The Readings this morning are:
- Acts 11:1–18
- Revelation 21:1–6
- John 13:31–35
Introduction
Last week, I spoke about how I reflect on the readings as an example of how all of us can hear God speaking to us as we read his inspired word. This week, looking at the readings set in the Lectionary, I wondered whether a different approach might be appropriate.
Last week, my approach was to read and listen to the text, and see what it seemed to be saying to you; asking questions to clarify what you are hearing. Just trying to listen to the text with the ears of the Spirit.
This week, I want to add something else into the process, or at least do so more explicitly. That added bit was there last week, but I want to make it clearer – what I am adding, is you (and me), your situation, your challenges.
Reading God’s word is always a two-way process – a conversation – between you and his word. It can’t be otherwise; no matter how hard you try to hear what God is saying, you can only hear from where you are, your situation, heart and mind are always going to affect how you hear.
But sometimes it seems to start much more clearly from your side. You don’t just go to God’s word to hear him; you go to it with questions and needs that look for answers. You are still wanting to hear what God is saying, so the answers may be more challenging than comforting, but it does affect the way you approach the word.
What we Bring to God’s Word
So, this morning, I want to go back two weeks to what I was talking about in terms of Church – the way we are church.
We are a Church in Transition
You may each bring your own situation to God and his word this morning, but our situation as a church is that we are being called out from where we are – where we have been for a long time – to become the church that God is wanting us to be. God may be using our financial situation and the lack of clergy to provoke this change, but it his calling that is at its true heart.
We are, whether we like it or not, a church in transition, in a Benefice, Deanery & Diocese in transition. Old patterns and old ways are being shaken –
But please hear me carefully; this is not about traditional or modern worship. They are almost beside the point. This is deeper. It’s about a church whose reality is gathering people, each with a Spirit-filled faith-life relationship with Jesus Christ, coming together as a living body expression of Christ on earth. It’s a church which is truly the sum of its parts, where each member is playing his or her part, and we together are building up the body for its work of service – to God and, in mission, to his world.
If such a church is the promised land that God is calling us to, we are being called out of Egypt to journey through the desert; renewing our relationship with God in a renewed dependency on his provision and protection.
What we bring to God
It is this situation, this need, that we bring to God’s word this morning. It is this situation that we bring to our gathering before him
We call these gatherings ‘Services’, but I wish we could find a better word. God does not need serving. He does not need our work (That’s what Liturgy means, the work of the people). He may call us to work with him – to lay ourselves before him as a living sacrifice – but fundamentally we come together because we need him.
So, we bring ourselves to him, in faith that he will speak life into us.
With that in mind, what can we find in his word this morning?
I suggest three things: Hope, Love and … well, I’ll leave the third one hanging for the moment.
Hope, Love & …
Hope
The first thing I hear in response to our question, from Revelation, is Hope.
People, Christian people have all sorts of hopes; of healing and blessing in this life, of meeting lost loved-ones in the next life – but what is the hope that God offers us?
Ultimately, it is a new creation in which God dwells with us (and we with him) and death, suffering and tears are no more.
But it is not just the absence of these things that defines this new creation. It is utterly new:
Behold, I am making all things new
Rev 21:5
All things; a new earth and new heavens, new bodies, new hearts, new minds, new wills, new desires, new relationships. There is a continuity in this hope; it’s not as if God is throwing away everything we have known – some of it certainly needs to go – but what remains will be radically renewed
So, we should not be surprised that God is calling us to new things now.
But, often, we just want the Old fixed, or made better. We don’t want this life to end, just to be healed. Or, if it does end, we want it to be continued in another place, with all those we have loved and lost. But that is not the hope that God gives us.
There is so much more of this life that is under God’s condemnation, so much in us. So, God tells us “Behold, I am making all things new.”
He gives us Hope, but it is also a challenge. From this vantage point, it might not seem clear how ‘all things new’ could be better. So, it’s going to take prayer and stepping out in faith – into the desert – until we may begin to see how glorious this Hope is.
Love
The second thing we may see to help us in this transition, from our Gospel reading, is Jesus focus on Love.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn 13:34-35)
We have a desperate need to discover what this means as his Church. Perhaps a significant part of why people do not see Jesus as Good News is because they do not see us as his disciples; marked by his Love. Have you noticed, parish churches are not always filled with people loving one another.
And then, we need to know what this Love looks like, because it is not as straightforward as it seems; take two examples:
- It was Because Jesus loved Lazarus, he let him die – because something better would be revealed than mere healing (Jn 11:5-16)
- It was Because the Father loves the Son above all, he gave him to die – because it would reveal Jesus true glory (Jn 13.31)
God’s love, the Love he calls us to, is totally bound up with his Truth; the reality of who he is in all holiness. It is not wishful thinking, or merely meeting people’s felt needs. It is a love that faces this Truth and bears the cost of that truth, sacrificially, in order to be a real blessing; real love to others.
We are called to Love God – who he is, his truth and holiness – and to love our neighbour. To combine those two is not easy – as all the churches struggles with sexuality and gender (and much more) show – but we are called to Love in truth, and to bear the cost, ourselves in doing so.
Too often, the church has either abandoned the Truth, in order to pursue what looks like love, or so held the Truth that love is abandoned and all truth’s cost fall on those we should be loving.
So, God gives us Hope, and he Gives us Love, to sustain, empower and direct us in our journey with him into the desert. And, just like Hope, Love is going to be a challenge to us:
- No short cuts that avoid the truth
- Loving one another as we look to be loved by God, himself
- Bearing with one another, in failures and disagreements
- Carrying our own cross and helping one another with theirs
Conflict
Which brings me to the third thing we may see, in response to our questions and needs. Strange as this sounds, it is Conflict.
The reading from Acts shows Peter being asked to account for his actions in going to the Gentiles and including them in the Church. To the church at that time, fundamentally Jewish, this was a radical change, and many opposed it. It was to become a continuing issue in the early church; as Paul’s battle with those who wanted to demand circumcision shows. And this was not the only time that the church would gather to try and sort this out.
What this shows is that God’s call to become new as a church, to become what he wants us to be in Christ, is going to cause conflict amongst us. Conflict is not the end (as some seem to make it), but it is not a sign that we have gone astray. It is almost a mark of the journey. The desert and God’s call is going to surface things that we have supressed in the cause of peace; things that we need to deal with.
I am by nature, I think, a conflict avoider. But God rightly complains when people seek peace in the wrong way:
They have healed the wounds of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace’, when there is no peace.
Jer 6:14
Combining this with my first two points; Gods call to his new thing is going to demand a radical commitment to Love and a radical Hope that, through hardships and conflict, we will come to a place where All things are made new in him.
Peter’s defence before the church is that God was doing something new, who was he to stand against it. Yet, clearly, as you read on in Acts, many in the new church continued to be uncomfortable with this. There would be other councils and joint statements issued to try and resolve the conflict, but it never seems to have gone away – God keeps on doing his new thing, and we go on struggling to keep up.
What does this mean for us?
What, then, does this mean for us?
I believe that God is going to go on challenging us as Christians together, calling us to a renewal of what we have known as Church. It’s not my plan. It’s not just a reaction to finance or clergy numbers. It’s his calling, his work.
It’s going to bring challenges and conflicts
- Communion – who enables it
- Leadership – how does it work together
- Parochialism – our church, or a church of churches
- Parish expectations – what do they want
- Deanery & Diocese –
It’s going to demand a radical commitment to love one another; being prepared to carry the cost of failures, disagreements and conflicts, by seeking a place for his Love in our hearts.
And, its going to mean All things being made new – starting with ourselves. Because this new church that God is calling us to is you and me, each and every one of us, together in his hands.