02 Friday Oct 2015
Sermon 16 August 2015
Following the Lord: the very definition of wisdom by Fr. Dana
Proverbs 9:1-6, Psalm 34:9-14, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:51-58
Recording: http://1drv.ms/1iQQBZ8
[transcript not yet available]
02 Friday Oct 2015
Sermon 09 August 2015
A vision by Fr. Dana
I Kings 19:1-8, Psalm 34:1-8, Ephesians 4:25-5:2, John 6:35-51 (sermon not from lectionary)
Recording: http://1drv.ms/1iQQsoB
[transcript not yet available]
02 Friday Oct 2015
Sermon 08 August 2015 (Marriage blessing of Jay-ar & Carmine)
Marriage: a contract, or a sacrament? by Fr. Dana
Genesis 2:4-9, 15-24, Psalm 127, Colossians 3:12-17, Matthew 5:1-10
Recording: http://1drv.ms/1iQQmxa
[transcript not yet available]
02 Friday Oct 2015
Sermon transcript, 02 August 2015
Need in the place of uncertainty by Fr. Dana
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15, Psalm 78:15-20, 23-25, Ephesians 4:1-16, John 6:24-35
Recording: http://1drv.ms/1VsmtVH
What do you do when you have a need? What do you do when you have a problem? Arrrrrgh…? Well, some of us do. The Jews had a problem in today’s Old Testament reading: they didn’t have food. There were 600,000 or a million of them. This was a significant problem, and a real need: they weren’t making this up. However, rather than simply going to Moses and asking him, or asking the Lord to fulfil their need, they communicated their need through whingeing or whining and complaining. They even made a false accusation (read Exodus 16:3). God responded to their request, not in anger or even frustration, but He very simply responded with respect. However He also identified the real problem in their hearts: they didn’t trust Him. The real problem wasn’t that they didn’t have enough to eat, but that they didn’t trust God.
Our real problem is lack of trust
God met their need richly: He went above and beyond what they required, even beyond what they asked: He sent them manna from heaven and meat in the form of quail (Exodus 16:13-14). The quail not only covered the camp, but stayed still long enough to be caught by hand. I can’t even shoot a quail with a shotgun half the time, but they caught them with their hands: that was God.
He sent them manna from heaven and gave them quail, but He also gave them a lesson in trust. He gave them a test (read Exodus 16:16-20). They didn’t get it: He said gather an omer apiece; those who were really industrious and gathered a lot only had an omer, and those who only gathered a little had an omer: everybody had the same amount. Those who kept it overnight found that it stank and rotted or moulded. That was a lesson; but it wasn’t enough (read Exodus 16:21-24). It’s OK to gather too much when you are told to: it won’t rot. Read Exodus 16:25-30. Finally they get the idea that if you did what the Lord says, it works the way He indicates that it’s supposed to work. Our generation has that problem: God has given us instructions on how to live, and we don’t think that’s good enough, so we have to try our own ways. The whole world is trying their own ways in almost every area you can think of, and most of it is not working.
Do you remember where in the journey out of Egypt this incident happens? You might be surprised: it was right after they’d crossed the Red Sea. It wasn’t “Three years ago God led miraculously through the Red Sea, but I’ve forgotten about that.” Only a chapter earlier they were singing, dancing and partying, because they had just seen the army of Egyptians destroyed (read Exodus 15:1-6)– those whom they were deathly afraid were going to destroy them. Three days later they came to a place where there was water, but it was bitter and through a miracle God made it sweet (Exodus 15:22-25); and He made that a teaching moment (read Exodus 15:26). He gave them water; and immediately after this begins today’s reading: there was no water and no food, and they were complaining. They had very short memories. But we would never do that, would we? I would never complain – I wish that were true. But I am guilty of this as well, and I suspect, if we were honest with ourselves, most of us would also admit.
We as a church are in a similar place that the Jews were in: we’ve been in this church for 20 years and in London for 25 years, but at the end of this month we have to find a new place to meet, and so far we don’t see anything happening. It’s not as if we’re starving and have no water; but, like the Jews, we have a need and we don’t see any immediate provision for this to happen. We don’t have a big savings account or a huge income. How is this going to work? We can’t really see how God will provide; and whilst it doesn’t look risky as if some of us will die, but it does look risky. What if the transition to a new place is difficult? What if on the first Sunday of September we don’t have a new place that has everything we need? What if it takes a while? What if people say, “I really liked coming when you were here, but now I don’t know if I want to go to a different place?” What if they stop coming? What if they stop giving? What are we going to do? We could be afraid just as the Jews were: if we think about all the things that could go wrong, we could worry. But what is God telling us? We’re not in nearly as bad a position as the Jews were: their life was threatened; they had a tremendous need; but – Guess what? God provided. He didn’t provide in the way they thought He would: “What’s this stuff on the ground?”
Open your hand
God provided, and when He provided they still didn’t quite get it. When He gave them manna, they still didn’t trust Him to give manna for tomorrow, so they tried to gather extra; and that’s the part that stank. He’s telling them, “Look, I promised to provide, so you don’t have to do it in your own. You don’t have to store it away in the bank – remember the parable of the rich man: “I’m going to tear down these barns and build some that are really big, and save it for the rest of my life…” – No: “I provided for you today; I’ll provide for you tomorrow. Don’t worry about tomorrow.” They wanted to store some in case God didn’t come through, in case God lied to them. Are we tempted to do the same thing? We could say, “We’re going to freeze all spending: we’re not going to spend anything in the church; we need to save everything just in case… We don’t know what kind of down-payment we’re going to need; we don’t know what kind of rent we’re going to find; our rent might go up… We need to hoard it all, we need to hold it in, we’ve got to keep it just in case.” And God says, “Did I call you here? Have I provided for you for 25 years? Have I provided this place for 20 years? Did I bring you out here to kill you, and I’ve just waited for 20 years for you to get stronger because when you were weak it would have been too easy?” Is that the kind of God we serve? I don’t think so.
I’m preaching to myself, because in myself I’m thinking, “Yes, but we’ve got to be wise and keep a little for tomorrow…” I have to resist that temptation. The way you should picture: we have a bank account, the church has a bank account, and you probably have one. It has something in it: imagine that was all in your hand: “I’m going to hold on it, I’m not going to let go of it. I’ll pay that bill, but I’m not going to spend on that; there’s someone in need, but I’m not going to help then either. I’ve got to keep it, because I might need it tomorrow.” God is saying, “I’ll provide for tomorrow. Open your hand.” “No! – If I open my hand, my hand could then be empty, and I won’t have anything, and I won’t have any control over my life; I might lose it, I might not have enough, and you might not give me what I need.” “Open your hand.” “Mine!” “Open your hand.” “No!” “Open your hand.” I have to force myself to open my hand. And He may take some things away; He may take it all away. But whatever He takes away, He will put into my hand what I need for tomorrow. And what i have today may be as big as a golf ball, and when I open my hand it gives Him a chance to give me a beach ball – it may be made of gold for all I know. Whatever we need for tomorrow, He will provide – not just financially, but emotionally and spiritually. He doesn’t want anyone to be left behind in this transition: He’s the Good Shepherd; He takes care of His sheep.
God provides for all kinds of needs
And this applies far beyond St. Stephen’s building situation: it applies to each one of us in our personal lives; not just our finances but in other ways. Last week we prayed for people, and nearly everyone came forward, because everyone has needs: marriage needs, crises, physical needs, employment needs… all kinds of needs. Just like the Jews, we have needs; and God knows it; and they’re reasonable needs. He’s not saying, “Come on, buck up, you can do without that.” We prayed about all kinds of important things. And the message of today’s Old Testament reading is that God cares about every one of those needs, and God provides for every one of those needs, but God provides on His terms. “I want a steak!” “How about manna and quail?” “I want beef!” “Manna and quail.” “I want salad!” “Manna and quail.” Manna and quail are better for you than anything else you want. It was designed perfectly for that needs at that moment. And they went through forty years in the desert, and their shoes didn’t wear out. He takes care of all our needs, the way he wants to do it. Not only does the Lord say “I am the Lord who heals you”, but He also says “I am the Lord who provides” – “I will provide”. And just as He did for the Jews He will do for us; He will provide above and beyond all that we can ask or imagine. He will provide what we need, not necessarily what we want; but what we need will be much better than what we want.
Seek what pertains to eternal life
We see a little corollary to this in the Gospel reading: Jesus has just fed the 5000, and these people are following Him everywhere. He says, “You are following Me not because I am God but because I fed you. You’re willing to walk a long way for your next meal.” He doesn’t say, “That’s a bad thing”; He says, “Take that desire and have the same kind of intense desire – ignore the situation, keep going – in the things that keep you in eternal life. Yes, you’re hungry because I fed you, and it was awesome, and you want to see it happen again, and it’s good to be full. But there’s something beyond your stomach. Seek what pertains to eternal life; strive in the same way for that which you need to live eternally, and I’ll tell you where to get that.” (John 6:24-27) Jesus gave them the bread, not on that day, but He told them how He would do it.
And He would do it the same way that God did with the manna. The Jews didn’t have to do a single thing: they went to sleep at night, woke up the next morning, and what was lying on the ground? Manna. All they had to do was go out and pick it up – nothing else. Jesus says, “I’m going to do that same thing. My Body is the bread that gives eternal life, and all you need to do to receive and consume that bread is to pick it up when it’s offered. You only have to receive it. But to receive it you have to believe that it’s there and that it’s good for you.” (John 6:28-35) All the manna covering who knows how many square miles for 600,000 people, all the manna would have been for nothing if the people had looked at it and said, “I’m not eating that”. He won’t force feed us, but He provides.
Why does God provide?
He’s going to provide us a place; we don’t yet know what it looks, and we don’t yet know where it will come from. The question is: Why is He providing? What is it for? Is it just so that St. Stephen CEC, London does not vanish from the face of the earth? I suspect not: it’s not just so we can exist. If we look at the New Testament reading it gives us a clue: it talks about the Body of Christ. We are the Body of Christ: we individually are the Body of Christ, and we at St. Stephen’s are a part of the Body of Christ, just as the church in Estonia is another part; it looks different and functions differently, and it is another critical part of the body. Paul says, “To each of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” (Ephesians 4:7) Each of us individually have different gifts, different grace; each church has different gifts, different charisms, different grace, different talents… and why is that? Jesus “gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” (Ephesians 4:11). That talks about our individuals gifts; and you can see in the same way He does churches: this church reaches better into this part of the community, another church reaches better into a different part of the community: different ministries; but all “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). Remember that “edifying” – it has the same root as “edifice”, which means an impressive building – is for the purpose of building up the Body of Christ: to make it bigger, to make it stronger, to make it more healthy, to make it able to stand the test of time, to make it teleios: mature.
Conclusion
We are facing this change at the end of the month. Hopefully we’ll remember not to come here on Sunday morning. I may have a hard time with that: I may have to do like the time change, and set an alarm the day before: Go… wherever we’re supposed to be going on the first Sunday of September. In the process, whether we have a new place or not, we should do what the Jews should have done, which is to take our request directly to God: not in a “You just brought us out here to die” frame of mind, but “You have a plan for us, You have a destination, You have a Promised Land for us, but I don’t see how to get from here to there; can You please show us the way”; and He will. We will keep on praying for that, and we’ll receive it with joy, because we know it’s coming even when we don’t see it.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember as we seek God’s face for our church, for our Diocese, is really what this is all about. What the Jews in the Promised Land was all about is not seeking God for what He can give but seeking God for who He is. This whole thing with the manna was training, not in how to eat right, but trust. Every day, trust; different days, trust. If we know and experience who he is, we won’t have problems believing what He will do. He will provide; and He will provide it not only for our benefit but so we can share it with others. That’s the ministry, that’s the edification: to reach out to whatever community He’s moving us to, to reach out and draw them in; to raise Jesus up, and He will draw all men to Himself. That’s our heart, that’s our goal, that’s what we pray for, and that’s what He will provide.
25 Friday Sep 2015
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:
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.
25 Friday Sep 2015
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.
25 Friday Sep 2015
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.
25 Friday Sep 2015
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 1st 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.
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.
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…
We’re called to minister in compassion, and so to have not only a place but to have a heart for giving food, clothing…
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.
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.
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.
25 Friday Sep 2015
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:
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.
25 Friday Sep 2015
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!”
They will rebuild the ancient ruins 