a role to play. The kingdom of God is not bricks and mortar, it’s flesh and blood - this is why the kingdom of God looks like Jesus - why the church as the body of Christ is such a powerful image. God’s authority is not about cracking the whip, it isn't there so we can be held accountable, it is so that we are given a direction of travel, it tells us how to best  make the presence of Jesus vivid to those around us.

So to our second reading. This passage follows Jesus washing the disciples feet, the last supper and Judas slipping away to betray him - Jesus has demonstrated the leader as servant,  has given us the meal that will nourish us and hold us together and now takes his last chance to teach his disciples before he will be arrested. We should take his words very seriously.

His mission is the same as his father’s. To a dark, difficult, dangerous world he has come to establish his kingdom of hope, joy and love. A place where all who want to follow him will be welcomed, nurtured and sustained. In our reading he passes  the baton onto his disciples, and so also to us.

He affirms his spiritual authority ‘I give you a new commandment.’ Commandment is not a word that he would have used lightly and this commandment focuses on fulfilling God’s plan. It is intended be listened to and followed; what Jesus says takes the direction of travel of scripture to its logical conclusion.

‘A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”   

If we want people outside the church to recognise Jesus inside the church, love for one another needs to be visible. If it isn’t, then we are masking Jesus.

Two questions - the first - What is the spiritual purpose to which scripture points us? The making visible the joyful, welcoming, holy kingdom of God here on earth. A place where the presence of Jesus is palpable. 

The second, how do we do it? How do we play our part? Accept Jesus’ authority and live by his commandment. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

Dorothy Sayers, who as well as writing the Peter Wimsey detective stories and a series of plays, was a devout if somewhat cynical Christian. She  once said that God went through three great humiliations. 

The first was at the stable, when God surrendered deity to embrace humanity in the birth of Jesus.

The second was at the cross, when Jesus was mocked and beaten and killed.

The third is the church, when God decided to let us be Jesus’s representatives on earth.

The commandment that makes us Jesus’s representatives on earth is very simple to say ‘Everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.’ 

Living it out will always be a challenge but if we accept the bible as our spiritual authority this is where it leads us.

Are we true?

 4/5/25                                St Peter’s                             Easter 2

Acts 9:1-6                                                         John 2:12-19

The sermon this morning is the 2nd in the series on the bible - last week Sam’s theme was “Can we trust Scripture?

We can. And why? Because at the heart of our trust in scripture is our trust in Jesus - he who is the Word made flesh.

The theme for today’s sermon is ‘The bible as an alternative story’ and to illustrate that we’ll look at the lives of Saul/Paul and Peter and how their lives were give new direction by a meeting with Jesus. Our readings both happen after the resurrection and I think it’s important to remember that the resurrected Jesus is no less fully human in these appearances than he was before the crucifixion 

What first came to mind I began preparing for today was something by Mark Oakley the current Dean of Southwark. He wrote, ‘We spend a lot of time asking whether the Bible is true, and miss the fact that the biblical texts are often asking us, 'Are you true?' This is the real question that readers of the Bible should face…'

Which is very close to something Jeremiah said, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things  and beyond cure.
 Who can understand it?’

We will have our own views about the sort of people we are - but scripture suggests that the story we tell ourselves about our own lives is likely to be unreliable. Fortunately the bible is a corrective.

To begin with Paul. The first time we hear of him is earlier in the book of Acts at the martyrdom of St. Stephen. 

He’s there when Stephen is dragged out of the city to be stoned ‘Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul.’. And Saul approved  of their killing him.(Acts 7:58 - 8:1) 

He gets worse - from today’s reading, ‘Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.

What sort of a person was Saul? Aggressive, convinced he was right, think of the Spanish Inquisition 

How would we or he expect his story to continue? Probably more of the same till nothing remained of this awkward group of disciples and the memory of this Jesus they kept banging on about.

But then this Jesus meets him on the road to Damascus and Paul is turned inside out. ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Saul is set on attacking people Jesus knew and loves. The seed of the church - the community of worship and love that Jesus came to plant is beginning to grow and Saul wants to pull it out by the roots.   

Peter’s story was different - knowing who Jesus was wasn’t his problem - Jesus had been the centre of Peter’s life since they met . Peter’s problem was that he Peter turned out not to be the person he had always believed himself to be - it turned out he wasn’t as brave, outspoken, and impossible to intimidate as he’d thought. He had promised Jesus he would never deny him but a few hour later he’d done it not once, not twice but three times. Peter had wept bitterly, but he’d still abandoned his friend. If you’d asked him what his future held it wouldn’t have been promising - he’d go back to the fishing and let the shame eat away at him. Did the resurrection change anything for him? What would Jesus think of a person who had failed him so badly. 

But Jesus meets him at the breakfast and puts him back on track. ‘Simon Peter, son of John, do you love me? Jesus addresses Simon’s failure head on. 

In our readings we have two people walking towards a future which is unhappy, misguided and wasteful until Jesus gives them both a new story 

The failings of Peter and Paul could have been catastrophic and were worked out in an uncomfortably public arena. 

We are nor Peter or Paul - our missteps are likely to be less catastrophic, certainly less significant for the future of the church -  but they still matter - they affect us and they affect what we can offer the work of Christ in the church. And though we are not Peter or Paul the mistakes they made are not likely to be unfamiliar to us.

  

Paul was certain that there was a total overlap between his ideas and God’s. He was convinced he was in the right until Jesus met him. We may not be as strident as Paul but we can find ourselves thinking that God will always endorse our views because they are so utterly reasonable and so untouched by our personal preferences.

Peter was in a bleak place - he loves Jesus, he rejoices in the resurrection, but he knows he has failed him. They used to be so close, but how can it be like that again - he has failed Jesus and knows the corrosion of shame and guilt. We may know something of this too.   

Interestingly Jesus’s  approach to Peter and Paul was same - he asked them a question - how easy it would have been for Jesus, the fully human Son of God to feel bitter about these two - Paul who wants to destroy every thing that Jesus went to the cross to achieve, Peter who chickened out when Jesus most needed a friend. Jesus had every reason to want to punish Peter and Paul - but he isn’t interested in that. The questions he asks are not those of the counsel for the prosecution, they are not demeaning, humiliating, or condemnatory - he wanted them to see where they had gone wrong  so they could change.

What he gave them, what introduced them to their alternative story was mercy.

Paul the bloodthirsty zealot received mercy; Peter the close friend of who had denied him received mercy; so both of them were able to enter a new story. Paul will be the great teacher of the church revealing the truths he was on the road to Damascus to stamp out. Peter, who failed Jesus is made the shepherd of his sheep.  The mercy, the forgiveness they received opened them up to the new story Jesus had for them

In our day by day walk with Jesus we too get things wrong, but we too have access to his mercy. We don’t need to pretend that we are infallible.

How does Jesus ask us questions? If the bible asks us are we true - how does it do that

                        

Very helpfully our new interim bishop sent a letter out to the diocese this week - she was welcomed at the Cathedral yesterday afternoon - and in it she tells us how to open ourselves up to a questioning, merciful  God who is seeking to help us to the story that is best for us. 

How can we live out our faith? How can we get back on track when we misstep?

Over to the bishop.. 

As we begin our walk together in faith, I want to encourage us to start as we mean to go on.  I’ve found it really helpful to have a passage of Scripture to ‘dwell’ in each year and I would like to suggest that until the end of the year we take the following verses as words for us to reflect on, allowing God to speak to, and encourage us.

‘As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.’ Colossians 3:12-17 (NRSV)

 29th December 2024               St Peter’s               Luke 2:8-19                        

In our imagination let’s go back 2024 years and three days.

So it’s the morning of Boxing Day and Joseph has just woken up. There’s a blank moment when he’s still more asleep than awake, but then , as he lies there, yesterday begins to swim back into his memory. 

The baby’s arrived  - Jesus is here now - he looks over at the manger and he’s asleep - sigh of relief; he looks at Mary and she’s asleep as well. Double sigh of relief.

His memory carries on working. There is something about shepherds, and about celebrating with shepherds. 

He knew Jesus was special and Mary obviously did, but how did the shepherds know? There  was something about angels as well. What else? He’d found a midwife too late for the birth but he was just glad that there was someone for Mary to talk to who knew what they were talking about.

It had taken Mary a while to drop off - and then Jesus had woken up a couple of times - if the birth was a shock for Mary and Joseph it can’t have been a picnic for Jesus either - so it’s reasonable that He was a bit restless. 

A more recent memory comes back - she’s gone back to sleep now but Mary nudged him five minutes ago because she wanted a cup of tea -  which depending on how far the wise men had travelled might have been just about possible.

Joseph gets up and gets on with it whilst thinking about what’s happened and how special it is and how utterly unlike anything that’s ever happened before it is 

..but then the midwife comes back and shatters his illusions. Apparently most of what happened - in fact almost all the things that struck him whilst they were happening - the time it took, the pain of it, the work of it, his spare partness whilst it was going on - the joy of it when it had happened  the whole astonishment of it - turn out not to have been special at all extraordinary yes but they’ve been ordinary as well.

Further - all the things that the midwife says they need to do to look after Jesus aren’t because he’s a special baby but because he’s an ordinary one. In fact, the midwife doesn’t see anything unusual about him at all. When she’s gone Joseph wonders where did the specialness of Jesus birth’ end and the ordinariness begin - he can’t tell but perhaps he decides - it doesn’t matter.

What can we learn from a God who chooses to live a life that has so much in common with everyone else’s?

Jesus is a God not just for the crises or the great joys - he’s there for the every day as well. Jesus didn’t cheat - there for the shepherds, angels and wise men and then skipping onto adulthood - he went through it all - crawling, toddling, those difficult teenage years when his parents were particularly stupid - Jesus lived through it at the same rate as the rest of us - which means that though he understands the particularly good and the particularly bad he doesn’t specialise in them. He cares about us when we are flat and when we are exuberant. Which means that we can keep a running conversation going with Him about whatever is uppermost in our mind - good or bad, vital or trivial

God born into the ordinary understands the ordinary.

And then -  something the wonder of which we will never exhaust - there is no way that Jesus could have shown His dedication to us, His commitment to us , His love for us more thoroughly than this. He doesn’t come to us as an outside expert - experts don’t come more inside than he did. He came, God with us, to be so utterly with us, to sink himself into our situation so completely that to the midwife, to Joseph and Mary, to those around he seemed like any other one day old, one week old, one month old baby. This is the love of a Creator for His creation, for us taken absolutely as far as it can go and we here now, whether in crisis or in ordinary, can bask in that love and be touched by it.           

Joseph, and eventually Mary and Jesus, wake up on the day after Christmas Day and get on with all the things they have to do. To the observer their plans for the day wouldn’t have seemed particularly ambitious. But just because something is ordinary it doesn’t mean God isn’t there.