The readings, this morning are:
- Acts 9:1–20
- Revelation 5:11–14
- John 21:1–19
Introduction
Good Morning Church
Good Morning Church. Good Morning, Body of Christ
That’s what you are, if you are in Christ and he is in you –
- if you do not know that you are his and his Spirit in you is your very life, then you are gathering with his Church, but you are no more than a guest (a welcome guest), and a spectator;
- but if you have handed your life over to Jesus and his Spirit lives in you, you are church, you are his body
Real Church
Let me approach this reality – this truth – from a different direction. What is real Church? What do you truly think is real church?
When St Keverne Church Building was closed for development and services took place in the Church Hall, I gather that some people did not come because they did not think that it was real church. Some churches, right now, are facing challenges in arranging for ordained priests to take communion services and are contemplating replacing some of their communion services by lay led Morning Prayer – and some are stating that they won’t come because it’s not real church.
I must say, as gracefully but as clearly as I can, that Jesus is appalled by such thinking!
Does that sound too strong? Listen to what he says in his word – in the words we have heard this morning and I think you will find that it is not.
Look around, this is church – look at real church – if indeed we are truly in Jesus and his Spirit is in us. Jesus, himself, has promised that where as few as two or three are gathered in his name, he is there in the midst of us. That’s a pretty low requirement; two people in Christ is enough.
Persecuting, Loving, Worshiping
Now look at the words we have heard this morning
Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
Saul has been persecuting the Church, wreaking havoc on the congregations in Jerusalem, dragging Christians off to prison and causing many to leave Jerusalem. But these Christians keep taking their contagion elsewhere, and church grows up in Damascus. So, Saul gets letters of authority from the High Priest to go and pursue his work in Damascus.
On the way, Jesus meets him and the light of his presence blinds Saul, who falls to the ground. Then he hears a voice – those around him hear it also, though they do not see the light. Jesus rebukes Saul; but he does not say ‘Why are you persecuting my people’, he says “why are you persecuting me?”
There’s much more in this passage, but I want us to focus on this realty – when Saul persecutes Christian people, Jesus says ‘you are persecuting me’. These Christians are Jesus; they are Jesus embodied on earth as much as Jesus was when he became incarnate and lived among us in the flesh.
Love Me, Love My Sheep
If Saul (Paul) emphasises this reality in a negative way, our Gospel reading emphasises it in a positive way.
Peter has, for all his courageous words, abjectly failed Jesus and denied him three times. If there was a time to stand up and be counted as a Christian, it was when Jesus was taken captive, brutally beaten and crucified – and Peter had utterly failed.
Something had kept him with the rest of the Disciples – after all, most of them had failed Jesus as well. That something was, of course, Jesus praying for Peter, as he had promised. But from Peter’s perspective, how do you come back from that? Jesus has a plan.
Jesus had revealed himself in his resurrection to Peter and the others. But now Jesus was preparing to leave them – just as he said – ascending to his glory in heaven, to pour our the Holy Spirit on his people. Jesus was leaving and, although he would be with them by his Spirit, Peter would never have the opportunity to stand up for him in the same way that he wished that he had done in his incarnation.
So, Jesus come to strengthen Peter, and to show Peter a way for Peter to turn from his failure and to truly love Jesus. Jesus asks Peter “Do you love me?”. Three times he asks. Is he testing Peter? Peter seems to think so, as he replies in desperation “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”
But this is not so much a test as a gift. Jesus gives Peter a way to love him. It is as if he says – Do you love me, I will show you hoe to love me … Feed my Sheep, Tend & Feed my Lambs.
Once again, Jesus is saying that these people – these Christians – are me in the world. They truly are my body. Love me, Love my sheep. Love my Sheep and you will be loving Me.
The Church is not an organisation, it is Christian People in Relationship with Jesus AND in relationship with one another in such a way that:
- Jesus can say to Saul “why are you persecuting me?”, and
- Jesus can say to Peter “do you love me, feed my sheep”.
Every Creature Saying …
And then, looking from a different perspective, Revelation shows us a vision of heavenly worship which reinforces this truth.
When John is first taken up into the heavenly places (Rev 4), he sees a Throne and the one who is seated on it. It is surrounded by twenty-four elders and by four living creatures, who praise and worship God.
But then the Lamb appears, as the one who can receive and open the scroll that speaks of the working out of God’s purposes in creation. And it is as if John’s vision pans out to see more; myriads of angels surrounding God and worshipping. And, beyond that vision fails and John merely hears – “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” speaking out in praise and worship.
The heavenly worship is not just the few, or the special people, but all creation – and each member of it – has a part in the worship of God.
And just as God now hears the prayers of millions of people – and hears each one as if they spoke personally and alone to him – so the heavenly worship may sound to John like the sound of many waters, but to God each voice is heard and every-one plays their own unique part in the heavenly worship.
What we experience in part as Church here on earth will be fulfilled in heaven; every member has a part to play, every voice is heard by God. There are no bystanders, no spectators.
Real Church
So, good morning Church. Look around; you are church. This is Real Church – you are.
This is the Church that Jesus died for; the church that he promised to build – you and you … all of us; in him and built together with every joining relationship that he supplies.
When Jesus commission his first people, he did not say go and build churches, or even go and gather congregations; he said go and make disciples – make people in my image, people who live in me and I in them, people who – when they gather together – look like me, embodied in a living community.
But we are too much like the people in Hebrews (Heb 5.11) who are still milk-fed, unable to cope with solid food. We need to repent of our human dependencies, and our ecclesiastical prejudices – arguing about forms of services, vestments, building and so on.
If I asked most people here what church really was, I am sure most would reply that it is not the building, but the people – but, I wonder whether we have really begun to think about what that means.
We have made Church too doable and to Professional
In a paradoxical way, we have made Church to Doable and too Professional.
Its too doable, to easy – any of you can do it; read the words, sing the songs, even do communion.
And yet, real church should be essentially undoable, the hardest thing in the world. Only people filled with the Holy Spirit, whose lives are dedicated to Christ and his word, can do it. Without that we are all just acting, its not real.
We should gather together, every time we do, with much prayer for Jesus to be in us and among us; weeping over the sins that mar his body and hungrily seeking his word and his grace in all we do.
It’s too Professional – we have made it so complicated, so that only those properly trained can do it. Who really understands the Lectionary, the colours, what you have to do to do Communion right, how to lead prayers, chose the music … and a thousand other practical things that seem to need doing in every service.
But Jesus says if just two of you meet together, I am in the midst of you. I am everything you need to gather.
It’s a paradox, but both undermine being Real Church
We have made Church too Passive, too Infantile
Perhaps part of the problem is that we have made Church too Passive, and we maintain an infantilised place for most of the congregation.
In the early church the problem was different
What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. 27 If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. 28 But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. 29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. 30 If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, 32 and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. 33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. As in all the churches of the saints, (1 Corinthians 14:26–33)
1 Corinthians 14:26-33
The problem there was keeping all this life in order. We don’t seem to have the same problem.
It’s interesting that one of the fastest growing forms of church is apparently Cathedral Evensong. There’s beautiful words and music and you can just sit there and enjoy it, sing a few hymns. Perhaps there is more to it than that, and we all can appreciate times when we can just be there. But I am not sure that you can build and sustain a living Church on such fare.
And I know that I am guilty in this. It’s much easier to lead it all, do it all. In a larger congregation it is harder to feel that your part in the worship is heard, or essential … but it is!
I think that it is Francis Chan, an American pastor and preacher, who has said that we make church like a zoo – looking after all these wild animals in domestic captivity. But, wild animals are meant to be out there, living, feeding themselves, growing stronger and reproducing.
Jesus will not leave us like this
Jesus will not leave us like this
And, Jesus will not leave us like this.
There was a furore in the news a while back, where some celebrity got so frustrated at her child sitting passively playing games on there tablet and not going out and doing things, that she smashed the tablet.
I wonder whether part of the challenges that we are facing as church, with reductions in clergy, reductions in congregations and church buildings, reports and everything becoming unsustainable, are Jesus smashing our tablets. All the props and counterfeits that we use to stop seeing that this is not Real Church, he is going to take away. Then we may see again that we are Church; that we can be Church – when we gather at the watering hole, and when we are out there living wild in the Spirit.
Does that sound frightening?
Does that sound frightening? Perhaps it is, compared to what we have made church, but I believe that it is coming.