Readings: Acts 10.44-48; I Jn 5.1-6; Jn 15.9-17
Reaching out to the people! Selling the message! We’ve heard a lot of this recently! At least, because we all thought the vote was going to be tight, many more people have paid more attention! And voted! Whether you watched the results with growing anticipation or despair, whether you are happy with the outcome – or not, it is now up to us to make the best of what we have. And perhaps one of the best things to come out of the apparent tightrope, is a recognition by politicians that everyone matters!
People do not respond well to aggression or a snidey put down! It was good to see Ed Balls, a practising Anglican, deliver the most gracious speech following his shock defeat. And the political pundits went on to describe a delightful man very different from our popular image of the socialist bruiser.
No one should be excluded from the common good! No one is excluded from God’s love, God’s will for human flourishing! This is something we have to learn! And it’s not easy! Even Jesus first followers found it hard to believe, let alone practice! It was only when Peter saw the Holy Spirit mightily working in the lives of Gentiles, that he fully came to understand, the gospel is universal, -480for everyone, not restricted to a chosen few! In our reading this morning from Acts, we have only the end of the story. Peter had initially refused to hear God’s word to him, refused until God had challenged him for the third time! But Peter was a fast learner. As his friend John. 0 Whoever believes in Jesus Christ, is born of God, may conquer the world! And then, if we would know joy in our hearts, if we would abide in God, we must love one another. Love one another as he loves us – sacrificially. So says Jesus, who gave his life for us. And calls us to go and bear ‘fruit’. The fruit of life as God intends for creation, the reign of God on earth.
Beautiful language revealing God’s love and God’s purposes! And yet it seems, on the ground across our world we hear ever more, of hatred and violence and war, all in the name of, for love of, ‘God’. Muslim and Muslim; Jew and Muslim; Christian and Muslim – Christian and Christian; Anglican and Anglican in the highly contentious debate over the interpretation of Scripture, now focused on the issue of equal marriage. It is hardly surprising that not a few outside religious faith, have come to the conclusion that rather than helpful to the world religion is a dangerous thing. And some are asking: is Christian faith something the world still needs? Of course my answer is yes – or I wouldn’t be here with my collar turned around! But let’s think about it for a few minutes.
Before the biologist Richard Dawkins got going, in a book titled simply ‘God’ by Alexander Waugh, grandson of Thirties author and Roman Catholic convert, Evelyn Waugh, Waugh takes a sardonic look at God – opening his book with the following reason for writing it: “God is the most influential figure in the history of human civilisation; for thousands of years he has shaped the way the world looks, thinks and breathes.” Yet God is also ‘the slipperiest of all slippery fish’; the most perplexing – and yet the most compelling figure, revealed by a myriad of diverse sources to be mighty, jealous, angry, rude, babyish, merciful, wise, humorous, and many more contradictory traits.
Do these, all too human frailties really describe God? Yes, they are there in Scripture. Yahweh, the God of Israel, is indeed at times, a jealous God, angry with those who are faithless to him, apparently reeking revenge on his enemies. Waugh of course, has flattened his sources, reduced them to the lowest common denominator, where anything can look absurd! In historical context, an emergent peoples in the process of becoming a nation, wrestling with the vagaries of nature, it is not surprising that drought, flood, whirlwind, are seen as coming from the hand of angry gods. What is extraordinary, is that out of the polytheistic mindset of ancient Middle East civilisation, tribal gods constantly warring with one another, gods who need placating, and for whom humans were mere play-things, what is extraordinary, is that out of`this culture, there emerges the understanding of a God who not only created but cares for his creation.
A monotheistic God who calls for an egalitarian society, who loves justice and limits revenge, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth not whole families slaughtered for the misdemeanour of one member. God who indeed, calls his people to care for one another. The God of strict fairness. The God of straightforward rules and regulations. The God who will punish the wicked. Is this the God for love of whose kingdom it is worth our dying? Many think so. But this is not quite the Christian God, the God whom Jesus reveals to us.
In another book with another simple title: Christ, its author, Jack Miles, American former Jesuit and now journalist, looks at Christ from the perspective of his subtitle: ‘A crisis in the life of God’. Christ, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Greeks. Christ, is indeed, a crisis in the ‘life of God’. That is, a crisis in our understanding of who God is. For in Christ, God incarnate, we see demonstrated before our eyes, the reversal of that logical sequence, sequence so comfortable and comforting to the self-righteous: wrong-doing, punishment, repentance and only then, mercy. In Christ, the all-powerful, all-seeing God is not the God of punishment. In Christ, God recognises that our lives are not straightforward that we struggle to live righteously together. God recognises our drive for connection with one another, and yet our fear of not succeeding, not belonging, not receiving that which we desire and deserve.
Fear which makes us unable to truly care for one another; fear and pride, and the will to power which fuel the hells we seem willing to create. In Christ God shows us in the most powerful way possible, how we can begin instead, to build the kingdom of heaven on earth – the prayer we offer Sunday by Sunday. Crisis in the life of God indeed. Not that God has changed. God is putting before our eyes for those who will see, a remarkably different revelation of who God is. A revelation which surely is ‘good news for the world’. A shocking revelation we find it hard to embrace – precisely because it challenges our instinctive fundamentalism! The Hebrew prophet Hosea, declares that what God requires of us, is mercy and not sacrifice. Love before purity. In Christ God shows us what this means. As Christ loves us, loves us in all our awkwardness, our unattractive, self-centred grasping, loves us even unto death, so are we to love not only each other, we are to love our enemies, do good to those who persecute us.
As the writer of John’s epistle declares: Love is the way. In Christ it is the God of love whom we worship. In Christ it is the God of surprises whom we worship. For Jesus was ever including those whom society regarded as definitively outside the circle of God’s love and embrace. Included them just as they were. Laughed with them. Partyed with them.
It is love which will transform us. What a shock for those first Jewish disciples of Jesus, to discover that yes, the Spirit of Christ, is poured out even on Gentiles! We are to love as Jesus loved, those who are different from us, those who think differently from us. We are not to sit in judgement on one another.
We are to love the evil-doer who exploits and destroys neighbour – and in so doing, to lead him or her away from selfish pride and greed and faction, to the real joy of honouring and loving one another.
Yes, we all find the gospel of Christ hard to embrace. It challenges each of us to live fulfilled lives. To do so will demand sacrifice of us. Today is the beginning of Christian Aid Week. On Friday we began a new ordinance of government. As we look forward may we each find grace to embrace the God of Christ. Amen.