Sermon transcript, 26 July 2015

Faith: looking the need straight in the eye by Fr. Dana

II Kings 4:42-44, Psalm 145:10-19, Ephesians 3:20-4:6, John 6:1-12

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1NYXchs

The readings today all seem to have a very common theme: they talk about need that is great – too great.

God takes a little and makes it enough

A few verses prior to the Old Testament reading, Elisha had returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land, and the sons of the prophets were sitting before him (II Kings 4:38). Each of these is significant:

• Gilgal is the very first place that the Israelites came to when they entered the Promised Land – the reason they had been brought out of Egypt, the reason they had made the journey, the reason they went round and round in the wilderness for forty years until all those who had been unfaithful had passed away. Read Joshua 4:19-24: God parted the Jordan as He had the Red Sea, so that they passed through on dry land. In the middle, one person from each of the tribes picked up a stone (not a pebble but a significant stone), then they set these up in a pile in Gilgal. Here they are in a place where God did an amazing thing some 40 years earlier, and the stones were there as a memorial to remind them.
• There was a famine: things looked pretty bleak. There wasn’t enough food for one person to live on, much less many.
• You’re the prophet of the Lord, sitting there with 100 students in front of you who expect you to be the man of the Lord, and no one has anything to eat. That is embarrassing for somebody in charge; but Elisha is not worried. He’s teaching these men to be prophets – an informal school of prophets – and here is an excellent opportunity to teach. His faith and leadership are put to the test.

A man comes with food, twenty loaves and grain, perhaps enough to serve a meal to a few people, but we have 101. Elisha calmly tells them to serve the food. I love the reaction: “What?!” “Serve the food, because the Lord will provide.” It doesn’t look as if He’ll provide: it was one person carrying the food, so it wasn’t that much. No great words, no wave of the hand, nothing showy… but what happened was the miraculous provision of God, who made what wasn’t enough more than enough. (II Kings 4:42-44)

We see something similar in the Gospel: Jesus is in this situation, except that He has a lot more people. He’s been preaching and He’s very popular, and people are following Him, and so He leads them up the side of a mountain and starts teaching them. (John 6:2-3) He finishes, and everybody’s tired and hungry, and He says to His disciples, “We need to feed these people.” They don’t quite respond with “What?!”, but they do respond: “We don’t have anything, and it would take a lot of money just to feed all these people a few French fries.” But then one of the disciples says, “There is this young lad, and he does have five loaves and two fish, so we’ve got something – but what’s that going to do? It might be enough for three people.” (John 6:5-9)

Jesus says the same thing Elisha said: “Feed it to them.” “Are you nuts? Do you want to start a riot?” It would be like going into the O2 filled with people and saying “We have free million dollar bills, but we only have four of them – come and get it!” They sat down, and they realised that there were five thousand men, and uncounted women and children. Jesus gave thanks to God and gave the food to the disciples to distribute. There were five loaves and two fish: ten of the disciples had half a loaf of bread each, and the other two had a fish. They keep on handing out food until they reach the last person, and everyone is fed. Afterwards He said, “We don’t want to waste it; pick up what’s left”, and they gathered up twelve basketsful. God took a little and made it not just enough but more than enough. (John 6:10-13)

Rely on Him, and give Him the little we have

“Jesus said this to test them, because He already knew what he was going to do” (John 6:6). The test wasn’t, “You feed them; if you don’t, you fail”; it was a test of their faith. They had some faith: they could have said “We don’t have anything – no way”. They didn’t have anything, but they looked around and found a young lad was willing to share his lunch. They said, “We have a little bit, but what can we do with this?” That’s all it took. God gives us situations like this to test us – not to see if we can be self-sufficient and fix the problem, but to see if we will rely on Him to fix the problem, and if we will give Him whatever little we have to use to fix it. It’s like the woman in the temple who dropped the two coins in the offering: she could have said “I’ll give You one, God, to do miraculous things with, but I’ll keep the other because I really want to eat today” – but she didn’t: she gave it all. The young man with five loaves and two fish didn’t say, “I’m going to keep one loaf and one fish for myself and then you can have the rest; I’ll make sure I have enough, because I’m not sure what you’re going to do with the other four loaves” – he gave it all. God took it, and made it more than enough.

He’s training His disciples to rely on Him – yes, to look at what you have and admit that it’s not enough. The disciples didn’t say “I believe in Jesus’ name that we have enough food for all these people”; they said, “We’ve got five loaves of bread and two fish; that’s not quite enough”. They weren’t afraid to look at their poverty in the face of a great need: they were honest; and they came to the one Person, Jesus, who could do something about it. It didn’t run out until everyone had had enough – not just a little bit extra, but twelve basketsful. And I’ll bet those baskets were the deep kind that you can carry stuff around in, not the little trays that we use for offerings.

It’s these kinds of provision of God that allows Paul to say, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think…” (Ephesians 3:20). That is “redundant” – saying the same thing twice when you don’t need to; he says it multiple times. “…according to the power that works in us…” God didn’t stop doing miracles when Jesus went to heaven. He didn’t stop doing miracles when the canon of the Bible was put together – the goal of Jesus Christ on earth was not to get the Bible finished and solidified and then to leave. The Holy Spirit was sent to live in us, to move around us, to continue doing the works of God. “…to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:21) He does it not so we can get this stamp of approval that says “We’re faithful: we do great things; we know we’re really good, because God does things through us.” He does it for His glory, and our desire is to move out of the way and let Him do His work.

Nothing that we face is too large for Him: He is able to surpass all that we can think, by an amount that is too large to measure. What that should say to us? Don’t give up. Don’t give up when you’re sitting there and have no food. Don’t give up when someone comes past and says, “I’ve got a few loaves and a couple of fish”. Don’t give up when it’s time for them to eat: “I can’t put this on the table – are you crazy?” Don’t give up when it’s time to hand it out: just go, and God will keep extending; God will provide.

Take the first step in faith

Do you watch any Indiana Jones movies? My favourite scene is where he’s getting close to where the Grail is, and he comes out of a cave and looks down a cliff, and there is a huge chasm and the other side is fifteen or twenty feet away. He knows he has to get across, but there’s no way – there’s nothing there. He takes a step, and hits on solid. He took the step when there was nothing there – he didn’t wait to see; he didn’t take some sand and throw it on the path to find out; he took the step first, when there was nothing there. That is what God is asking us to do.

But Indiana Jones didn’t do that at home stepping off the ledge of a second-storey window; he didn’t do it to prove that he could do it – he did it because he was on a mission, allegorically, you could say, a mission sent by God. He didn’t do it so that he could prove he could do anything, but because it was the only way he could get from where he was to where he had to go: there was no alternative. It was the same in the Gospel: there are five thousand men, and the nearest town is ten miles away; we can’t send them walking to get food; they’re hungry and tired: they need something. And God provided. That applies to us as well.

Receive God’s provision

What do we do when we have a problem, when we have problem that is too big to climb? It’s impossible: I can’t even get up this first rock. We look straight at the problem; we don’t deny the problem or minimise it – “It’s not that bad; it’ll be ok” – but we look honestly at the obstacle. We look honestly at ourselves – I haven’t got a thing that will get me over, through, around, or in any way on the other side of this mountain. Then we pray, and we ask God.

And we work with what He gives us: if He sends a boy with five loaves and two fish, that’s what we work with. If He sends us provision to solve this problem in a way that’s really not what we wanted to do, we need to go with Him. Perhaps you’ve heard the story of someone who’s caught in a flood: he’s sitting on his roof in the midst of a swollen river is running past really fast, and he said, “Dear God, please rescue me!” Along comes a man rowing a boat: “Hop on! We’ll take out of here.” “Oh no – God’s going to save me.” Along comes a motor boat with six people who have been rescued. “Come on – hop in!” “No – God’s going to save me.” Along comes a helicopter with a guy on a ladder: “Come in! We’ll save you.” “That’s all right – God’s going to save me.” The house collapses; he falls into the river and dies. He goes to heaven, stands in front of the throne and says, “You didn’t save me! I trusted in You! You let me down!” Jesus looks at him very calmly and says, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter – what do you want?” We have to be prepared to accept what he wants to provide, because His way of getting us over, under or around this obstacle, or healing this problem – this physical problem or this relationship problem – might be a little different than we’re expecting, but we must receive.

The same God is with us

Do not give up on Him; do not give up on each other. There may be someone here who has a word or something for your problem. We are the body of Christ; we have different gifts, functions, talents and abilities, but we are all called to love one another, to help one another. We are also called to minister to those outside our group, to the least, the lonely and the lost. Let us not give up. God will provide what we need to do what we’re called to do.

We can “take that to the bank”; Elisha could take that to the bank, Jesus could take that to the bank, Paul, and Peter and James and John and all the other disciples could take that to the bank; and they did, and we are with them, because as Paul’s letter said, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Ephesians 4:4-6) It is the same God who was with Elisha and Elijah and Isaiah and David, with Mary when she was told she was pregnant, with all the disciples, ten of whom were killed for their faith – the same God is with us. The same God will provide for us, the same God has provision; He isn’t saying “He needs more than I’ve got – what am I going to do?” – He is more than enough for us. And I really believe that what He wants to do right now is to provide.

Sermon transcript, 19 July 2015

I am the Good Shepherd: go and do likewise by Fr. Dana

Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 23, Ephesians 2:11-22, Mark 6:30-34

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1gV86Gm

The readings today seem to have a lot to do with sheep. And as you know, one of the primarily analogies Jesus used for Himself was the Good Shepherd – the True Shepherd. The prophets and everyone else were hirelings; that doesn’t necessarily make them evil, but they are not the Owner of the sheep. I am not the Owner of any sheep: you belong to the Lord; I’m a caretaker, and I will be answerable to the Lord for how I’ve treated His sheep.

God rescues His sheep from abusive shepherds

The Old Testament started out pretty strongly: “‘Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of My pasture!’ says the Lord.”  (Jeremiah 23:1) In the original the word for destroy means “to cause to wander away, to perish.” When sheep wander away from the flock, they’re in danger because they’re by themselves, and wolves make them easy prey. The word for scatter means “to dash to pieces” or “to disperse”. If you had a small handful of sand and drop it in a bucket of water, it starts spreading out; that’s the meaning of “scatter”. Woe to the shepherds who cause the sheep to fall away from the faith and perish, and those who cause the sheep to be scattered into separate groups. To such shepherds, the Lord says, “I will attend to you for the evil of your doings,” (Jeremiah 23:2).

But to the sheep He says, “I will gather the remnant of My flock out of all countries where I have driven them, and bring them back to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and increase.” (Jeremiah 23:3) He’s not blaming the sheep for wandering off – there are sheep that, despite the best efforts of the shepherd, wander off because they have their own mind about things; that’s not who He’s talking to. When the sheep stray, the shepherd goes after them; if a sheep does this all the time, the shepherd breaks a leg so that it can’t wander so far, and it limps after them: He has a way of dealing with unruly sheep. But that’s not what he’s talking about here.

Read Jeremiah 23:4-5. This is played out over and over again since Jesus’ time and before Jesus’ time. The Old Covenant shepherds – the Pharisees and rulers – neglected the sheep, in some cases destroyed and scattered them. You’re supposed to shear sheep: when the wool gets too long, you cut off most but not all of it, and use it for clothing and other things, and then the sheep grows more wool. If you shear it too closely and don’t leave enough wool, the sheep can’t maintain body temperature: it’s unhealthy. A shepherd who takes too much from the sheep harms the sheep; and certainly a shepherd who kills the sheep and eats them for his own benefit is harming the sheep; and these will be held accountable.

But God sent His Son Jesus Christ, who at the end of this passage is called “the Lord our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6), to gather all these injured sheep and bring them back. Jesus Himself said, “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” (John 10:16) There is one faith, one Lord, one Baptism (Ephesians 4:5), one flock, one Shepherd. He will bring them back from all the places where they have been driven. And He did that when He came to earth: He did it physically by gathering followers, and He did it spiritually for those of that time who never met Him directly and for everyone since then who hears the Gospel and responds. And He appointed New Covenant shepherds: the Eleven Apostles and the one who as added to become Twelve again. These shepherds fed the flock, they were fruitful and increased. But as you know, over the last two thousand years some of those shepherds lost their way and started abusing and feeding off the sheep. But God didn’t stop working, and He is ever renewing His flock, renewing His shepherds. Multiple times over the past two millennia He has removed some of His shepherds and replaced them with shepherds who will feed and protect His flock, so that as this passage says, “They shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, nor shall they be lacking.” That should not fill us with pride but with holy fear, especially those in leadership; because if we are appointed as shepherds, we have a solemn charge, we have a responsibility. If we start abusing the sheep, He will remove us; we are not immune.

Good shepherds care for the sheep

Psalm 23 describes the life of a sheep under the Good Shepherd: those who follow the Great shepherd, Jesus, will receive provision, restoration, protection, comfort, will be fed, He’ll fill our cup to overflowing, He’ll set a table for us even in the midst of our enemies – that’s good to know because the world isn’t too friendly to us right now – and, most importantly, we’ll dwell with Him forever. That’s the life of a sheep. It’s a great life. He’ll lead me beside still waters and make me lie down in green pastures. That doesn’t mean I’ll have everything I want, be rich, or that things will be easy – but it will be good.

In the New Testament reading, He talks about the flock becoming one. He’s speaking to Gentiles: read Ephesians 2:11-12. People who were not Jews, people who didn’t intentionally come and learn from the Jews, were without hope: they didn’t know anything about the true God; they didn’t know anything about Jesus Christ. But read Ephesians 2:13-15: He has made us both (Jews and Gentiles) one flock. Now they are no longer foreigners; now they are sheep of the flock, just like His chosen people. This is good news; it is another expression of the good news of the Gospel.

And then in the Gospel (Mark 6:30-34) we learn how a good shepherd operates. Jesus and the disciples had been ministering in a very busy place with lots of people around; He knew they were getting tired, and He was tired. He said to his disciples, “Let’s go to a quiet place, because we need to refill. It’s good to minister, but you can’t keep pouring out when your needle is on empty. Let’s go to a quiet place.” And they did; but the sheep followed them. Jesus is not a selfish shepherd – He’s a good shepherd. They get out of the boat and there are all these needy people there; He says they are like sheep without a shepherd. Even though He’s tired, even though the specific reason they came away was to rest, He meets their needs: the sheep come first; He ministers to the sheep. This is how a good shepherd takes care of the sheep, how he responds. A good shepherd shows love and compassion to the sheep, and that precedes rest. He had mercy on the sheep because He knew they couldn’t fend for themselves. Sheep without a shepherd start to scatter, and those that get away from the main group become easy pickings for wolves. He knew, and He didn’t want that to happen, and so He ministered to the sheep.

Rescuing lost sheep in today’s culture

There are sheep out in the world today. Some of them have been part of a flock and have wandered away; some of them have never known Jesus, but they will. We are called to minister to them. I’m the shepherd of this congregation, but we are also each a shepherd in some way. Parents are shepherds of their children: we’re responsible for feeding them, taking care of them, helping them to grow, encouraging them… Every one of us has been given something: talent, resources, time… whatever it is, we have something that we can give to other people. That’s what He’s calling us to do: even if we don’t have “Shepherd” as a title after our name, we are still called to love one another, to minister to one another, to go after the sheep that are lost, and to rescue any of them that are willing to be rescued and saved.

We’re in a unique age in our culture. When I was a teenager, and certainly earlier, it was almost assumed that eight or nine out of ten people that you would meet were Christians. They understood what you were talking about, and they understood concepts like sin, compassion, redemption… They don’t anymore; and in fact, when you mention some of those terms, they’re downright hostile: it’s seen as control, manipulation. A lot of the sheep really don’t want to be rescued: they’re quite happy on their own, and no amount of debate will change their minds. You cannot argue someone into the Kingdom: you might point out some fallacies in their life philosophy, but that doesn’t make them want to receive yours.

We’ve seen a time like this before in a culture – in a big culture: the Roman Empire. In the time of the disciples, the Roman Empire wasn’t at all friendly to Christians, and in the century or two after that it got worse, to the point where some of the Emperors liked to cover them in tar and plant them in their gardens and burn them as torches to light their parties. But that Empire was changed; in fact, it fell.

The Celtic way of evangelism

We live in a culture that’s not friendly. No one’s being burned as torches – thank goodness! But we need to reach out to them, and we need to reach them; and we can learn some things. There are many places we can go to learn: we can learn from the disciples and from the Scriptures, but that doesn’t tell us much about the day-to-day life of people other than Paul and the Twelve Apostles. One place where can look is the Celtic Church. Have you seen Celtic or Irish art: crosses with lots of curlicues, and illustrated Gospel books with lots of fancy letters that are almost impossible to read? The Celtic people did that. Ireland was primarily a Celtic culture before Saint Patrick came. Ireland is one of the few places in the world where Christianity came from the outside and became the primary faith without anyone being killed – that didn’t happen in Rome or in most of Europe. There are things we can learn about how it happened in Ireland.

About twenty years or so ago I first read a book called The Celtic Way of Evangelism, and it opened my eyes. It’s not going around knocking on doors and handing out tracts; it’s not arguing people into the Kingdom. It describes how Saint Patrick and his followers brought Christianity to Ireland and totally transformed the whole culture. There are some things we can learn about that. I would like to read you a few little things out of here, to start you thinking about how this might apply to us.

Patrick had been kidnapped in a raid by men from Ireland, taken to Ireland, and was a prisoner there for several years, escaped, came back to Britain where he lived, and had a dream where one of the Irish peasants was calling to him and saying, “Come back: bring the Gospel”. This was unprecedented, because until this point in time there was a philosophy that you can’t save a barbarian people; if they weren’t civilised, you couldn’t relate to them and they couldn’t understand the Gospel. This was why there was bloodshed in other places: the first thing you had to do was go in and civilise them, get them to act the way we act; then you could share the Gospel. That didn’t happen in Ireland. The Celts were barbarians: there was child sacrifice, Druidic priests, and all kinds of strange practices. But one thing they did was that they were always looking for the truth – maybe in the wrong places, but they were always looking for the truth.

Enter Patrick. While he didn’t say this, by looking at what happened in Ireland, we can understand that the first principle is that there is no shortcut to evangelising people: the first thing you have to do is understand them. You can’t go around that fact; you can’t minister to someone you don’t understand. This was tried in other places, but the way of understanding them was to beat them into submission until they talked and thought the way did, and then you could communicate them. That’s not what happened with the Celts; they listened. The Druid priests maintained control because they had secret knowledge that only the priests knew, secret spells and secret philosophy; if you wanted anything you had to go to the priests and ask for it. That was one of the big distinctions they saw in the early Christians: in Patrick and his followers: the people easily perceived the difference in early Christianity, which was open to all, it kept no secrets from anyone, and had as its aim the happiness of the whole population – not fattening the shepherds.

Here’s a little description of how they did it: Patrick’s entourage [group] would have included a dozen or so people including priests, seminarians, and two or three women. Upon arrival at a tribal settlement Patrick would engage the king and other opinion leaders, hoping for their conversion or at least their clearance to camp near the people and form into a community of faith adjacent to the tribal settlement. The team would meet the people, engage them in conversation and in ministry, and look for people who appeared receptive. They would pray for sick people and possessed people, counsel people and mediate conflicts. On at least one occasion Patrick blessed a river and prayed for the people to catch more fish – and they did. They would engage in open-air speaking, probably employing parables, story, poetry, song, visual symbols, visual arts and maybe even drama, to engage the Celtic people’s remarkable imaginations. Often Patrick would receive the people’s questions and then speak to those questions collectively.

The group would welcome prospective people into their fellowship to worship with them, pray with them, minister to them, converse with them, and break bread together – not say, “You have to do this, this and this before you can come into our fellowship.” The mission team typically spent weeks or even months as a ministering community of faith within the tribe, and the church that emerged would have been astonishingly indigenous, made up of local people who lived there. In this area, if God blessed the efforts of Patrick’s band and the people responded in faith, or if enough people gathered around, they built a church.

Patrick engaged in this group approach to apostolic ministry for twenty-eight years until he died. By this time the people that he’d planted were also growing up and planting. An ancient document called The Annals of the Four Masters estimated that in those twenty-eight years Patrick’s mission planted seven hundred churches and that Patrick ordained perhaps a thousand priests. Within just his lifetime, thirty to forty, perhaps more, of Ireland’s one hundred and fifty tribes became substantially Christian. Patrick and his followers went into the culture, made a place – camped near the tribal settlement – and modelled the Christian way of faithfulness, generosity and peace to all the Irish; and the Irish responded.

The strange thing is, the leadership of the Church loved Patrick – right? They said, “Good job! Amazing! I don’t believe how you did that!” No – they called Patrick on the carpet for associating with these barbarians. It sounds like the Pharisees: “Jesus eats with sinners. If he was the Son of God, he’d know who those yucky people are, and he wouldn’t get near them.” Patrick did just what Jesus did, and look what happened.

Where is the community to which God has called us?

How does that relate to us? We’re looking for a place to meet. We have an awesome place right now; it’s incredible. There is no tribal settlement out there. If we could take the tourists off the street, take away the bus and taxi drivers, and go outside the door, there wouldn’t be anyone within a how many miles: no one lives very close. We aren’t in a community. We love tourists and we talk to them and minister to them when they come in here. This morning someone came here looking for a Roman Catholic Church, and I used the map on my phone to show him where the closest one is. Will he come back here? No – there’s no community out there to minister to, to engage with on a prolonged basis, like Patrick. I really believe that we’re called to be in a place – wherever that is – where we can be a presence in a neighbourhood, a tribal settlement, that we can walk out of our door and minister to; where we can have a sign that says who we are and what we do, and if you need something, come on in; and as we build a reputation in the neighbourhood they will, and we’ll grow. The goal is not to grow: the goal is to see sheep rescued, restored, made healthy, including our own people now, and any sheep that God brings to us: that’s what we’re called to.

And so I would ask you to pray seriously about that: How does that apply to us? How can we fulfil what we are called to do? This book is not a manual how to; it doesn’t tell you ten steps how to build a big church. It says: This is what we have seen in looking at how Patrick and others engaged the culture, the barbarian culture, and we can learn from that; we can apply knowledge from that – maybe different techniques: they didn’t have cell phones or electric drums – but we can apply what we learn from this. And so I would ask you to join with us to pray. We have a group of intercessors – an intercessor is someone who gets between two parties and communicates both directions. Intercessors want to hear from God and speak what God says to the people and speak to God what the people are saying. Even if you’re not able or willing or desirous to be an intercessor, you can still pray. Pray that God would show us where He has for us; because He has a place just for us: we don’t know what it looks like or where it is, but we know it’s just what we need at this point in our history. And if we’re faithful to follow Him, He’s faithful to lead, because this is the kind of transformation of the culture He desires: not to go out with signs and whacking people over the head, not to be Bible thumpers, “slaying” people “in the Spirit” with something physical; but to be Jesus, to be good shepherds.

Sermon transcript, 12 July 2015

Prepare to be sent out by Fr. Dana

Amos 7:7-15, Psalm 85, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:7-13

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1R6anf3

God has a plumb-line (Amos 7:7). A plumb-line is a string with a weight on it, which comes to a point. You can hang it anywhere, and where that point is shows you straight up and down, because it’s only affected by gravity. When it stops swinging, you know the point that’s directly below wherever it’s hanging.

God has a plumb-line. The culture doesn’t want to hear that: the culture doesn’t want to hear that there is a standard, something against which all actions and thoughts are judged; they don’t want to hear that there’s a right and a wrong. We, however, are called to declare the truth: the One who is the Truth, the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We are not called to proclaim it with a machine gun or a cricket bat; we are called to speak the truth in love – but nonetheless to speak the truth.

The time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God

The Old Testament reading talks about a plumb-line, and it’s quite instructive, particularly as it applies to our world today. The book of Amos was written during a time when the people of Israel had departed from following the Lord. They had been following Him, but then they actively lost their way: they chose to go their own way, to follow the gods of the peoples around them. Read Amos 7:7-8. What about all these evil people that are surrounding us? What about all these people who really don’t care what God says? Now we’re at the point of the message; this can be summarised in part of a verse from I Peter 4:17: “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God.” Yes, we’re surrounded by peoples and cultures that don’t care what God has to say; but judgment doesn’t start with them; it starts with us who say we follow Him.

If this were Moses, when God says, “Stand back: I’m going to zap these people”, Moses would always stand in between and say “Wait a minute! These are the people You saved out of Egypt. Think about what you’re doing! Stop!” Amos doesn’t do that: the time for intercession is over. Amos does not pray for them; in fact, God says, “I will not pass by them anymore” and “Their sanctuaries will be laid waste” (Amos 7:9). That’s judgment. “I have been intimate with these people, and they won’t follow. I’m not going to come around anymore; when they pick up the phone I’m not going to answer; and those places that still have My name on them and look as if they’re worshipping Me, they’re going down.” This is not good news. Amos does not intercede for them, because they have wandered in the opposite direction from the Lord, too far from the truth, and God will no longer hold back judgment, because Israel refuses to listen and even tries to silence the prophetic voices that He sends to warn them.

Here’s the application for our day: do you see a similarity? Has our culture gone too far? I’m not the judge – God is the Judge – but it looks as bad as what Amos is talking about here. That’s bad news; perhaps even worse news is that God does not hold the culture to a higher standard than He holds the Church. We may not be doing all the things that the culture is doing, but the plumb-line that God measures us against is the same plumb-line that He measures them against; and we’re not straight either. If the culture has gone too far, perhaps if parts of the Church have gone too far, God’s judgment will begin with the house of God. The good news is that God is patient; He has been patient; but His patience has a limit. He is long-suffering; He is not eternal suffering. God fights against his enemies; and if His enemies happen to be in Israel, and happen to be Israelites, He will fight them as well. If His enemies call themselves Christians, He will fight against them as well. And so we cannot declare untruth as the truth. The whole central idea of the book of Amos is that God puts His people on the same level as the surrounding nations: He won’t destroy surrounding nations for behaviour that He will tolerate in the Israelites. The same is true with us: God expects the same purity of all of us; the standard is the same. As it is with the nations that rise up against the kingdom of God, even Israel and Judah were not exempt from the judgment of God because of their idolatry and their unjust ways. Do you see any idols in the culture? Probably so: money, popularity, fame, fortune… tolerance of anything and everything…

No matter how good our nation is (whether it’s Britain, the Philippines, America…), no matter how much we’ve been blessed, no matter what our reputation is, no matter what God has given us or done for us in the past, God requires obedience now. The culture doesn’t want to hear that; parts of the Church don’t want to hear that.

Jesus sends us out

What are we going to do? If we are true believers, what’s our calling? What are we supposed to do? The Gospel gives us a hint (Mark 6:7-9). Jesus sent out the Twelve; He didn’t send them out in abundance; He sent them out “on the edge”, with just enough to get started. They didn’t have a debit card, a cheque book, a credit card, or anything for “what happens if”, but they had just enough; and that’s how He sent them out. This same God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills [Psalm 50:10] could have given them everything they would ever need in a small bag, but He didn’t: they had to trust Him. He sent them out to do good; He sent them out to bring healing and deliverance and to preach repentance (Mark 6:12-13).

He sent them out like David when he went against Goliath. David went to take food for his brothers, and he saw Goliath challenging the armies of Israel: “What’s the matter with you chickens?” and David said “I’ll fight him” and Saul says “Are you nuts?” and David says “No – I’ll fight him” and Saul says, “Great! Here’s my armour”…. When Saul was chosen as king, he was head and shoulders above everyone else in the country, and David was a teenager… So David took it all off, and took five stones. That’s how the disciples went out. They didn’t have armour or weapons, or a sword or money to buy one, or money to buy food; but He sent them out, and just like David, they succeeded. They went out armed with the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of God in them.

Read Mark 6:10: “You don’t have money for a hotel; just go, and when someone invites you to stay with them, stay with them. If there are cockroaches on the floor and they serve you weird food, eat it anyway. Just stay there until it’s time for you to leave.”

Read Mark 6:11a: They will meet with resistance. There are people – like our culture – who won’t want to hear; they don’t want to put you up, to invite you in or even to hear you talk. But Jesus doesn’t tell them to confront, condemn, or call down lighting to strike these rebellious people. On leaving, they are simply to shake off the dust from their feet: in essence, to say, “I tried; I’m done with you. I’m not taking anything with me from you. I’m commending you to God: whatever He wants to do with you, let Him do it; I’m done.” But the disciples went and proclaimed the truth. If the people didn’t hear, “Fine: I’m not going to make you hear, I’m not going to beat you with it; but I gave you an opportunity. If you don’t want to hear, that’s your choice.”

Will we go?

And so the Twelve went out, totally unprepared, totally unequipped, but on the authority of Jesus’ word (Mark 6:12). Guess what? We’re in the same position. We’ve been comfortable here for twenty years. God has done many good things here, but now He’s sending us out. If you look in the cheque book, there’s not much there. He’s not sending us out with a building food or with extra equipment, but with just about what we need, and that’s it. And He’s not telling us where we’re going yet. We’re being sent out just like the Twelve. The question is, are we going to act like the Twelve? Are we going to do what He asks us to do? Are we going to go out and heal the sick, to bring deliverance, to speak the truth in love? Even if it means, “If they know who we really are, they might not rent their building to us”? If they know what we really believe, they might be intolerant. We’re called to speak the truth in love.

And if we do that, what will happen? If we go out equipped with the power of the Holy Spirit with the mission to call believers back to the truth and preach repentance to people who don’t know the love of God yet, what will happen? What happened in the last verse of our reading? Read Mark 6:13. They were faithful to Christ’s instructions, and God was faithful to his promise and worked in and through them to bring healing, deliverance and salvation. That’s why we exist: to proclaim the Gospel, to free the prisoner, to bring sight to the blind, that the lame would walk – whether they are physically, mentally or emotionally lame… That’s what we’re called to do; the Spirit of the Lord is upon us to do these things, to be these things (Isaiah 61:1ff): we do them because they flow out of who we are.

And as we go, we need to measure ourselves against that plumb-line: Are we off a little? Are we crooked? Are we bent? Is our wall tottering? … individually and as a church. The way we do that is ask God to show us, because He’s the one with the plumb-line. God, where have we fallen short? What do we need to change? What do we need to confess? What do we need to do to be faithful? Because if we’re faithful, we know that You will be faithful; and if You’re faithful to us, we can change this current world empire, just as the disciples and those who came after them changed the Roman Empire. We can bring this empire, this culture that says that it doesn’t need God – and I’m not just talking about the British culture: the whole world culture is going that way, although some cultures are further along than others – we can bring that whole philosophical system crashing down – Wrong statement: We can’t, but God can if we’re faithful. He can turn the world right-side up again, just as He did with the disciples.

Isn’t that your heart? Aren’t there people in your life whom you would love to know the Lord: their life would be so much better if they would just receive Him? And you can’t beat them with Him – Jesus isn’t a weapon; He’s a person. And there are people in the culture who need Him, and there are some who are willing to listen, who are hungry for Him, but they don’t know how to get there. We’re called to minister to them: maybe not to go out and stand on a corner and preach, but to minister where we work, where we live, where we’re going to be meeting as a church, to be salt and light in the culture. And we will cast out many demons and anoint with oil many who are sick, and heal them; the Gospel will be preached, men women and children will be saved, and God will receive the glory.

Let us be prepared

Sounds like a great life to me. Even if we do leave with nothing in our pockets, it’s ok: the rewards of faithfulness are greater. Let us be challenged to do that. Especially in the next six weeks, let us prepare ourselves for whatever God wants to do. He will launch us out, whether we’re ready or not; but we can co-operate with Him; so let us do so.

Sermon transcript, 5 July 2015

The way forward by Fr. Dana

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1R69NOq

I want briefly to pluck out a couple of things from the readings. In the Old Testament reading, God is sending Ezekiel to the people and He says, “I am sending you to them and you shall say ‘Thus says the LORD God’ – that’s what I’m telling you to do” (Ezekiel 2:3). And then He says, “As for them [for their part], whether they hear or whether they refuse… they will know that a prophet has been among them.” (Ezekiel 2:5); in other words, “Your responsibility is to speak the Word – not to make them do it, but to speak it; it’s their problem if they refuse, but it’s your problem if you refuse to speak My Word.” We’re called to proclaim the Gospel, whether it’s popular, whether people agree with us, whether they think we’re great people or terrible people, bigots or whatever else, we’re called to declare the Gospel of the Lord in love, to speak the truth in love. That’s what we need to do.

In the New Testament, even Paul has a “thorn in the flesh”: we’re not perfect, and God won’t always heal us from those thorns; sometimes He lets them stay there. Often that’s because we’d become proud and puffed up if we didn’t have them: every time that thorn jabs us a little we remember that we’re human and have problems like the people we’re talking to. That’s good: it helps us to proclaim the truth in love rather than in arrogance. (II Corinthians 12:7-10)

Without vision we perish

What I really want to talk about this morning springs out of a very short half verse in the book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs was written by Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, and so it’s a book of wisdom. Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision the people perish”. That doesn’t mean they’re blind; he’s talking about a vision in the sense of a destination. When God called the Hebrew children out of Egypt, He didn’t call them out to escape Egypt; He called them out because He had a place for them to go, and they couldn’t go there unless they left Egypt. This is why God got a little ticked off when they said, “Oh, if only we could go back to Egypt! I remember the onions and the garlic; it was so good!” – forgetting about the bricks and the straw and the mud and all that other stuff. He had a place for them, and they were staying, “Oh, but the old place was better”. We all know that the old place wasn’t better: they were just remembering the food; everything else was lousy, but the food was great.

In May we celebrated twenty years of ministry as the CEC in London. I can’t tell you what the vision was during those twenty years; I do know that there was one, because you didn’t perish. And you know that there was a vision: Fr. Donn came to London because he had a vision of planting a church here; and what happened was bigger, because we have a mission in Edinburgh and one in Dublin. Now we come to a change: we have to change; we’re not running away from anything, because we didn’t choose this change. We’ve been praying that God would show us what He wants us to do, and He made it clear that He wants us to leave St. Margaret’s; that was a work of the Holy Spirit, because He set on their hearts to ask us to leave; He didn’t set it on our hearts: He has a purpose in it. That means that by 1^st September we’ll be meeting in a different place: we have no choice. And in that process as we move we will be changed. We can let that change be bad – “Oh, I remember the leeks in Egypt; they were so tasty!”– it’s not likely that we will move to a place that will look like this. But if we listen, we’ll move to the right place. The change does not have to be negative; it does not have to harm us. The enemy wants it to harm us: he wants it to cause division and frustration, and no doubt there will be challenges; but it does not have to be negative. And so the question that we need to answer is, “Who does God desire us to be?” or, to put it a different way, “In May 2035, what will we be celebrating on our anniversary, when we’ve been here 40 years?”

We haven’t yet formulated a vision for St. Stephen’s, and I’m not going to give you one now, because the vision for St. Stephen’s is not one man’s vision – if it is, we’re in trouble. What we long for is the Lord’s vision; and our role – whether you’re Bp. Elmer, me, the Deacons, the clergy’s wives, or laity… whoever you are – our role is to discern what that vision is, to support it and to pursue it with all our hearts.

I would like to draw a big picture of what God could be calling us to. I’ve shared it with Bp. Elmer and he’s already cut out parts of it; but I want to share with you so that we can all be praying: Which parts of this are for us? Which parts are for us now? Which parts should come into play as we look for a place? Which parts are so far in the future that we don’t need to think about them now? Let me propose something to you, and just let the Holy Spirit speak to you.

A vision for St. Stephen’s

The vision, in very general terms, is to build disciples who will stand, regardless of the situation, regardless of the cost: to build strong disciples; and that is to build the Church so it lasts for all generations. If St. Stephen’s goes away as soon as everyone over the age of eighteen who is here now moves, dies or whatever, then what have we done? We want to build a church not just for the next generation but for generations after that; because Scripture tells us, “You as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (I Peter 2:5). We’re just stones in the spiritual church, and that spiritual church is way bigger than we are. We’re the stones that are laid in the first twenty years above the foundation; but what if it’s a hundred years or two hundred years? There will be a lot of stones on top of us; and we need to prepare the way for those stones to be hewn and put in place.

The mission – should you choose to accept it – is to make disciples of all nations. For us, that means England, Scotland, the two Irelands and Wales, and all the nationalities that reside there. We’re not just going for natives, Filipinos or North Americans; we are for everyone. Jesus said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20) – Not just “make converts, get people saved” – that’s step 1; but “make disciples”: teach them and prepare them.

• What’s a disciple? Jesus said these two things: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31, Matthew 22:28) A disciple is someone who does this. We proclaim those two commandments every Sunday because we think they’re important, because Jesus thought they were important.

So how do we build people who will do this, who can love the Lord with everything that they are, and can love their neighbour as their self? That’s not an easy thing in today’s world because there are some really “unlovable” people around; sometimes they’re part of the church, sometimes they’re not, but we’re called to love them anyway. What’s our strategy for accomplishing this mission? I believe that to build a church that can do this, we have to build in a community of ministry and commitment; someone better than me has put it like this: “Belonging precedes believing”. I think we have seen that in the last year, in Robbie. A primary reason that he has come into the church is that when he came here we reached out to him, we loved him, he found a place to belong; before he ever knew any of the theology, he found a place where he was valued. We can do that; there are other people who have mentioned the same thing. Those of you who know Bernadette, her husband Paul when he came here for the first time said he felt different; he had never experienced that before. It wasn’t because we’re really good-looking or kind, but because the Holy Spirit is here working through us; and we need to build on that.

How could this look? How do we do this specifically? One way would be to establish a place of comprehensive ministry to our Parish and the community surrounding it. Comprehensive ministry: we have some small groups, but right now most of what we do is to come together and worship and administer the Sacraments, then we go home, and we come back again a week later. I believe God wants us to do more.

• If I look some years down the road, I would see a building that we own, which means we occupy it 24 hours a day 7 days a week, all year round if we want to have worship rehearsal at 2:00 on Thursday morning we could; if we want the young adults to get together on a Friday evening, we could; we wouldn’t have to ask anyone’s permission. We don’t have to come two hours early to set up every weekend, or space to take everything down and put it back in the corner so we’re out of the way.
• I see a place that is ours, with property that has homes on it where people in the Parish who want to can live there; or if that doesn’t work, a church building that we own in a neighbourhood where some of our people live in that neighbourhood. It doesn’t mean they have to live there now, but someday we’ll have people living around the church so that we can be involved together in a community life.
• In that place, we minister to the people in the Parish: not only those who live nearby, but everyone in the Parish. My heart is that even though we are changing locations, we don’t leave anyone behind. If we need to travel around, do a midweek Eucharist in someone’s home, that’s fine, because we’re called to care for the people, wherever they are.
• In this location I see a small group of people doing the prayer offices every day, which is essentially every three hours. We may still have Morning Prayer, but if we have prayer every three hours, whenever you have time – morning, noon, or evening – you can come.
• We’ll have the Eucharist: I see us having the Eucharist every day; anyone who wants can come.
• We’ll proclaim the Gospel: we’ll have sermons, and also little teaching on Scripture and the early Church Fathers on these other prayer offices. They won’t take an hour, but the goal is that those who don’t have much time can participate.
• Every Friday at one of the offices we’ll have the Liturgy for the Pre-born, which is essentially a Mass for the dead for aborted children: they are thrown in the rubbish or flushed down the sewer with no recognition that they ever existed. I’ve been doing the prayer part every Friday since about 2005 because I think it’s important, and I think the way we’re going to win that battle is through prayer, not protest: it is God who will change hearts.
• This place will be a place of service: if we have a permanent place it will make it much easier to train acolytes, new people in worship (we already have new participants in the worship team, and there are more to come); and this includes dance, art, banners, flags…. Also the altar guild: sewing, making paraments for the altar… There are lots of ways people can serve, not all of them during the Mass. Serving Christ in the shadows: we’ll need people to clean and maintain, people who know how to fix things. There will be lots of ways to serve using the talents that people have. We might need groundskeepers and gardeners.
• We’ll want to equip people: studies in the Scriptures, Christian virtue, how to apply the Scriptures, how to develop things like humility, taking the lowest place, joy in the midst of adversity, commitment even when things are not going well, selflessness, and other areas of spiritual formation.
• We’ll want to provide “net-mending”: as we’re trying to be fishers of men, there are things in our lives that are holes, things that are wrong with us, hurts and even possessions. Whatever it is in us, net-mending is getting rid of those things: deliverance from any oppression or possession, physical healing, healing of the past, healing of memories.
• We also desire fellowship: the homegroups that we have now, and the eating together and sharing of meals is part of fellowship; we’re not going to give that up. If we have our own place, we’ll have an opportunity for common work, for example putting a carpet somewhere or installing a football table, something for the youth to do. Working together is part of fellowship.
• And of course there’ll be teaching.

That ministers to the needs of the Parish, but that’s only one side. What about everybody else? What about seekers, people who come to us – especially if we have our own place in a neighbourhood, there will be people who will come to us because they’ll know that we’re here and they’ll know who we are and they will have heard good things about us. They’ll come to us for food, clothing, basic hygiene, lodging…

• What about people who had a job but who are temporarily unemployed? (That could be somebody in the Parish.) If you’re unemployed long enough, the money runs out, and for some people that doesn’t take very long.
• For those who are disadvantaged: maybe they don’t have any job skills, maybe they have an impairment that makes it hard for them to get a job; they need help to get on their feet.
• Perhaps a ministry to those who gave come out of prison: they really need a new start.

We’re called to minister in compassion, and so to have not only a place but to have a heart for giving food, clothing…

• Maybe some of the houses on the land could be a place to provide overnight lodging to people who are needy – not to duplicate what other ministries and charities do, but more for people who are referred to us through the Parish. We could give them a place to stay overnight, and maybe God would call us to do longer-term things.
• Perhaps some lodging for the elderly, a kind of nursing home, to take care of our own people when they get older, and others as appropriate, to give them healing, to give them love, to give them a purpose.

If we do all that and do it well, that’s needed everywhere; that mission that’s now a Parish in Edinburgh, that mission that’s now a Parish in Dublin, that nothing at all right now that becomes a Parish in Wales, will need to learn to that. So we can be a training ground for them, and for people from other Parishes in Europe; they can come and learn how to do those things – if that’s what God has called us to do. Whatever of these things God has called us to, if we learn to do them well by listening and following, we can share our knowledge and it can happen elsewhere. You here in London can change the world. We can do this: we can have a training school for Liturgy, a school of worship arts to train people not only in piano and voice but in worshipping: not being the centre of attention but worshipping with the heart, singing to the Lord rather than to an audience.

Who knows the kind of people God may bring to us? We may have people who are skilled in woodworking: they can make processional crosses and other things… I don’t know. But God can do this. And if we have a heart to do whatever it is He’s calling us to do then He’ll open those doors. If our heart is open, He won’t shut a door on what He’s called us to do.

Where do we start?

This all sounds really good: let’s do it tomorrow! No, we couldn’t do it all at once; but we must start somewhere. If God has called us to any of these things, we must start moving in that direction. God has spent the last twenty years making a really solid foundation: if you haven’t left yet, you probably won’t, because you’ve been through stuff. Now it’s time to build on that foundation.

To do any of these things requires certain sorts of facilities, and the question is: What do we need soon, as opposed to down the road? I’m going to a list a few things, and the goal is for us to start talking about this – What is it that we’re called to do? – and thinking about it, so that we can make a good next step.

• Wherever the next location is, it can’t be close to everyone [Please refer to the map], but more importantly, is it easily accessible by tube or bus? It could be anywhere that people can get to.
• I would like a place that we can have full time: I think that’s high up the list.
• It would be nice to have scared space where we could have the Eucharist on the main floor so that people don’t have to go upstairs or downstairs just to get to the Eucharist.
• We need an altar; if they don’t have one we need to be able to make one and fit the paraments to it, because we can’t worship without an altar.
• We need a place with adequate power for the worship team: we have some electronic things.
• We need space for vestments,
• We need storage for items that are not in use even if it’s not our own place: places to store the Christmas things when it’s summer time, children’s supplies, and so on.
• A fellowship area, with probably high on the list a place where we can eat, and that means a place where we can cook, which means a kitchen.
• We need a place that’s safe for nursery/toddler people. Maybe that’s not immediate, because we don’t have any at the moment, but it needs to be on the list.
• It would be nice if there was an office there so that stuff can be kept in the office rather than in the clergy’s houses.

That should get you thinking about what we should be looking for.

In the meantime

It’s not likely that God will provide all of that on 1 September. He could, and if He wants too I would be so grateful; but if He might not. And how He provides it is not clear either. If we think about where we want to be long term, the steps on the way could be in different orders.

• The next step might be that we won’t find any place and that we will meet in homes for some months, and we’ll have Eucharist in different areas.
• He could provide a rented hall to use every Sunday; if it has storage, that would be better, but if it doesn’t we would have to decide what is important to bring in, because we would have to bring it in every Sunday, and since most of us don’t have vehicles either we spread it out among a number of people or we find some other way.
• It might be a shared church, which might mean that services can’t be on Sunday morning.
• It could be a rented business space on the ground floor and space to live above it, if the price was right.
• It could be a rented house with a room big enough that we could do church in.
• If there are other people are willing to consider He could provide a house where two or three families could live with a room big enough to do church.

God could do any of these things, and I don’t have an inside track on what He’s going to do.

A call for intercessors

How do you begin looking for that? It could be anything, and it could be lots of places. We’ve walked around in neighbourhoods and started looking, but we really need you to be our eyes. There’s no website where you can say “find me a church or a house or a hall that looks like this…” If you see or hear about something, let us know.

We can’t do this in our own strength: we can see what’s out there, but we can’t make a decision or pursue the right places in our own wisdom, or we’ll go wrong: I guarantee I will. We need God’s guidance and direction. We need Him to speak clearly and plainly; and we need to hear His voice, not my nagging little “But you need this… you’ve got to do this…” For this reason we need intercessors. Moses is an excellent example of an intercessor: God would say, “Have them do this”, and Moses would say, “OK, guys, do this” – and they wouldn’t do it; and God would say, “I’m going to fry you!” and Moses would say, “Wait! These are Your people…”, and God would say, “Oh, all right…” It wasn’t because God didn’t care: He wanted Moses to intercede; it wasn’t that if Moses hadn’t said something God was going to fry them: because He loved them, He brought them out. We need someone who’ll stand in the middle: to intercede means to plead our case to God and carry his words to us.

The important part of being an intercessor is that you must be willing to follow God wherever He leads: if He says, “Right there” [the most unlikely and inconvenient place on the map], you must say “Yes”. The role of the intercessor is to bring back to the Rector’s Council – who will part of the intercessors – “I think God is saying this”, not “I think God is saying the church should be across the street from my house”. You must be willing to hear what you hear God saying even if doesn’t make sense, and even if He’s not saying the same thing to anyone else. we’ve talked about government by consensus: getting people together and hearing what God is saying to each one; you must be willing to stand up and make a fool of yourself: when twenty-nine people have said, “This is what we’re going to do” one person says, “You know, God told me just the opposite” – because there have been situations in the CEC in a Bishop’s Council where that happened. They thought they had consensus, and one person said, “That makes no sense at all based on what God said to me”; and when they worked it through, they decided he was right. It’s hard; it’s very damaging for your self-esteem when everyone disagrees with you, especially when you think those people are important; but that’s what you have to do. A willingness to seek and an openness to hear God’s will despite our own personal preference, and a willingness to share it so we can make the right decision. We need people who will do that.

If we can we’ll try to set up a time when they can all get together regularly; if we can’t, then there will be a time when we come together and talk about we’ve heard. But whether we’re praying in the same room or not, we need to be praying for the same thing with the same goals and the same heart. And so I’m asking if you would consider being an intercessor. I could choose people, but I want someone who is willing to say “I might not be very good at it, but I’m willing to try” because God will honour your heart. I think people who do this will see God working, because they’ll see all the things we could have done in the beginning and that people were saying, and where we end up, and it will be clear that God did it.

I’ve been talking for a long time; this takes the place of a Parish meeting. I’m sorry, but this is important for our future as a church. I believe this will open the doors of heaven: I think He will change our hearts, and our ministry, and if we’re willing He will do things you couldn’t imagine.

Sermon transcript, 28 June 2015, Foundation Day  (Marriage blessing of Robbie & Marivic)

God makes the two one by Fr. Dana

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1R68BKW

The first reading today (Ezekiel 37:1-14) gives us hope that there’s no point at which it’s too late in life: the bones, although they looked dead, were given new life.  That is true for each of us; that is true for Marriage.   Normally we wouldn’t have a Marriage ceremony as part of a Sunday morning Mass, because we distinguish giving the Lord His pre-eminence, and giving marriage the focus it is due.  But somehow when Robbie and Marivic asked, I felt that it was the right thing to do; and as the day drew closer I understood why: It’s singularly appropriate to come together this morning, first to worship the Lord, but also celebrate and bless the union of Robbie and Marivic in Holy Matrimony, because this is also the day we commemorate the founding of the Charismatic Episcopal Church.

At first glance that might sound like two totally different and unrelated things; but amazingly enough, the two are tied together in Scripture – not in the readings we heard this morning, but in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus.  The letter to the Ephesians is a letter of encouragement and instruction; he speaks to the believers of the tremendous gift of salvation that we have received through grace – not that we have earned it by our good works – and how we are called to live a new life, a life made possible by the Holy Spirit living in us and working in us.  Paul gives us some instruction how to live in unity and how to work in love, and then he turns his attention to marriage; and he uses an analogy that was probably quite unexpected, and that is still unexpected in our day.

Read Ephesians 5:22-24.  If you read that in the culture, you will immediately get a nuclear meltdown.   “What? Are you insane?  We’re equal…”  It’s because they don’t read on: they stop there, and that’s all they listen to.  So let’s read on in Ephesians 5:25-32.  This passage starts by speaking to the wife, and then it turns and speaks to the husband, and then finishes speaking about Christ.  Let’s address these in reverse order.

Giving up yourself to become one

Let’s look at Christ.  “…just as Christ also loved the Church.”  How did Jesus love the Church?  God created man and woman and told them they could do anything in the world that they wanted to do except one thing: to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; and that was the one thing they couldn’t do without.  But God had a plan: God the Father and God the Son looked down on mankind trapped in the bondage of sin; and the Father asked the Son to do something, and the Son said “Yes”.  He set aside His Godhead: He was involved in the creation of everything, yet He set that aside, became a man, lived a perfect life and died as an innocent sacrifice to pay the price for everyone’s sins and set us free.  And what He received for that was the Church: anyone who would accept what He did.  He gave up everything: everything He was, everything He had, all His rights, all His privileges, to give Himself for the Church.  He does that to sanctify us: “sanctify” means to be set apart for holy use.  In order to be set apart for holy use, He had to cleanse us, because in our sin were not clean.  That’s what He did; that’s how Jesus loved the Church.

He speaks to husbands: “Love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church…”  Give up all your rights, give up who you are, give up what you have… to love someone completely, to do whatever is necessary for her benefit.  This does not mean, “I’m the husband, I know what’s wrong with you and I’m going to fix you.”  It does not mean being a lord over her; it means laying down your life for her.  It means co-operating with God as He is working in her to make changes: He’ll show what needs to be done.  It means seeking God for changes in me, the husband, because she’s not the only one with problems; I have problems too.  It means I must be willing to give up anything and everything that God asks me to give up for my wife.  That’s how husbands are to love their wives.

Let’s go on to that passage where He speaks to wives: “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord”.  Given what we just heard about husbands, if you find a man who’s willing to do that, it’s a lot easier to submit yourself to his care. When a man takes a woman as his wife, she becomes part of his body: the two become one flesh, they are inseparable, they are the same body.  And we are to take care of our body and provide for it, just as we do our health, our appearance, our spiritual well-being, the whole body.  A wife might consider submitting herself to someone like that, someone who has her best interests in mind, not his own.  That does not mean that the wife has to do whatever her husband says, no matter how bizarre or evil it is, and that she can’t say anything.  It does mean I am to respect my husband as guard, guide and protector of the home, and that I am to show him that respect even when I don’t agree with him, and when I’m telling him that I don’t agree with him.  When we’re working through these problems, I do it with respect, and he needs to do it with love.  And if we can’t agree, and it’s not something that causes me to go against the laws and will of God, I need to be willing to let him have the say.  And if it goes wrong, I need to be willing to work with him to understand why it went wrong so that we can do something different the next time.  It’s not a blind, unthinking slave – it’s two people who are made one flesh; and they both want the best for the body.  In that context, I submit, it becomes possible for a wife to submit to her husband.

But notice to whom Paul speaks when he gives these instructions: he says to the husbands “Love your wives”, not to the wives, “Nag your husband until he loves you”.   He says to the wives, “Submit to your husbands”, not to the husband, “Make her submit to you”.  That’s very intentional: marriage is a willing giving up of yourself to become one; that’s what Robbie and Marivic are doing today.

All of us can learn from this

And even those of you who are not married can take something away from this:

• Men: Don’t just marry someone you can live with; marry someone whom you can love like Christ loved the Church, whom you can give yourself to wholeheartedly, someone who recognises the value of that kind of love.
• Women: Don’t just marry someone you can live with; marry someone who’s willing to love you like that, who is willing to love you not for what he can get out of it but what he has to give you – I don’t mean money and a house, but himself – someone whom you can trust with your submission.Submission is not something that you should give lightly, because you’re giving your whole self, just as the man should be giving his whole self to you.
• Both of you are taking risks, because you’re making commitments – shall we be honest? – that you haven’t got a clue how serious this is.I didn’t when I got married:  “Oh, this will be good; I like this.”  And then the challenge comes: “Am I really committed to this?  Am I really going to hang in when I don’t understand a thing she’d doing and she doesn’t understand what I’m doing?”  Look for someone that you can love like that, whether you’re a man or a woman.

God does the work

Given all that, we’re still human.  Who can possibly lay down his or her life for another person?  Who can possibly love his wife as Christ loved the Church?  Who can possibly submit to her husband in all things?  In our own strength we can’t; and that’s why in the Church, Marriage is not a contract.  If all you want is a contract, so that when things go wrong you can get your piece when you split, go to the courts: that’s the purpose of Marriage before the State: so that the children can inherit, and so that if one of you dies, the other one gets it… all the legal things.  That’s not Marriage in the Church is: it’s not a contract, although you do sing something; it’s a Covenant, and it’s not just the two of you: God gets involved.  God doesn’t just say, “Love your wife as Christ loved the Church… Submit to your husband as the Church submits to Christ…” – He says, “That’s My desire, and My Holy Spirit will live in you to make that possible.”

It’s not just a contract between two people – it’s a Sacrament.  The Eucharist is a Sacrament: it’s not just remembering – God is present and He comes into us when we share the Body and Blood.  He does something in us, He’s not a celestial watchmaker who wound up the universe and went to coffee and will come back later to see how things are going – no, He’s intimately involved.  Even in spite of all evil and terror in the world which came in because of what we did, He’s still involved, He still works in our lives; and He stills works in our marriages, and He still makes it possible for us to do what He asks us to do.  He enters our marriage; He begins making us one the moment the Marriage is concluded.  But it’s not one hundred percent instantaneous: that’s when it starts; He makes a change right then, but then He keeps on making changes as we go along: we grow into it, we mature, we make mistakes, we argue, we disappoint one another, we forgive one another; and we become stronger, because He’s weaving us together: He’s weaving a man and a woman together as one.  He’s doing the work; we commit to it, but He does the work.

Baptism – Robbie was baptised two weeks ago – it’s not just a sign so that we can say, “Oh yes, I was baptised, so I’m OK”; it’s a work that God does to change our hearts, to make us one with Him.  That’s what Paul is talking about with Christ and the Church becoming one, and Jesus when He prays, “Father, make them one as you and I are one” (John 17:21-22).  That’s what He is doing; that’s what He is doing today.  That’s why He called the Charismatic Episcopal Church into being: to proclaim and to embody what has always been in the Church but has sometimes been forgotten.  God works; He’s still working.  It’s not dead ceremony; it’s only dead ceremony if I’m dead; I can do a ceremony as if it has no meaning, but it’s only because it has no meaning to me, not because He’s not there; it’s because I’m ignoring the meaning and I’m just going through the words.  God help me if I ever get that way: take me home!

And so today we celebrate with Robbie and Marivic the two becoming one, God making two one.  It starts today, and it keeps on going.  And that is a miracle; it’s a mystery.  Thank God.

Sermon transcript, 21 June 2015

God is not punishing us – He is launching us by Fr. Dana

Job 38:1-11, 16-18, Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32, II Corinthians 5:14-21, Mark 4:35-41 (5:1-20)

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1R676ML

The Old Testament lesson is from Job, and it’s hard to pick apart because it’s a whole story, but let me give you a quick synopsis.

Chapters 1-28 tell the story of what happened to Job: he had everything and lost everything, and most of those chapters are about him proclaiming his innocence and sinless and his friends saying “No, you’re wrong”.  His friends claimed to speak for God, and their basic position is, “God only punishes the wicked; you were punished; therefore you are wicked.”  Have you ever been told that, either by a human or by a little voice in your ear?  Guess what?  That’s a lie.

After they’ve gone back and forth a number of times, in Chapters 29-30 Job summarises his life, and then he says, “If I walked with falsehood… if my step has turned from the way… if my heart has been enticed by a woman… if I have despised the cause of my male or female servant… if I have kept the poor from their desire… if I have seen anyone perish for lack of clothing… if I have raised my hand against the fatherless… if I have made gold my hope… if I have rejoiced at the destruction of him who hated me… if I have covered my transgressions as Adam did… and if my land cries out against me… if I have done any of these things, then I deserve this punishment…” (Job 31:5, 7, 9, 13, 16, 19, 21, 24, 29, 33) – “but I haven’t.”  That’s his position.

In the next six chapters (Job 32-37) Elihu, the youngest of his friends, who very wisely kept his mouth shut because he let the older ones speak first, pipes up.  He’s an advocate for God, as the others were, but emphasizes how God is perfect, and so Job must have done something, since Job couldn’t possibly be perfect.

God is quiet through all this: He’ll let them argue, and He’ll even let the friends claim to speak for Him; but finally this has gone on for long enough and He says, “Stop; My turn.”  And when he speaks He essentially says, “Alright, Know-it-all, do you know the design principles of the universe?  Do you know how all creation is designed to work together?  If you do, go ahead and tell Me.” (Job 38-39)  Job is the first to reply, and he wisely says this (read Job 40:4-5): he starts to get the point.  And God in another two chapters really presses the point home, but He does not condemn Job for anything he has done; He never once says, “You know, Job, you’re wrong; you’ve sinned”.  What He does say is, “You presume too much”.  And in the final chapter Job says this (read Job 42:5-6).  Even though he didn’t do anything wrong, he repents of his words, his presumption – not of the sin he didn’t commit.

Things happen that are not God’s punishment

What’s the result of all this forty-two chapters?  God gets on not Job’s case; He gets on the friends’ case, the friends who were claiming to speak for Him.  The reason He does is that they were promulgating this lie that “God only punishes the wicked; you were punished; therefore you are wicked”.  Not all bad things come from God’s punishment; not every bad comes because someone did something wrong.  Some bad things happen just because Creation is fallen: sin is in the world; that’s what gave Satan the right to torment Job.  God had been protecting Job, and He removed His protection, not because Job did anything wrong but because God wanted to show Satan something (Job 1:7-12, 2-6), and He wanted to show Job something, and He wanted to show Job’s friends something.  Even though Job experienced tremendous tribulation and persecution, he was not wicked; and in a lovely twist of irony God tells the friends, “You’d better have Job pray for you, because I’m this close to doing something: you’d better have Job pray for you and offer sacrifices for you so that I’ll forgive you for what you said in My Name.” (Job 42:7-8)  And Job does; and then God blesses Job multiple times more than what he ever had before (Job 42:9-17).

There’s the whole book in a nutshell.  What is this telling us?  Job was not afraid to cry out to the Lord; he was not afraid to communicate his pain and his need; he was honest with God.  He may have been presumptuous, but he was honest: he did not hide it (Why hide it when God knows it anyway?) but he was honest and straightforward with God.  And God was not offended by His honesty; God did not say “Ooh, I can’t take that!”  God showed him where he was wrong, but he was not offended.  He also showed that things happen that we have no clue why; we can’t explain it.  The only reason we know why what happened to Job happened to Job is because it’s recorded in the book of Job.  If we had only the evidence – Job was a great guy and did all these good things; then suddenly calamity hit: he lost his crops, his livestock, his house and his family – we might go through life thinking the same things that his friends did – What did he do?  What was going on in his personal life? – but we know that’s not the case.  Things happen that aren’t God’s punishment.  Things happen that aren’t God’s perfect will; but God’s perfect will was given up when Adam fell.  And we can’t say, “That’s not fair!” because we’re here because of our own sin.  Best of all, we don’t know what the end to all this is.  The end of all Job’s struggle was a new life, a new family, new blessings, because he didn’t complain when he lost the old ones.  And he did not give up his faith in God when his circumstances told him he should have.  His wife told him, “Curse God and die!” and he didn’t (Job 2:9-10); that tells us something.

God works in storms

What does the Psalm tell us?  Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good – even when bad things happen.   It says He has rescued us from all adversity, like Job; it says we cried out in our distress and He rescued us – and He did; and it says this… read Psalm 107:23-30.  Those who sail on the sea of life see the works of the Lord and the wonders in the deep.  On the sea there will be storms, and they were much scarier for them than they are for us nowadays, because their boats were much smaller.  I can’t imagine being on the ocean in some of the ships the size they sailed in.  If we go out on the sea, there will be storms: Creation is fallen, life is going to be that way; but we will see the Lord work in the midst of that.  Those who spend their lives in the harbour don’t experience the storm, and it’s not so bad because the harbour is protected.  They may remain forever calm, but they may never see how much God loves them, how good God is, how great His loving-kindness is, and how great His power is.  If you leave your car in the garage, you’ll never have to wax it – although you might have to dust it.  It probably won’t rust, but you’ll never go anywhere either; you’ll never have the enjoyment of driving, you’ll never experience God saving you from running off the road.  We can’t see Him work if we only stay in the calm places.  I really think that’s where we are as a church; God has brought us to this place through all the twenty or twenty-five years of development, to get us ready to go out on the sea, and it had to be to a certain point so that we wouldn’t panic and jump ship; and that’s where we are.

No one is beyond God’s reach

But as the second reading said, because we have seen God work in a storm, because we have seen God rescue the perishing, we’ve seen God change hearts, we’ve seen God do a lot of things, now “we regard no one according to the flesh” (II Corinthians 5:16).  What that means is that we look at no one and say “You too far gone: God can’t reach you; it can’t happen.”  Personally, I don’t believe Judas was beyond the reach of God, but then he committed suicide, and that ended that story.  No one has gone too far, and if they have we can’t see it: we don’t know; we don’t regard anyone as being beyond hope; we will never consider anyone too far gone for the Lord to redeem.  Read II Corinthians 5:17.  The things that looked horribly terrible, totally unredeemable, are gone; anyone can be renewed if they’re willing to let God do it.  We’ve seen it, we are witnesses, and because we are witnesses we are also as this passage says “ambassadors for Christ”.  Read II Corinthians 5:20: that’s who we’re created to be, and that’s we’re created to do.

In the Gospel reading we have a perfect example of God working in the storm, but you didn’t hear it.  We had an example of there being a storm and of Jesus sleeping in the boat, but you didn’t hear it.  There’s an example in the rest of the reading, which I didn’t include, which is what happened after the storm when they reached the other side.  It’s not a physical storm, but it’s an example of no one being beyond the reach of God. Read Mark 5:1-20.   This wild man, running loose among the tombs, was considered a lost cause; he was unreachable, untouchable, uncontrollable; they didn’t want to have anything to do with him – who knows what he’d do – they couldn’t restrain him, much less reason with him: he was hopeless.  He was the man who by all rights should be beyond the reach of God.  But then he met the God of hope.  Before Jesus did anything to him, before He commanded the demons, before He touched him, when the man saw Jesus from afar, the demons knew who Jesus was, and he didn’t run away: “When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshipped Him” (Mark 5:6).  With two thousand demons in him, he still ran and worshipped him.  No one is beyond the reach of God.

The man is healed, and so he becomes a good churchgoer; he is sitting quietly in his right mind.  That’s only part of it: he wanted more.  He wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus said, “No, just tell people what happened; be a witness”.  And so this man became an ambassador for Christ.  What a testimony he had.  “I had hair down to my ankles; I had lice living there.  I cut myself.”  He was an ambassador and people marvelled; he became an eye-witness, beseeching and imploring others on Christ’s behalf to be reconciled to God (II Corinthians 5:20)… and you know he was effective.  That’s what we’re made for, to do that: to implore others to be reconciled to God, to love others with the love of Christ and draw them in.  Because there is no one beyond the reach of God’s love and grace: not you, not your husband or wife, not your son or daughter, not your friend, not your enemy, not your boss… no one.

God is launching us

We carry the good news, and we are called to share it.  We are called to love with the love of Christ, to carry the light of Christ into the world; but if we stay in the offices of the Consulate all the time, it won’t happen.  It won’t be risky: we’ll go to work every day, sit behind our computer and get paid; but nothing will happen.  If the ship sits in the harbour, it doesn’t go anywhere.  God has stirred up our nest.  We’ve been comfortable here, and I’m not saying that’s wrong, but that time is coming to an end; and we didn’t do it: God did it.  He says, “You’re not perfect, but we’ve patched the hull in some places, and the masts are strong and the rigging’s up, and the sails don’t have huge holes in them.  It’s time to start heading out to the ocean.  We’ll keep on repairing as we go along, but you’re close enough: we can go.”  We’re leaving the harbour, and we’ll see the works of the Lord.  God is launching us, and we don’t know where the journey will take us, but we know who’s in the boat, we know who’s directing, and we will see the works of the Lord as we do His business.  As we celebrate the Eucharist and pray the Post-Communion prayer, let us commit fully to the words we pray together: “Send us out, Father, to do the works You have given us to do [not that You have given someone else to do, but that You have given us to do]: to love and serve You as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.”  In the immortal words of Nike, “Just do it!”

Sermon transcript, 14 June 2015  (Baptism of Robbie England)

Lifted up in Christ by Fr. Dana

Ezekiel 17:22-24, Psalm 92, II Corinthians 5:1-10, Mark 4:26-34

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1PCgcjf

Man was created to have relationship with God. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, chapters 1 and 2 are about creation: how He made the universe and all that is in it, including how, after He had created all the animals, He paraded them in front of Adam and let him name them all. Adam did not find an adequate companion, and so God put Adam to sleep, took a rib and made a woman and that was the perfect companion for Him. They both also had a relationship with God: an intimate relationship; not just “He’s up there somewhere, we know about Him, we can see the evidence around us, but He’s gone to sleep and we’re doing whatever we want”. Genesis 3:8 says, “They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day”. They heard the sound, and the key is that they knew what that sound was: they knew what it sounded like for the Lord to go walking in the garden. They knew because He did it often and they were there. There is no Scripture that says that Adam and Eve walked with God, they were familiar with Him being in their midst and, as the Bible shows us, having conversation with them.

Unfortunately this particular verse is the beginning of the end of that relationship, because the second half of the verse says that they “hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” They didn’t normally do this, but on this day they did, and you can probably guess why: Adam and Eve ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one thing in all creation that God said “Don’t go there”. “You can have everything else: all the animals and plants, the mountains and the ocean, you can do anything you want to do, but don’t even go near that tree.” (Genesis 2:16-17) He said that because He knew that tree was tempting. Having everything else in the universe was not enough: they had to do it. And when they did, and God came walking as He normally did, they said, “Whoops! We’d better hide”, because they knew they were naked (Genesis 3:10). The remainder of chapter 3 describes how Adam and Eve, who were designed to have a relationship with God, and to walk in and enjoy the garden, because they did the one thing… There weren’t Ten Commandments; there was only one: keep your hands off that tree! And they disobeyed it. That was the end of that intimate relationship of actually walking with God.

Only God can restore us

As you know, we’ve all been suffering the consequences ever since. One of my daughters said that she would like to meet Adam and Eve, and just _______, because they were so _______! But the truth is that if we had been there any of us would have done the same thing. It’s easy to say “No, I wouldn’t”, but you weren’t there, and you don’t know. Man lost that intimate relationship with God through his own actions. Unfortunately, there is nothing that man could do in his own actions to restore that intimate relationship: it wasn’t possible. The whole Old Testament teaches us that it wasn’t possible. God tried to get that idea across to us by establishing all the sacrifices and various laws for the Jews: the people with whom He chose to have the closest relationship, to be an example to the rest of us. All the things He set up for them to do still didn’t do it. All the blood sacrifices, morning and evening – and even more often on the Sabbath – and all the things they had to do, never restored that relationship. In fact, God said the blood of animals sacrificed by a sinful priest isn’t going to do it. [Psalm 143:2, Micah 6:6-7, Galatians 2:16, Hebrews 10:1-4]

And so God knew this would happen from the very beginning – when He created Adam, He knew that Adam would fall – and He already had a plan: He already knew what He would do about it. [Acts 4:27-28, Romans 11:32] And it wasn’t to ask man to do something; instead, He asked His Son to become man, and to do what man could not do for himself, which was: to live a sinless life and to be sacrificed, to offer Himself as a sacrifice just as all those animals had been sacrificed, to offer Himself as a payment for the sins of mankind; and Jesus said, “Yes, I’ll do it” [Hebrews 10:5-7]. We have expressions such as “A man pulls himself up by the bootstraps”, which means “A man takes control of his own life and makes something of himself”. Or you hear of a “self-made man”: nobody helped him; he went out, worked hard, and did it. The truth is, in terms of spiritual salvation, we can’t do that. And in fact, even in our physical life: we think this person did it on his own – Frank Sinatra: “I did it my way”. No you didn’t! – Guess who gave you that voice: God did. Guess who made all those women go crazy over you: God did. Man did not lift himself up: God does.

God brings down the proud and lifts up the humble

And that’s what the Scriptures that we heard today tell us. Ezekiel 17:22-24 is talking about a tree, but he’s really not; the alternate reading (Ezekiel 31:3ff) talks about Assyria as a tree. He’s talking about Israel and the other nations including Assyria, and He has a theme: “I will do it; you can’t do it. You can try all you want, but you can’t do it – I will do it.” God raises up the lowly and brings down the lofty; God raises up the humble and brings down the proud: God does it. Ezekiel 31:10ff says, in other words, “Because I grew you big and powerful, and you were lifted up in your heart – ‘I did this’ – I’m going to bring you down.” And God brought them down. Whatever He wills to do, He does it: “I am the Lord… I have spoken, I have performed it.” The good news is that He wills to do good things for us; but we need to remember that He lifts up the humble and brings down the proud.

In Psalm 92:7 He talks about “When the wicked spring up like grass, and when all the workers of iniquity flourish”. It certainly seems in our day that if you’re doing wrong you’ll prosper: if you’re stealing, either from the rich or the poor, you’ll prosper; if you’re advocating evil, you’ll prosper, grow and succeed. But if the rest of the verse says “it is that they may be destroyed forever.” Hitler had a good thing going: it looked as if he was going to conquer the world; Napoleon and Alexander “the Great” both looked as if they would conquer the world; the Roman Empire and all these other empires were great and mighty – where are they now? God raises up and God puts down. The wicked spring up, but only for a season, so that He can show us through their end what the end of all man is when he depends on himself.

God lifts up the humble in Baptism

What does that have to do with today?   What does it have to do with Baptism? Today Robbie has come to be baptized; and while that’s a great thing for him, it’s an awesome thing for us as well. It’s an awesome thing when a man says “I can’t do this myself; I’m not capable; I need the Lord.” I grew up in an evangelical church where Baptism was primarily a sign: I was baptized at Easter, April 1963; and so if Satan comes after me and says “You’re going to hell”, I can say, “It says in my Bible that I was baptized on 12 April 1963, so there!” That’s true, but that’s not all that it is by a long shot. It wasn’t about me standing up and saying, “OK, I’m ready”: that’s a little piece. The big piece is what God did in me on that day. That’s why we call it a Sacrament. It’s not just a sign – though it is a sign – but it’s something that God does in a man or woman that changes him or her. It is a prime example of Him lifting up the humble, of Him doing something in a man that man cannot possibly do for himself.

In Baptism we renounce the lure of the world, the flesh and the devil; we turn to Jesus and place our trust in Him; and the reason we do it is that He is the only One who can raise us up; He is the only One who can save us [Acts 4:12]. And we will hear that we will need to persevere: that when we fall, we need to confess our sins; that when we stumble, we need to confess and stand back up: not stop, but keep walking. And the reason we do that is that although Baptism does an awesome thing in us… When that water is poured over our head and we are chrismated as Christ’s, an amazing thing happens; but it does not instantaneously make us perfect. Just as when we were born physically, we came out helpless: we had to be fed, other things had to be taken care of; we had to learn to walk… First we had to learn to crawl: we fell crawling; you try to go too fast and go “plop” on your chin…   We have to learn; we have to grow: we stumble, we crawl, we learn to stand, holding onto things, then we learn to let go and totter and fall, then we do that 117 times, then we take a step and our parents go nuts because we took a step… That’s what it’s like in the spiritual life: when we are baptized we are born again, reborn as Jesus said, born in the Spirit (John 3:5). We were born of water, which speaks of the water which breaks in the womb: physical birth in water and spiritual birth by the Spirit. That’s what happens at Baptism: water is a symbol.

A death and a new life

We die to self when we enter the water; and when that water washes over us, we are raised up again. [Romans 6:3-6] We have to die in order to live. We come to Baptism giving away ourselves, as Jesus did: He sacrificed His life; He went physically to death for us and was raised physically from death; and when you go to heaven and see Him, you will see that He still physically has the scars, He still bears the wounds in His hands. We know that because after He rose and appeared to the disciples they were able to put their hands in those wounds (John 20:27): He still bears the scars for us. And we are called to lay down our life, not physically – at least, not at Baptism – and that ends: the old man dies, and we become a new man – because of what God does, not because we submitted to Baptism. And we are given a new life, a life we’ve never had before. You will have a new life this afternoon that you’ve never had before, Robbie. It may not dramatically different, because again you start by crawling before you learn to walk; the spirit will be different, because the Holy Spirit will be in you; and we rejoice in that.

And in this ceremony we participate: we remember our Baptism, and we make the same promises again for ourselves that you make. This is a time to share in the joy of Baptism and the joy of a new life, and we are grateful for being a part of it.

Sermon transcript, 7 June 2015

God is building up His Body by Fr. Dana

Exodus 24:3-8, Psalm 116, I Corinthians 11:23-30, John 6:54-63

Recording:   http://1drv.ms/1iQlfm4

We’ve heard of the Body of Christ a lot; we say it practically every Sunday during the Eucharist. There are two aspects to the Body of Christ and they’re both very important.

Discerning the Body of Christ

The first is described in today’s Gospel: these are Jesus’ words (John 6:54-58). After the destruction of the temple in the early centuries of the Church, the Romans especially, and others, accused Christians of cannibalism – not because they attended a service, but because they saw the Liturgy. What is this – eating flesh? It has been a problem for the church; it was a problem for the followers of Jesus; it made even the disciples grumble. It is a really hard saying (John 6:60). In our day, if I want to sell a product to you, I will focus on the positive attributes and play down the negative ones, the things that would make you have second thoughts. It’s obvious that Jesus wasn’t selling something – He was calling followers… Actually He wasn’t calling followers – He was calling disciples, people to be committed; and He wanted to make absolutely sure that the people who said “yes” knew what they were signing up for.

The verses that follow bear this out (John 6:61-66). He’s talking to his disciples, not to the crowd. He has just told them something that makes a significant number of them think, “Uh… I don’t know if this is for me; this is pretty strange”; but He doesn’t sugar-coat it – He says, “This is the way it is. You can only accept it if the Father has called you.” This isn’t the Twelve, but it’s some of the others. Some who later went out as the Seventy-Two were included among the disciples: they were those who followed Him; they didn’t just come to get healed or something, but they were following Him around. Some of them after He said this went home: they said, “I can’t do this: it’s too much; I can’t bear it.” Can you imagine that? Can you imagine following Jesus for weeks or months, seeing everything that he did, hearing everything that He said, and then coming to a day where you say to yourself, “I can’t do this; this is not for me”? I find that hard to believe, and yet it happened. And that means I’m capable of that too: it’s not that I’m better than they are. I have the advantage of having read the whole Bible, and still I see that that could happen to me. Some walked away, but some stayed.

This was obviously important then; if it wasn’t important, Jesus would have said, “That’s just a minor theological point: don’t worry about it; it’s above your head. We’ll go on and do more important things.” He didn’t say that. it was important then, and it’s important now – because the importance of what he was saying about His Body and His Blood was not merely symbolic. The truth is, when we go to the table and that Bread and that wine are consecrated and we eat it, we are truly consuming the flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t know how; we can’t explain it; we can’t take a microscope and say, “Oh yes, I see Jesus’ DNA in this”. But it’s true nevertheless: Jesus said it’s true.

And it’s important; and how important it is is expressed in the New Testament reading; because when we eat the flesh of Jesus and drink the blood of Jesus, it affects us. Every person who takes it, it affects us – either to strengthen us or to judge us (I Corinthians 11:27-30). It is as if I was one of the Roman soldiers, even the one who put the spear in His side, or one of those who hammered nails into His hands and feet, I would be guilty. “Not discerning” means “not understanding”: you take it, but it’s like McDonalds.   If we take seriously what Jesus said about His Body and His Blood, we must also take seriously the consequences of receiving it unworthily; and that is why every time we come to the table of the Lord we always have Confession first: we take the opportunity to say “This is a miraculous mystery; it’s the price that was paid for me; it’s important, it’s critical, and I need to look at myself: am I worthy?” Not, “Am I worth it in my own eyes?”, because we never are, but “Am I worthy in His sight? Have I cleared the table of all the junk that has accumulated over the week or the day?” Every time we offer the Bread of life, so that it does not become the Bread of judgment, we offer Confession so that we can examine ourselves and ask God to take away our sins. That sounds as if the Body of Christ is pretty important.

We are the Body of Christ

There’s another part of the story, though. It’s an awesome part, but there’s another part. Paul describes the other aspect of the Body of Christ: read I Corinthians 12:12-14. “Now you are the Body of Christ” (I Corinthians 12:27). Do you hear that? This is not just an analogy for a committee, organisation or corporation. Read I Corinthians 12:27-30. He’s making a point here: you are members of a Body – not a political or corporate body, but the Body of Christ. We are not sardines in a can, all of us identical; we’re not Lego pieces, all the same shape and size, and He can build whatever He wants to out of them – we’re unique. We are unique individuals, we have unique talents, we have unique gifts, we have unique skills; we look unique. We have different functions, purposes and roles, but we don’t have different value to Him. The person who has a hard time speaking and sweeps the floors and dusts the pews is every bit important to God as the person who puts £2000 in the plate every Sunday or the person who stands behind the altar: it’s not a difference in value – it’s a difference in role. And all of those gifts, functions and purposes are given to us uniquely for the benefit of the Body, the Body of Christ.

Read Ephesians 4:11-13. “Edifying” means “lifting up”; an edifice is a very imposing building, tall, big, daunting…   That’s why He gives us gifts, roles and talents: for the edifying, lifting up, strengthening, making impressive (as in making an impact on the world)… making the Body of Christ imposing… until it is perfect. Last week we talked about teleios, meaning “perfected”, and we used the analogy of a ship: to be teleios is to be a ship in which the hull is sound, there are no leaks, the rudder is strong, the masts are in place, all the rigging is there, the sails are up, ready to go. That’s His goal for the Body of Christ, which we are.

We are called to give our lives for the life of the world

In the verses before today’s Gospel, Jesus compares the Bread that He is to the manna that the Jews ate in the desert (John 6:49-51). Notice He says, “I will give it” [His life]: no one is taking it from Him [John 10:17-18]; no one murdered Jesus. Jesus came to give His life: if He didn’t want to give His life, there wasn’t anybody who could have taken it: not Herod, not the Emperor, not Pilate, no one – He gave it. He gave His flesh on the cross for the sins of the world. He gave His Body – the Body of Christ – for the life of the world; and we, the Church, are called to be His Body. If we are called to be His Body, and if He gives His Body for the life of the world, then He gives us for the life of the world. That is profound.

And that explains why Paul says what he does in Romans 12:1-2. We are called, to present our lives as a sacrifice, just as Jesus did, to give them willingly. God doesn’t take them: He wants us to give our lives to Him, just as Jesus did. It’s our choice. We give our lives in many forms: we give our time (we do this by being here); we give our talents and treasures. Some of us may be called to give our lives unto death: I don’t know what this culture will be like in ten years. But whether we give, and how much we give, is our choice. Jesus gave it all; what we give is our choice. Read II Corinthians 9:6-8. To help you choose: If you sow a little, you’ll reap a little; if you sow a lot, you’ll reap a lot; but it is your choice. This is not a guilt trip; this is your choice. The word for “cheerful” is “hilarious”: not “Ha ha ha…” but “Go for it; take it; I want to see what you’re going to do with it!” The truth is, no matter how much you give – even if you give more than you think you should, or than the world thinks you should; even if you’re the woman who only gives two coins because she only has two coins – you will have always enough, and an abundance for every good work, so that we can do more.

God is building us up

This applies to us individually, and it also applies to St. Stephen’s. We’re in a new place and a new phase. We’re not physically in a new place yet, but we’re entering a time of challenge and change. We don’t know yet what it will look like, but we know it will be different. Some people thrive on change: “Ah, yes! An adventure! Awesome! I’ve been waiting for this!” Some people don’t: for some people change is uncomfortable at least; for some it’s really, really scary. If this change is a little scary for you, a little upsetting, it’s alright: no one should look down on you for that. Change is hard: we’ve got used to the way things are, and now they’re going to be different. Some things will be better, as we see them, and some will be harder, as we see them; but in God’s sight everything will be better in terms of His purposes. We don’t know what the change will look like, but we know that it is part of God’s work to edify the Body. We are the Body; He is building us up, He is strengthening us, He will help us to grow, and we will look different – a good different; we will act differently – a good different; we will have new opportunities – good opportunities. But we will still be who we are.

We are the Body of Christ; Christ is the Head of the Body. Your body, most of the time, does what the head tells it to do. We will go where Christ, our Head, wants us to go, and do what He wants us to do; and the good news is, He will take care of us. Whatever we give, whatever we give up, whatever we sacrifice, He will give us always in all things an all-sufficiency, and in fact an abundance, for us to do good works. His desire is for our good, not our ill. He’s not saying, “Oh, I’ve been waiting for this: you guys have been real trouble; this is going to be fun…”   He’s taking us to the next level; and it’s for our good and for the good of people who don’t even know Him yet: people whose lives we’ll touch because of this change, people who don’t know Him yet, but they will know Him in the future, and then they will be part of His Body as well: they will become the Body of Christ.

Right now we’re like the disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee and the storm is tipping the boat every way and there’s water splashing in, and they’re saying, “Oh my God! Don’t you care that we’re going to die?” But Jesus said, “What are you worried about?” If you can, instead of hiding in the bottom of the boat and thinking “I’ll be glad when this is over!”, take a deep breath, stand up, walk to the front of the boat, stand there in the crowd and feel water splashing on your face and the wind blowing your hair, and enjoy the adventure –it is going to be an adventure. Feel the spray, feel the wind, and know that neither of those has power over the One in the boat, whose Body we are. Hold fast to the knowledge that He will protect us, and He will bring us to a place of safety – just as He did the boat: they made it to the other side and it was calm – and that place will be a home for St. Stephen’s. If you’re worried, if you have concerns, don’t hold them in; share them with Edye and me; let’s pray about it.

Maybe God put something on your heart that we really need to think about, that needs to be something important about where we go, and it isn’t important where we are now. We need all your input, because we’re moving together. This isn’t my idea: “I’ve been waiting for this; now we can get to the place I want.” He’s taking us where He wants us to go, and He speaks to each of you. Sometimes other voices speak to us too – voices that makes us afraid, voices that tell us, “That can’t be God – no way!” – but by sharing together we can discern what is the Lord and what is not. That’s the way we learn to hear God’s voice: “Oh, I’ve heard that voice before, and that has nothing to do with God”, or “I’ve heard that voice before, and that’s God, and I’m not sure I like what He’s saying” or “I’m not sure I understand what He’s saying”. Together we can do this, because God wants it done.

He will carry us, He will protect us, and He has a place for us, because we are the Body of Christ. We receive the Body of Christ and it changes us; it strengthens us, that we may be the Body of Christ. Let’s do it.

Sermon transcript, 31 May 2015

God is launching the ship by Fr. Dana

Isaiah 6:1-5, Psalm 93, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-16

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1iQjHIJ

Before I start, I have a message for you, from I Thessalonians 2:2-3. I’m going to change “we” to “I”: “I always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in my prayers. ³ I remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Truly I thank God for you: you are a blessing to me and to my family, and to the Lord, most importantly – seriously.

A vision of hope

The Old Testament reading begins with Isaiah 6:1. Uzziah was a good king (Israel had some good kings and some rally horrible ones), perhaps the second best since Solomon (Jehoshaphat is hard to compare with), and he reigned for fifty years: that’s a long period of good. But now he’s dead, and there’s a year of mourning, and it was during this year of sadness that Isaiah was given the vision in this chapter. It was a vision of hope in the midst of despair. It was a vision of such hope that every Sunday during the Eucharist we declare a portion of it. Maybe you recognise it: when we celebrate the Eucharist, we declare what the seraphim said in this passage: “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of power and might; heaven and earth is full of Your glory.” (from the Sanctus; see Isaiah 6:2-3) The passage tells how overwhelming this experience was, and the effect it had on Isaiah, who said, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” (Isaiah 6:5) – “I’m not worthy of this” – like Peter was when Jesus first met him and provided the harvest of fish. They’d been fishing all night, and Peter said, “Get away from me: I’m unclean, I’m not worthy of Your presence”. (Luke 5:4-8) Nonetheless, God was with us: He was with Peter and He was with Isaiah; He didn’t leave. What He did was in the Spirit: what He did symbolically for Isaiah was that He took a coal from the altar and touched Isaiah’s lips, and his lips were no longer unclean (Isaiah 6:6-7); in fact his whole body was no longer unclean.

In the Psalm we heard that the Lord reigns, that He’s clothed with majesty (Psalm 93:1), and all of these things that we saw in Isaiah. Nonetheless the floods have lifted up; the earth has lifted up in a threat to overwhelm, the floods look as if they’re going to bury us (Psalm 93:3). Yet Psalm 93:4 tells us that “The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters”: those waters that look like they’re going to flood you out are just noise. It’s Satan making proud boasts, but they have no power; and the reason they have no power is that “The Lord on high is mightier… than the mighty waves of the sea”; and His “testimonies are very sure” (Psalm 93:4): we can count on it. That doesn’t make things easy.

The way of the world and the way of the Spirit

In Romans 8:12-14, we heard that those who have received the Holy Spirit are to live according to the Holy Spirit: we are to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, rather than the siren songs of the world, the flesh and the devil. The world is always trying to get us to focus on ourselves: “What’s good for me? If it feels good, do it. You can prosper – who cares about anyone else? You can be anything you want. You can do anything you want.” The flesh says the same things: “Gimme, gotta have it, gotta have it…”, whether it’s money, sex, new car, whatever… That’s what advertising is all about, to appeal to your flesh: “Ooh, I need that!” If you turn away and think about it, you don’t really need it: that car won’t get me to work any faster or any better than the one I have; in fact the insurance would be about three times what I pay on my car now. It appeals to “I want it, gimme, gotta have it, need it, now!” And you know the devil doesn’t have your best interest at heart: he never has. Just ask Adam and Eve.

In the Gospel we heard that all men and women are creations of God, and therefore they’re born of water. Jesus talked to Nicodemus about being born of water (John 3:5), and that makes sense: when you’re an infant in your mother’s womb, you’re surrounded by fluid, and when you’re born the water breaks and it comes gushing out. With our first child, Edye was sitting on a chair in the kitchen when her water broke; it was as if a huge water balloon was sitting on the chair and somebody popped it. She was dry, and there was a flood of water was coming from under the chair. Eowyn was born of water, and that’s enough to make us a creation of God.

That doesn’t make us a child of God. That requires us being born of the Holy Spirit; and when that happens, something happens to us. Jesus says, “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes.” (John 3:8) I’m sure you’ve experienced that: you’ve been walking on the street and all of a sudden a gust of wind blows your hat off or blows your umbrella inside out, and you think, “Where did that come from?”, and it passes, and things are calm again. That’s nature; that’s also, Jesus says, the way everyone is who is born of the Holy Spirit.

Wait a minute – that’s not logical. In other words, He’s saying that those born of the Holy Spirit act in ways unexpected by the world: if you’re born of the Holy Spirit, you will do things – not every day, not continuously, but there will be times when you do things that your unsaved friends don’t have a clue about: “Why the… would you do that?” In fact, some of your saved friends may not understand you: “God can’t want you to do that…” Yes, He can. He asked His prophets to marry a prostitute [Hosea 1:2ff] or to lie on the ground for a year [Ezekiel 4:4-6] or to go with no clothes [Isaiah 20:2-5] – but He had a purpose: He was trying to make a point to the people, and the people weren’t listening. He had to get extreme. Extreme sports have nothing on God: that’s playtime; God can be extreme. Those born of the Holy Spirit act in ways unexpected by the world, because the world cannot comprehend the ways and purposes of God. It’s not their fault: if they don’t have the Holy Spirit, they can’t understand the ways of God; our minds aren’t built that way.

Then to prove it, Jesus says that the Son of Man must be lifted up on the cross (John 3:14). There’s an example of God’s ways being totally foreign, incomprehensible even to the men who followed Jesus for three years. “The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be lifted up on the cross.” “What! No, Jesus! Don’t say that! Forbid that!” Jesus said, “Get behind Me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:21-23) God’s way just didn’t make any sense to Peter. That’s the way God works.

We’ve been in the harbour of preparation…

What’s your point, pastor? How does that apply to me?

Think of Saint Stephen’s Charismatic Episcopal Church as a ship. It has been in the harbour for twenty years, since its inception.   “Being in the harbour” doesn’t mean that we haven’t been doing anything or that God haven’t been doing anything, or that we’ve missed whatever His plan was and He has put us on the shelf – I am not saying that. Quite the opposite: we’re a ship in the harbour because we’re being built and fitted for a journey; and any time God builds something He takes His time. In the USA there is a yearly construction contest: who can build a house fastest? There is a competition where you build from the foundation up and build the whole house in about a day and a half. You can do that, but you would not want to live in that house: after only a few months you would start seeing cracks in the wall, because they didn’t take the time to build it right; the whole goal was to be fast. God’s goal is not to be fast – God’s goal is to build something that will last not just ten, twenty or a hundred years but for eternity. Whenever God builds something to last, He always spends much more time preparing the foundation and the infrastructure than we ever expect.

Look at Jesus: He spent roughly three years in active ministry, from the time He was thirty until His death when he was thirty-three. But He lived thirty years before that: He grew up as a child; He was under the authority of His father; He was learning… just for those three years. But His ministry was not limited to those three years, because when he died His ministry didn’t stop, and when He rose His ministry was transformed: it wasn’t just speaking to people on earth – it was transforming people who hadn’t even been born yet: His ministry still goes on. That was exactly God’s plan from the beginning.

We’ve been in the harbour this long because God is not building a row-boat: something for a couple of people to sit in and paddle around and enjoy the flowers and the birds and then come back to the bank. He is building a mighty sailing vessel with three masts, rigging and sails, to carry a multitude; and He is fitting it to withstand the high seas – not the harbour. We’ve been in the harbour, but that’s not where we’re going or what we’re built for. We’re built for the high seas, and the high seas means storms, high waves, fear, adventure… we don’t know, all of this…. We’re not quite finished: He doesn’t wait until the last little touch is made on the ship; as soon as we’re seaworthy he sends us out. He’s been working in us to make us seaworthy; He’s not finished: there’s more to be done, there’s a lot of learning and teaching and healing that still has to be done; but He has determined that we are far enough along that it’s time for launch.

…but now we are being launched

We can be confident in this, because He’s the one in charge of the timing. On Tuesday afternoon I received this letter from the Anglican Diocese of London, dated 22 May: “Dear Father, You may be aware that St. Margaret Pattens has undergone significant repairs in the last year and more are currently being planned. Along with our emerging partnership with other Anglican churches, we are actively planning for a growth in our mission and ministry, and this will mean significantly more use by ourselves of the church on Saturdays and Sundays. With that in mind, I am writing to formally give notice to you under the terms of our agreement… that your use of St. Margaret Pattens will cease on 1 September 2015.”

The church of St. Margaret Pattens needs their space, and that’s OK. I’d been feeling that God had something for us; now I know that it’s God’s plan and not my feeling.

It continues: “We have thought very carefully about this and have consulted other colleagues, because we know that this will cause some difficulties for you. It has not been an easy decision for us, as we greatly value what you bring to the mission of the wider Church. If you wish to look for the use of another church, I would be willing to look to see if there would be other possibilities for you. Do let me know your thoughts. With best wishes, Martin Sargeant, Head of Operations.” (I think he’s acting as the Archdeacon.)

We have been notified: 1 September, we are being launched. This is exactly what God has wanted, even if we don’t think we’re ready; but He is doing this. Like Isaiah, we are coming to an end of a very distinctive period in the life of St. Stephen’s. As we saw a couple of weeks ago [from the photos at our 20^th anniversary celebration], we’ve got some tremendous memories of what has gone on in this place. But what’s gone on is not because of this place – it’s because of God. And God isn’t going to stop working just because we change places. It’s been good, and God has given us people over the last twenty years who have poured their lives into us for our good. Some of those people are still here, and some of them are still pouring their lives into us even though they’re not here.

We can’t see where we’re going – but God can

But now He is sending us out, and we cannot see where we’re going. That’s the scary part. As in the Psalm, we look out, and chaos fills the world. The seas will probably be rough at times; but God reminds us that though those floods are lifted up, they’re nothing but noise. As when Jesus was asleep in a boat on the Sea of Galilee – and that wasn’t even a big boat; it probably had a single mast with a sail – and the disciple said, “Oh, don’t You care? We’re going to die! Wake up!” and Jesus says, “Don’t you trust Me?” And then He said, “Cut it out!”, and the storm stops. We can have that same kind of confidence, because we’ve learned from the disciples, and from Jesus being asleep in the boat, that it’s OK; we’ve never experienced that before, but we have their testimony. Though the floods be lifted up, God is higher and mightier than all.

The Epistle to the Romans tells us that we are to live according to the Holy Spirit: to follow His leading rather than the lure of the world, the flesh and the devil. So we’re not going to look for a place in a rich neighbourhood where we can get big – unless that’s where God wants us to be. We want to know, “God, where do you want us? Where are You sending us? And help us to understand why You’re sending us there.”

In the Gospel, we find that our path may not make sense to the world; it may not even make sense to us. I don’t know where He’s calling us; but I do know that wherever He calls us to, if we go where He calls us, we will prosper in the ministry that He gives us – maybe not in the ministry that we envisioned, not in the plans that I had, but in the plans that He has.

It is for God’s purpose

My previous Bishop’s favourite word is teleios; it appears in the Bible and is translated in some places as “mature” or “perfect”. One of those places is Colossians 1:28. Referring to “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27), it says, “Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.” That’s what God is doing in us: that’s that building in the harbour, that building that will keep going on in us wherever we go. He wants to make us perfect; not so that we can be a trophy on the shelf, but so that we can become perfectly obedient and perfectly carry out His will, and also help others to become teleios. One picture of teleios is a ship; the hull is solid, it’s airtight, all the masts are built and strong, the rigging has been put on, the sails are up, full of wind and ready to go: nothing lacking. That’s what God is doing in us, not for our glory but for His glory, and for His purposes: that we might bring other people on board and that they might become teleios as well.

That’s what God is doing; we don’t understand how. We know that’s His purpose; we can’t necessarily automatically correlate the things that are happening to us in our personal lives, in our church – Why is this going on? Why do I have to go through this? Why are You asleep, Jesus? – We don’t understand; but He’s doing it, and we need to trust Him, because the ship of Saint Stephen’s is about to be launched.   No longer will we be sitting in the cradle where it’s stable, where we can all sit on one side of the ship and it won’t tip – we’re going out into the water: not just the calm water of the harbour, but we’re going out past the breakwaters that smooth the waves, out to where the sea is rough. And He will never give us more than we can handle. We may be standing at the rail saying “Oh, my God!”, but He will be there. He has a place for us; He has a new place for us. It’s new to us: it may not be a new building, but He has a new place for us that will match the destiny that He has for us; and we can’t see that yet. So we don’t know where we’re going, but He does. He knows exactly where we’re going; He’s had it written down for aeons; we just can’t see it. And so our task is to discern what His heart is; and we need help. We don’t want to follow our flesh or the world or the devil; we want to follow God. I have a vision that God gave me 25 years ago, but I don’t know that that’s the vision for this church.   The vision we want is God’s vision; and if it’s God’s vision, it will also be the Bishop’s vision; and if it’s the Bishop’s vision it will be our vision; and we all need to embrace what God wants to do, and to embrace it we have to discover it. And that doesn’t mean, “Here’s what the next 100 years are going to look like.” He may just say, “Just go here, and I’ll tell you what to do when you get there.” But it has to be His word and not ours.

Pray

The responsibility of deciding rests, under the authority of the Bishop, with the Rector’s Council, which at present is me, Dcn. Andrew and Dcn. Dado. But we’re not the only ones who hear, and so here’s what I would ask you to do:

• Please pray that God would reveal His will to us and to you, that we would be in unity, not with some “10-year master plan for reaching 500 people” but unity with His plan, and that we would faithfully obey everything that He directs.
• And I ask that you would pray that every scheme and attack of the enemy would be exposed and defeated; because if God has something more than us, you can bet that the enemy is going to pull out all stops to try to defeat it. That’s true of all believers; if all you’re doing is sitting in the pew warming it, Satan’s not going to do much to disturb you, because he already knows you’re ineffective; he doesn’t want to rile you: Heavens! You might get serious. But if you’re striving to do the work of God the way God wants you, he will come against you just as he came against Jesus. He knew Jesus was a threat – he just didn’t know how bad! And so he did everything he could against Jesus. Pray that he will be defeated and that we won’t listen to his plans but we’ll listen to God’s plan.
• And also pray that not one person in our church will be left behind. Change is hard; for some people it’s really hard. For some people change is “Oh, something new! Exciting! This is awesome! This is adventure!” But for some people, it’s “No! I was just getting used to what we were doing. I was just getting the hang of it.” Some people have physical reactions to change, and that’s OK, but we need to help them. We want no one to be left behind.

On a practical level, please send me the address of where you live. I want to plot on a map where everyone lives – not necessarily so that we can get in the middle of where most people are: that might be God’s plan, or it might not – but wherever we go, we want it to be as easy as possible for people to get there. My heart is that we can have a place that we can have 24/7, all the time; we can have men’s fellowship, women’s fellowship, choir practice, informal practices, acolyte training… any time we want without shelling out more money. Maybe that’ll happen; maybe that’s a few years down the road: we’ll see. But if we can have your address, it’ll help us to discern the impact of whatever God is speaking to us. Of course if you’re planning to move somewhere in the near future, it would be nice to know that too. We don’t want to control where you’re moving – that’s your business – but help us to know.

All hands on deck!

Really what this is, going back to the ship analogy: this is a call from the Admiral, from Jesus: “All hands on deck!” Whether you’re in the prayer ministry or healing ministry or young adults or worship or acolytes, or maybe you’re not really involved yet, God is saying, “All hands on deck!” This is getting serious: we’re going on a journey, we’re going on a mission, a mission to build disciples; and we need all the hands we can get, because there’s a lot of work to do. The time of mostly preparation is over: preparation will still go on, we’re not perfect, but now there are other things that need to be accomplished, and we all need to be on board. I pray that God will touch you and me, all of us, to give us a sense of destiny: that He has something good planned for us, and it probably won’t be easy. He could just throw it in our lap – He’s done that before – but if He doesn’t, we need to be prepared. So pray, pray, pray, that His will be done.   We have three months; we don’t have to rush, but we do have to be serious and listen. And if you hear the Lord saying something to you, please pass it on, and we’ll share it with the Rector’s Council and the people, and let’s see where this adventure takes us together.

Sermon transcript, 24 May 2015, Pentecost Sunday

The Person and power of the Holy Spirit by Fr. Dana

Acts 2:1-21, Psalm 104:24-35, I Corinthians 12:4-13, John 20:19-23

Recording:  http://1drv.ms/1PCbwd1

Pentecost is a significant time in the history of the Church: the Holy Spirit was not on the earth before that day: something happened, something new.

What is the Holy Spirit? If you were raised on Star Wars, it’s not “the force”, although the Holy Spirit can be with you. However unlike the force the Holy Spirit cannot be controlled; there is no training programme for you to go through to control the Holy Spirit (to control “the force”). The Holy Spirit also does not have a “dark side”; the Holy Spirit is all light, all good, because He is good. In fact, the question I asked – “What is the Holy Spirit?” – is a trick question, because the Holy Spirit is not a “what” – the Holy Spirit is a “Who”: He is a Person.

Who is the Holy Spirit?

The Nicene Creed has a section each for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the section on the Holy Spirit, this is what it says:

“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life…” Read Genesis 2:7. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and the Giver of Life: He brings life; He causes life. Two years ago when Edye and I visited St. Stephens’ for the first time in this decade, we heard the reading about the dry bones (Ezekiel 37:4-10). The army, though it was miraculously restored with bone, muscle and sinew, was not alive until the breath came. Is there a breath to which it can be said, “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain”? I’m not aware of a breath out there that inhabits the four corners of the earth. So who was this breath that came and breathed into the dead army? This breath was the Holy Spirit, who came and breathed life into this army; and that is what he does to us: He is the Lord and Giver of life.

The next line of the Nicene Creed says, “…who proceeds from the Father…” The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, when the disciples were gathered, because God the Father sent Him, at Jesus’ request: “I will ask the Father and He will send you…” (John 14:16). Jesus only did what He saw that the Father was doing, so He knew that this was God’s plan, and He asked the Father, and the Father did it. Also read John 14:26. Jesus did this because He knew that the disciples could not accomplish in their own power all that they were called to do: they didn’t have a chance; and so He said, “I will ask the Father and He will send you the Helper.”

The next line of the Creed: “…who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified…” Here is proof: the Holy Spirit is not a force; the Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit is worshipped, just as God the Father is worshipped, and just as Jesus the Son is worshipped. When He met the women and they fell down and worshipped Him (Matthew 28:9), He did not tell them, “Don’t do that: I’m a human” – He accepted their worship: He is God. The Holy Spirit is also God.

“…who has spoken through the Prophets.” We could be here for quite a while looking at all the examples where the Holy Spirit spoke through the Prophets; but we won’t – we’ll just look at one. The children of Israel have been wandering through the desert, eating manna – the food of angels – and whining that they don’t have any meat. And so God had Moses gather seventy elders around him, and… Read Numbers 11:25. In fact, the Spirit was so powerful that although two of them remained in the camp, when the Holy Spirit fell on the sixty-eight, He also fell on the two in the camp. He came on these seventy men, regardless of where they were, and they all prophesied [Numbers 11:26-27]. The Holy Spirit speaks through the prophets.

“The power of the Highest will overshadow you”

The section of the Creed about Jesus Christ also talks about the Holy Spirit: it says that He “…was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man…” Jesus was conceived in the Virgin Mary because of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit did not become a physical person and have sex with Mary so that Jesus was conceived – the Holy Spirit came upon her. When the angel came to Mary, He said this: read Luke 1:31, 34-35. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you…” This is why we call Mary the Mother of God, and Joseph her husband – not the Father of Jesus, because He wasn’t. The Holy Spirit came upon her, and she conceived Jesus. Notice how similar these words to Mary are to the words Jesus speaks to His disciples regarding the coming Pentecost (Acts 1:8). That’s what happened at Pentecost: the Holy Spirit “came upon” the disciples. Tongues of fire settled on them (Acts 2:3), but the Holy Spirit didn’t stop above their head: He went inside them, into their hearts, into their spirits.

…that all might be saved

And strange things started happening. One of them, the most obvious, was that they started speaking in other languages. They weren’t what we would classically call “speaking in tongues” – it went far beyond that. If I speak in tongues, I speak in a language that I don’t know, and you hear me speaking in that language. That’s not what happened here: each person hearing the disciples heard in their own native language every person that was speaking (Acts 2:6-11). Being drunk would not explain this! All eleven of them were speaking, and all however many hundreds of people who were there heard all eleven speaking in their own language. It’s as if I am speaking one thing, and every one of you is from a different country, and every one of you hears it in your own language: it wasn’t what I was speaking – it was what happened between what I said and what you heard. That defies the laws of physics: I can’t make a sound or speak a word that one person hears as a totally different word than someone else does. This was amazing; this was the Holy Spirit.

In our reading we heard Peter talk about the prophecy in Joel (Acts 2:16-21). This is not an audio-visual spectacle to make people’s hearts flutter. The goal is to save lives, to rescue the perishing: that’s why the Holy Spirit came.

Our second reading talks about the gifts, the various manifestations, of the Spirit. It talks about diversity, but then says, “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all” (I Corinthians 12:7). If He gives you or me a gift, we could go around saying, “Look at this gift that I’ve got – it’s bigger than your gift.” It’s not – it’s for the profit of all. Later on it says, “one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills” (I Corinthians 12:11). That’s what it means to be the Body of Christ. We each have different gifts: we don’t all need to be an eye or an ear or a hand; I think I’m probably a left knee-cap! All the parts are important, and they all have to work together for the body to function properly. And the Holy Spirit is the Master of all this: He causes us all to work together to fulfil the commands of the Head – and the Head of the Body is Christ. We together are a Body – not a club or an organization where we have roles: I’m the Secretary and somebody else is the Vice-President – no, we’re a Body: we’re an organic, living Body, and we work together to fulfil the direction of the Head. The love of Christ flows through the veins of the Body: it nourishes us, it fills us; and the Holy Spirit lives in us to make that real and to manifest it in the outside world, that all might be saved.

The key to authority

Then we hear in the Gospel that the disciples are shut in this small room, quivering because of what just happened and what they think could happen. They were afraid of the Jews who had just put Jesus to death, along with the Romans. Jesus came in (He didn’t bother unlocking the door) and gave them peace; and He gave them the Holy Spirit; and with the Holy Spirit came authority. (John 20:19-22) They had authority because they were under authority: they were there because He had called them as disciples. They didn’t know what to do – they didn’t receive any specific instructions when Jesus died – but they came together because they were a body; and He gave them authority. The reason they have authority is because they are under authority. You remember the Roman army captain: the centurion came and asked that his servant be healed (Matthew 8:5-9).

Why don’t we see more evidence of the power of the Holy Spirit in our day? It’s not that the Holy Spirit was really powerful on the first day and over time He dissipated – like the smoke of our incense: it’s really powerful if you’re close to the thurible, but the further away you are the weaker it is, and pretty soon it disappears, and now I can get very close to it and wouldn’t smell much. Is it not possible that our cultures – the world’s culture – have got us to the point where we really want to use power for our own benefit? There are even ministries that will teach you how to use the Holy Spirit to get what you want; that’s not what the Holy Spirit came for. In fact, when we step out from under God’s authority to go our own way, we lose His authority. It’s not something that once I’ve got it I can go anywhere I want and do anything I want – we only have authority if we’re under authority.

The power of living with God in control

One of the places where we have recently seen the power of the Holy Spirit was in a bunch of guys dressed in orange jumpsuits kneeling on the edge of the ocean with men in black behind them with swords, and the men in orange are praising Jesus. That’s power! Power doesn’t have to be rising up and slaying the enemy. The power God gives could do that – He did that with Moses and Elijah – but sometimes He chooses to do something else: sometimes He makes us witnesses in intense trial, even in death. Read about the saints in the first few centuries of the Church: there are some amazing things. People were fried on griddles, like a sausage in a frying-pan, and they did not renounce the Lord. That’s power; and that’s witness, because the people around were affected by what they saw. People today are affected by seeing those men in orange – and that doesn’t mean that only men do that; women do too; it just hasn’t made it to YouTube.

“The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.” He may indeed want us to prosper, even as individuals; He may want you to have a really good job. But if He does, it’s not just for you – it’s for your family, for His Church… He wants good things, but it works together for good, not just for me.

So the key to seeing the Holy Spirit move in power is not, “God, You need to send Him again because He’s got worn out down here” – the problem is in us. Have you ever heard the saying, “God is my Co-Pilot?” It means “I’m flying, and He’s sitting over here telling me what to do.” Wrong picture: God is not my Co-Pilot. God is my Pilot. He knows where we’re going, and He knows the best way to get there. When you receive the Holy Spirit, God becomes your Pilot. He makes the decisions, and our responsibility is to become like Jesus: to see what He’s doing – to see what the Father is doing – and go with it. If the Father is taking you to a new job that’s better, go with it. If God is saying, “You’re right where I want you to be; stay there, and I’ll tell you when it’s time”, we need to enter into that with joy, not grumble and then say, “OK – is it done yet? Now can I change?” It means being patient. This is a perfect relationship; and I guarantee that if you do that, your life will be amazing. I don’t mean they’ll make a movie out of it – I mean you’ll say, “I’ve never lived like this before: it’s incredible. What it’s doing in my heart is amazing.” It’s good, but it’s scary, because you have to give up control.

Are you familiar with CS Lewis’ The Narnia Chronicles, especially The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? When the children come into Narnia and meet the beavers and find out about Aslan, Lucy asks, “Who is Aslan?” Mrs. Beaver replies, “‘I tell you, he is the King of the wood, and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great Lion.’ ‘Ooh!’ said Susan. ‘I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel quite nervous about meeting a lion.’ ‘That you will, dearie, and no mistake,’ said Mrs Beaver; ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’” (Aslan is a metaphor for Jesus.) “‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr Beaver; ‘don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.’” (Ch. 8)

If you live with God in control, it’s not safe, but it’s good: it’s incredible. The results aren’t guaranteed. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to live long and prosper. Remember Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego: King Nebuchadnezzar built a huge image, 90 feet high, and said everybody had to worship the idol; and these three men refused to do that (Daniel 3:1-7, 12). So they were brought to King Nebuchadnezzar, and he spoke to them. (Daniel 3:14-15) Do I follow the Lord or not? This is pretty scary. What did they say? Daniel 3:16-18. “We believe He’s coming through; we believe He’s going to rescue us; but if we’re wrong it doesn’t matter: we’re still following You.” Just like the guys in the orange jumpsuits: “All I’ve got to do is say the word, and your head will stay attached to your body.” “Sorry. Actually, I’m not sorry: I’m not going to follow you – I’m going to follow Him.” They heated up the fire, tossed them in – and they’re walking around in there! (Daniel 3:24-25). That was the Lord. And so they came out and Nebuchadnezzar made a decree: “Don’t say anything bad about the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, because if He doesn’t kill you, I will.” It changed his heart. That’s the power of the Holy Spirit.

That’s the power that we see in Thomas. Jesus gets word that Lazarus has died and says, “Let’s go to Jerusalem”; and the disciples say, “Are you crazy? They were just trying to kill you. Why would you go back there?”; and Thomas says – “Doubting Thomas”: “I ain’t going to believe unless you prove it” – Thomas said, “Let’s go with Jesus, so we can die with Him.” (John 11:7-8, 15-16) “I don’t want Him to die alone” – He didn’t say the last part, but that’s what he meant: “If He’s going, I’m going.”

That’s what we’re called to do. That’s the kind of Holy Spirit power we’re called to have: the power to tear down idols – if that’s what God’s called us to do; power to confront the culture, if that’s what God’s called us to do; power to die on a beach somewhere, if that’s what God’s called us to do; power to declare the truth in love, even though people will misunderstand it, twist our words and hate us for it: we’re called to do what is right.

The power to build a better church

We’re here not to build a better life, but to build a better church – and I don’t mean a better church than has ever existed before. I’m just saying that we’re here to build the kind of church God wants, that He built early on and has built many times throughout history: not a church that is angry at the world, the flesh and the devil – although it’s ok to be angry at the devil – but a church that will go into the world and show – not just say, but demonstrate – the love of Christ. And we have to do that first with each other: if we can’t love each other – whom we’ve seen – we can’t love strangers on the outside.

…a church that comes against the sins of the flesh and defeats them, not by passing laws but by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to pass righteous laws: we want bad things to be illegal and good things to be legal; but that’s not going to save us. What will save us is what we do regardless of what the law says. If the law says that evil is good, we have to do the good; and if we are put in jail for it, “Sorry, o King, but we’re choosing Him.”

… a church that stands unflinchingly against the devil and that is so obedient to the will of God, whatever it is, that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. The gates of hell are not an offensive weapon: the devil is not coming against you swinging a gate. Jesus said “On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18) because the church is storming the gates of hell: the church is on offense, not defence; the Church is not hiding in a room wondering when the Jews will come, knock on the door and take us away – although they may do that: it won’t be the Jews this time… but we won’t be hiding in a small room just waiting. We are offense – not offensive. (Yes, there are groups that claim to be the Church that make a point of being obnoxious to people; I don’t think they have saved any souls. They may feel good inside if they have spoken a piece of the truth, but they haven’t done the work of the Lord.)

To have a church like this sounds really great in theory, but I’m neither worthy nor able to lead a church like that. I guarantee I can’t do it. That’s why He sent the Holy Spirit. He can do it; He is worthy; He is able and – even better – He is willing. He’s looking for people to say “Yes”: that’s all it takes; not for our glory, but for His glory.

So what do we do? It’s called reckless abandon. Go for it! That’s what He’s called us to do. Then we will see the power of the Holy Spirit at work; whether it’s in lack or prosperity, life or death, whatever it is, we will see the Holy Spirit work; we will see men and women and children saved; we will see amazing things happen, whether the culture changes or not. We just need to say “Yes”.