Children of God

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Very similar, but not quite identical, to one preached in 2009 with the same title.  Moreover, the presence of two small boys in Church meant that I departed from my script more than somewhat, so the podcast is different again!

I thought that today, for once, we wouldn’t look too closely at the Gospel reading,

as Luke’s account of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples after the Resurrection

is very similar to the account in John’s gospel,

which I expect you looked at last week.

The only thing I will point out is that Luke says Jesus actually ate with them –

ghosts, after all, don’t eat!

So that particular detail is, for the gospel writer,

just another proof that Jesus really was raised.

He wasn’t just a ghost;

he wasn’t just a figment of their imagination.

He ate some fish –

and there’s the dirty plate!

You may have read the first chapter of this letter from John last week, too.

I want to focus on the passage we read today, in a minute.

It isn’t quite a letter, is it –

it’s more of a sermon.

He doesn’t put in the chatty details that Paul puts into his letters,

nor the personal messages.

Nobody seems to know whether it was really the disciple that Jesus loved that wrote the Gospel and this letter,

or whether it was someone writing as from them, which was apparently a recognised literary convention of the day.

But I noticed last week that right at the very beginning of the letter, or sermon – hey, let’s just call it an Epistle and have done –

right at the very beginning, he says:

“We write to you about the Word of life, which has existed from the very beginning.

We have heard it, and we have seen it with our eyes;

yes, we have seen it, and our hands have touched it.

When this life became visible, we saw it;

so we speak of it and tell you about the eternal life which was with the Father and was made known to us.”

In other words, the writer, too, claims to have seen, known and touched Jesus!

But to today’s passage.

“See how much the Father has loved us!

His love is so great that we are called God's children –

and so, in fact, we are.”

“See how much the Father has loved us!

His love is so great that we are called God's children –

and so, in fact, we are.”

We are God’s children!

You know, when you come to think of it, that’s a pretty terrifying concept.

People tend to think of themselves as serving God, or as worshipping God.

But to be a child of God?

That’s a whole different ball-game.

After all, if we worship God or serve God,

that doesn’t necessarily imply that God does anything for us in return.

But if we are God’s children?

That’s different!

That implies that God is active in caring for us,

in being involved in our lives,

in minding.

Many of us here this morning have had children of our own.

And all of us have been children!

Perhaps some of us didn’t have very satisfactory childhoods,

or our parents weren’t all they should have been.

The model of God as Father isn’t helpful to everybody, I know.

But I still want to unpack it a bit, if I can, as I do think it’s important.

We are all children of God, so we are told.

We are not servants.

We are not just worshippers.

“Children” implies a two-way relationship.

Actually, it almost implies more than that.

It implies that God does the doing;

we don’t have to.

No, seriously, think about it a minute.

I have a daughter –

she’s grown up and married now, of course,

but for eighteen years she lived at home,

and for many of those years she was totally dependant on Robert and me for everything, and her little boys are on her and her husband –

for food, for clothing, for education, you name it!

And babies – my younger grandson is only just a toddler, rather than a baby – need their parents even more than older children do.

Nicholas can't even keep himself clean yet;

someone has to change his nappy for him every few hours.

Parents look after their children.

Quite apart from the seeing to food, clothing, education and so on,

it’s about the daily care –

seeing to it they get up and so on.

All the things we need to remind them to do or not do each day:

Have you washed your hands?

Have you cleaned your teeth?

Put your shoes on.

Put your coat on.

Pull your trousers up, please.....

Don't bite your nails!

And so on and so forth.

But it is, of course, because we care for and about our children,

and want them to grow up to be the best possible person they can be.

And parents do this because they love their children.

Ask any new parent –

all those sleepless nights,

the pacing up and down, the nappies, the lack of sleep –

and yet, they are delighting in that precious baby,

and will show you photographs on the slightest provocation.

And that is just how God feels about us!

Pretty mind-blowing, isn’t it?

And yes, God does want us to grow up to be the person he designed us to be.

And sometimes that will involve saying “No” to us,

as we have to say it to our children.

“No, you mustn’t do that;

no, you can’t have that!”

Not to be mean, not because we are horrid –

although it can feel like that sometimes when you’re on the receiving end –

but because it is for their best.

You can’t let a child do something dangerous;

you can’t allow them to be rude;

they can’t eat unlimited sweets or ices.... and so on.

My elder grandson once said, with a deep sigh, when reminded that sweets weren't very good for him:

“Is anything good for me?”

And the same sort of thing with us.

God loves us enormously and just wants what is best for us.

And because we are, mostly, not small children, we tend to be aware of this, and allow Him to work in us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

John goes on to comment about sin and sinfulness.

It is rather an odd passage, this;

we know that we do sin, sometimes, because we are human.

And yet we know, too, that we are God’s children and we abide in Him.

Yet John here says nobody who sins abides in God.

If he were right, that would mean none of us would, since we are all sinners.

But then, are we?

I mean, yes, we are, but the point is, we are sinners saved by grace, as they say.

God has redeemed us through his Son.

We don’t “abide in sin” any more.

St Paul tells us that when we become Christians, we are “made right” with God through faith in his promises.

I believe the technical term is “justified”, and you remember the meaning because it’s “just as if I’d” never sinned.

However, we also have to grow up to make this a reality in our lives.

That’s called becoming sanctified, made saint-like.

One author described it like this.

Suppose there was a law against jumping in mud puddles.

And you broke that law, and jumped.

You would not only be guilty of breaking the law,

you would also be covered in mud.

So when you are justified, you are declared not guilty of breaking that law –

and being sanctified means that you wash off the mud!

So we no longer abide in sin, but are we washing off the mud?

That’s not always easy to do –

the temptation to conform to the world’s standards can be overwhelming at times.

We all have different temptations, of course;

I can’t claim to be virtuous because I don’t gamble,

since gambling simply doesn’t appeal to me!

But I am apt to procrastinate, and can be horrendously grouchy at times, particularly when stressed, as I am at the moment.

Robert is to retire next week

– NEXT WEEK, oh help

and our lives are going to change in unimaginable ways.

And my parents are selling the house they have lived in since 1958, and that is also going to bring huge changes.

I am not very good at change!

I am also very inclined to suffer from self-pity,

and the other day I posted a really self-pitying update on Facebook because of all this stress.

And two posts down, someone from Brixton Hill had posted:

“Cast all your anxiety upon Him, for he cares for you!”

That was me told, then!

I laughed, and deleted the status, and have tried to do just exactly that, but it isn't always easy, is it?

And, of course, there are those who have not said “Yes” to God,

who perhaps have no idea of doing so.

In this model, they are not God’s children –

but that doesn’t mean they are not loved!

Indeed, God so loved the world that he sent his Son while we were still sinners, so we are told.

God loves the worst and most horrible person you could imagine,

just as much as he loves you or he loves me.

Even terrorists.

Even paedophiles.

Jesus died for them, too.

Just as he died for you, and just as he died for me.

And we, we are Children of God.

We are God’s precious Children.

We are not just servants of God.

We are not just worshippers.

We are children.

And the Risen Christ calls us his friends.

Amen.

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

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This Sunday is one when the Church traditionally celebrates the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, which is the story we heard in our Gospel reading today.

Until very recently, Christian women in many denominations would be “churched” about six weeks after giving birth – either at a special service, or as a special prayer said in the main service, to give thanks for a safe delivery and so on. It seems to have died out now, largely, I think, because the service was not transferred to the modern prayer books, and arguably because childbirth is so very much safer than it used to be. Shame, really – it would be a lovely thing to happen whenever someone appeared in church with a new baby!

For Jewish women, though, the ritual was also about purification. They would, traditionally, go to be purified forty days after giving birth. I am not totally sure what the process involved, but fairly certainly Mary would have had a ritual bath before going to the Temple to make her thanksgiving, and to present the baby.

The text says Mary and Joseph took a pair of pigeons to sacrifice – interesting note that, because that's what you took if you were poor; richer people sacrificed a sheep. And if you were really, really poor and couldn't even afford a pair of pigeons, I believe you were allowed to take some flour. But for Mary and Joseph, it was a pair of pigeons.

And they present the baby – they would, I think, have done this for any child, not just because Jesus was special. And then it all gets a bit surreal, with the old man and the old woman coming up and making prophecies over the child, and so on.

Actually, the whole story is a bit surreal, really. After all, St Matthew tells us that the Holy Family fled Bethlehem and went to Egypt to avoid Herod's minions, but according to Luke, they're just going home to Nazareth – a little delayed, after the census, to allow Mary and the baby time to become strong enough to travel, but six weeks old is six weeks old, and it makes the perfect time for a visit to the Temple. The accounts are definitely contradictory just here, but I don't think that really matters too much – after all, truth isn't necessarily a matter of historical accuracy.

Come to that, I don't suppose Simeon really burst into song, any more than Mary or Zechariah. Luke has put words into their mouths, rather like Shakespeare does to the kings and queens of British history. Henry the Fifth is unlikely to have said “This day is called the Feast of Crispian” and so on, or “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”, but he probably rallied the troops with a sentiment of some kind, and it is the same here. Zechariah, Mary and Simeon probably didn't say those actual words that Luke gives them, but they probably did express that sort of sentiment.

Although I often wonder why it is that when Jesus reappears as a young man, nobody recognises him. We don't hear of an elderly shepherd hobbling up to him and saying “Ah, I remember how the angels sang when you were born!” But perhaps it is as well – it means he had a loving, private, sensible childhood. Which, I think, is partly why we see so very little of him as a child, just that glimpse of him as a rather precocious adolescent in the Temple. He needed to grow up in peace and security and love, without the dreadfulness of who he was and why he had come hanging over him.

But on this very first visit to the Temple, he can't do more than smile and maybe vocalise a bit. It is Simeon we are really more concerned with. His song, which the Church calls the Nunc Dimittis, after the first two words of it in Latin, is really the centre of today's reading. He is saying that now, at last, he has seen God's salvation, and is happy to die. The baby will be “a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of God's people Israel.”

“A light to lighten the Gentiles”. This is why another name for this festival is Candlemas. Candlemas. In some churches, candles are blessed for use throughout the year, but as we are no longer dependent on candles as a light source, it might be more to the point to bless our stock of light bulbs! Because what it's about is Jesus as the Light of the World. A light to lighten the Gentiles, certainly, but look how John's Gospel picks up and runs with that. “The Word was the source of life,and this life brought light to people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.” And John's Gospel reports Jesus as having said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness.”

Jesus is the Light of the World, and that's part of what we are celebrating today.

We rather take light for granted, here in the West, don't we? We are so used to being able to flick on a switch and it's light that we forget how dark it can be. We had a brief power-cut last Saturday, and it felt very dark indeed! Even though we have a really good emergency lantern and, of course, torches on our phones. And candles, come to that – I make sure we have a supply of emergency candles, just in case.

Not that a candle provides very much light, of course – you can't see to read by it very well, or sew, or any of the things people did before television and social media, or, come to that, before houses were lit by electricity. But even a candle can dispel the darkness. Even the faintest, most flickering light means it isn't completely dark – you can see, even if only a little. And sometimes for us the Light of the World is like that – a candle in the distance, a faint, flickering light that we hardly dare believe isn't our eyes just wanting to see. But sometimes, of course, wonderfully, as I'm sure you've experienced, it's like flicking on a light switch to illuminate the whole room. Sometimes God's presence is overwhelmingly bright and light.

And other times not.

This time of year is half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It's not spring yet, but the days are noticeably longer than they were at the start of the year. There are daffodils and early rhubarb in the shops, and the bulbs are beginning to pierce through the ground. The first snowdrops will be out any day now. In the country, the hazel trees are showing their catkins, and if you look closely at the trees, you can see where the leaves are going to be in just a few weeks. We hope. Candlemas is one of those days we say predict the weather – like St Swithun's Day in July, when if it rains, it's going to go on raining for the next six weeks. Only at Candlemas it's the opposite – if it's a lovely day, then winter isn't over yet, but if it's horrible, Spring is definitely on the way. The Americans call it “Groundhog Day”, same principle – if the groundhog sees his shadow, meaning if the sun is out, winter hasn't finished by any manner of means, but if he can't, if the sun isn't shining, then maybe it is.

So it's a funny time of year, still winter, but with a promise of spring. And isn't that a good picture of our Christian lives? We still see the atrocities, the horror of terrorist attacks, the awfulnesses perpetrated by organisations like Al Qaeda and Boko Haram. We still see that we, too, can be pretty awful when we set our minds to it, simply because we are human. We know that there are places inside us we'd really rather not look at. It is definitely winter, and yet, and yet, there is the promise of spring. There is still light. It might be only the flickering light of a candle in another room, or it might be the full-on fluorescent light of an overwhelming experience of God's presence, but there is still light.

The infant Jesus was brought to the Temple, and was proclaimed the Light to Lighten the Gentiles. But, of course, that's not all – we too have that light inside us; you remember Jesus reminded us not to keep it under a basket, but to allow it to be seen. And again, the strength and quality of our light will vary, due to time and circumstances, and possibly even whether we slept well last night or what we had for breakfast. Sometimes it will be dim and flickering, and other times we will be alight with the flame of God's presence within us. It's largely outwith our control, although of course, by the means of grace and so on we can help ourselves come nearer to God. But it isn't something we can force or struggle with – we just need to relax and allow God to shine through us. Jesus is the Light of the World, and if we follow Him, we will have the light of life and will never walk in darkness. We will, not we should, or we must, or we ought to. We will. Be it never so faint and flickering, we will have the light of life. Amen.

Samuel

The text is almost the same, barring updating, as this sermon, so I won't repeat it here.  You can check the differences by listening to the podcast!



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Baptism and the Holy Spirit

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Today is the day that the Church celebrates the Baptism of Christ,

and when I first looked at the readings,

I quite thought I was going to be preaching on baptism.
But when you look more closely at the readings,

there is another theme that springs out –
and that is the Holy Spirit!

In our first reading, from Genesis, we are told that

“a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
“A wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
Other translations refer to the Spirit of God hovering,

or brooding,

over the face of the waters.
I rather love the image of brooding –
as though God’s Spirit were protecting the as-yet-unmade earth.

Then in our second reading, in Acts,

Paul realises that there is something missing in the believers at Antioch, and asks them whether they received the Holy Spirit when they were baptised.
And they are like, “Er, you what?”

not at all sure what he is talking about.
So he enquires a bit deeper,

and finds that they had not actually heard the full Good News about Jesus at all,

but had only got as far as John the Baptist.
So he has to give them a quick crash course on what salvation is all about,

so they can be baptised into Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit.

And our Gospel reading, of course,

is one of the passages that describes the baptism of Jesus,

and tells us that the onlookers,

or some of them, at any rate,

saw the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus looking like a dove,

and they heard the Father speak from heaven:
“You are my Son, whom I love;
with you I am well pleased.”
Actually, Mark’s version, which is the one we heard today,

seems to imply that it was only Jesus who saw the Holy Spirit,

but other accounts say that the bystanders did, too.

In the beginning, God.
That says it all really, doesn’t it?
We know that God was responsible for the Creation of the World,

and that right there at the start,

the Holy Spirit was there, hovering, brooding, caring!

The Holy Spirit was there when the world was made.
The Holy Spirit was there when Jesus was baptised.
And the Holy Spirit came down on the believers, as we believe he still does today.
As Christians, we believe that the Holy Spirit is one of the Persons of the Trinity.
That is a rather formal way of saying it,

but it is one of those things that is difficult to put into words.
We worship one God, not three,

but we worship God the Father,

God the Son,

and God the Holy Spirit.
Or, if you prefer, God the Creator,

God the Redeemer,

and God the Sanctifier.

I don’t want to get into a long discussion of the Trinity here;
time enough to do that on Trinity Sunday!
All too easy to say the wrong thing.
All we really need to remember today is that the Holy Spirit is God,

just as the Father is God

and just as Jesus is God.
And that, when God works in us,

it is God the Holy spirit who “does the doing”, as it were;
someone once described him as “The executive arm of the Trinity”!

And we see Him “doing the doing” in our readings today.
We see Him hovering over the as-yet-uncreated earth,

brooding over it, protecting it.
We see Him descending on Jesus in the form of a dove,

affirming him and, I rather think, enabling Him for ministry.
And we see Him descending on those new believers in Acts, cleansing them, renewing them, gifting them and enabling them, too, to be Jesus’ people.

And, I hope, we see Him “doing the doing” in our lives today!

Earlier on, when I did that thing with the water,

it was a bit of a picture, wasn’t it?
First of all, I couldn’t pour water into the cup until I’d taken the lid off.
Then, there was rather a lot of stuff inside –
no room for any water.
Then, I needed to rinse the cup out before I could have a drink.
But once all that was done, the cup was fit for my use.
And that is what God the Holy Spirit did for the believers in Antioch –
through baptism, they were enabled to “take the lid off”,

be cleansed and made fit for service,

and then God could fill them and use them.

I hope we see Him cleansing us,

renewing us,

gifting us

and enabling us, too, to be Jesus’ people.
I hope we see those lovely characteristics that Paul described to the Galatians that a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit will have:
love,

joy,

peace,

patience,

gentleness,

goodness,

loving-kindness,

faith….

Not that we can probably see it in ourselves –
these qualities are always easier to see in other people than in ourselves.
But I hope we do see them in one another, too, and affirm each other in them.
After all, no matter how freely we are able to talk about our faith –
and for some of us, that comes easier than for others, I do know –
it is whether our lives match up to what we talk about that is important,

that either attracts or repels other people to Jesus.
If we say one thing, but do another,

then people are going to be turned off.
If we don’t behave the way Jesus describes His people as behaving –
always putting other people first,

always treating other people with the greatest possible respect for who they are,

not neglecting your family under the heading of “religious duty”,

and so on;
if we forget that, then maybe people will wonder whether faith is worth the effort!

I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if that wasn’t one of the reasons Paul recognised that the so-called believers in Antioch were actually nothing of the sort.
They were not allowing God the Holy Spirit to indwell them and it showed. Well, they couldn't, could they –

they had not heard of the Holy Spirit.
They weren’t acting like believers, if you like!
So Paul knew that something was wrong.
They were like the cup with the lid on –
there was no way God could use them.

Now, there are various ways we can react to this sort of sermon.
We can reckon it doesn’t apply to us –
God wouldn’t use us anyway.
But, in fact, that’s not true.
God can use you, wants to use you, and very probably already does use you, if you have made yourself available to be used.
If you are sincere in wanting to be God’s person, then God will use you.

You can also react to this sort of sermon by feeling guilty.
You feel that if only you were holier,

or more pious,

or a better Christian,

or even a better person,

God could use you more.
But that’s also not really a sensible response.
You see, it isn’t about you trying hard.
You don’t have to be perfect before God will come to you.
Rather the reverse –
after all, if you did have to be perfect,

that would rather negate the whole point of the Gospel!

My cup didn’t have to empty itself and clean itself before I could use it, did it?
I did all that.
And likewise, we don’t have to become perfect before God can use us.
All we have to do is to be willing to let God work in us,

be willing to co-operate with God, if you like.
God the Holy Spirit will, if we ask,

come and indwell us,

cleanse us,

fill us,

renew us,

make us whole –

and then we can be used.

God doesn’t just make us whole in order to use us, mind,

although that too.
God wants to make us whole so that we shall be whole.
Through the Holy Spirit, God makes us whole for our own sakes,

but by doing that, he enables us to be used.
We become the sort of person Paul described,

full of those qualities I mentioned earlier.
We leave behind the sort of qualities we aren’t supposed to have,

and develop the sort we are.

God the Holy Spirit was present at creation.
He, or She, if you like – the word used at creation, Ruach, is feminine –

was present when Jesus was baptised.
She was present when the believers of Antioch were baptised.
And She is present here with us, now, today.
Let us pray.

God our Father,

We confess that we have allowed ourselves to become empty,

Not filled with your Spirit, not fit for your use.

We pray that you will fill us anew, cleanse us, gift us, and make us whole, both for our sakes and so that you can use us in your service.

This we ask in the power of that same Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ your Son, who died for us.
Amen.

Be joyful always

I'm not putting the text up, as it was, in all but minor details, identical to that which I preached three years ago, which can be found here.



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Advent Sunday 2014

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So, Advent.

It’s almost an anomaly nowadays, isn’t it?
Out in the world, people are starting to celebrate Christmas already –
the shops have had their decorations up since the beginning of last month, or even earlier,

and the round of office parties, works celebrations, school festivities will be starting any day now.
And the endless tapes of carols and Christmas songs that are played in the shops, I should think they’d drive the shop assistants mad!

But here in Church, Christmas hasn’t started yet, and won’t for another four weeks.
We are celebrating Advent,

and it seems to be another penitential time, like Lent.
Those churches that have different colours for the seasons have brought out the purple hangings,

and many will have no flowers except for an Advent wreath.

But Advent is really a season of hope.
We look forward to “the last day when Christ shall come again”

to establish the Kingdom on earth.
We also look back to those who’ve been part of God’s story, including John the Baptist and Jesus’ Mother, Mary.

Today, though, our readings are about the coming King.

Our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, tells how the prophet,

and perhaps the people for whom he was speaking,

longed and longed to see God in action.

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

that the mountains would tremble before you!

As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil,

come down to make your name known to your enemies

and cause the nations to quake before you!”

Scholars think that this part of Isaiah was written very late,

after the people of Judah had returned from exile.
They would have remembered the stories of the wonderful things God had done in the olden days,

in the days of Abraham and Sarah,

of Isaac and Jacob,

of Moses,

and of David the King –
and then, they would have looked round and said

“But hey, why isn’t any of this happening today?”

They reckoned the answer must be because they were so sinful.

“You come to the help of those who gladly do right,

who remember your ways.

But when we continued to sin against them,

you were angry.

How then can we be saved?

All of us have become like one who is unclean,

and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,

and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

No-one calls on your name

or strives to lay hold of you;
for you have hidden your face from us

and made us waste away because of our sins.”

It does sound very much as though the prophet were longing for God,

but somehow couldn’t find him, in the mists of human sinfulness and this world’s total abandonment of God.
You know, there’s nothing new –
we complain that people don’t want to seek God today,

and our churches stand empty,

but there was the prophet saying that thousands of years ago!

And, of course, as it turned out,

God hadn’t abandoned his people at all!
Jesus came to this earth, lived among us, and died for us,

and Isaiah’s people now knew the remedy for their sin.

But Jesus himself tells us, in our second reading,

that his coming to live in Palestine as a human being isn’t the end of the story, either.
Somehow, someday, he will come back again.
He obviously doesn’t know all that much about it while he is on earth,

and rather discourages us from speculation as to when or how.
But he draws pictures for us:

“The sun will be darkened,

and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,

and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

“At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.”

It is a scary thought, isn't it, with the world as unstable now as at any time in the past century.

What’s more today, as at no other time in history,

communications are such that if Jesus were to come back,

we’d know about it almost as soon as it happened –
look how quickly news spreads around the world these days.

Half the time you hear about it on Facebook or Twitter before the BBC has even picked up on it.
And Jesus' return would be something totally unmistakable.

But lots of generations before ours have thought that Jesus might come back any minute now,

and Christians throughout history have lived their lives expecting him to come home.
We have remembered Jesus’ warnings about being prepared for him to come, but He hasn’t come.
And we get to the stage where we, too, cry with Isaiah:

“Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,

that the mountains would tremble before you!”

Like Isaiah, we long and long to see God come and intervene in this world, and wish that He would hurry up.

And that’s perfectly natural, of course.
Some folk have even got to the stage of believing it won’t happen, and have given up on God completely.
But Jesus said it will happen,

and one has to assume He knew what he was talking about.

But that doesn’t mean that we can blame God –
if You had come back before now, this wouldn’t have happened.
Every generation has been able to say that to God,

and it’s not made a blind bit of difference.
So maybe there’s something else.

You see, in one way, Jesus has come back.
Do you remember what happened on the Day of Pentecost,

in that upper room?
God’s Holy Spirit descended on those gathered there,

looking like tongues of fire,

and with a noise like a rushing mighty wind,

and the disciples were empowered to talk about Jesus.
And we know from history,

and from our own experience,

that God the Holy Spirit still comes to us,

still fills us,

still empowers us.

One of the purposes of these so-called penitential seasons is to give us space to examine ourselves

and see if we have drifted away from God,

to come back

and to ask to be filled anew with the Holy Spirit.
Then we are empowered to live our lives

as Jesus would wish.

We don't have to struggle and strain and strive to “get it right” by our own efforts.
God himself is within us, enabling us from the inside.
Jesus doesn’t just provide us with an example to follow, but actually enables us to do it, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Robert and I very much enjoy ice dancing,

although we have never been very good, and as we get older,

we don't get any better, either!

Rather the reverse.

And no matter how hard we've worked, we've never been much good. But supposing somehow the spirit of a very good ice dancer could get inside us,

and actually make our bodies move in the right way,

and show us how it's done from the inside.

That would be so much better than anything our coach could tell us, or anything we can learn from watching videos.

We would be enabled to dance better.

And that’s what God does –
by indwelling us with his Holy Spirit,

He not only shows us what to do, but enables us to do it.

All of us will face the end of the world one day.

It might be the global end of the world, that Jesus talks about, or it might just be the end of our personal world.
We expect, here in the West, to live out our life span to the end, and many of us, I am sure, will do just that.
But we can’t rely on that.
You never know when terrorists will attack –
or even muggers, or just a plain accident.
We can’t see round corners;
we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

But whether it is tomorrow,

or twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years from now,

one day we will die, and then, at last, we will meet Jesus face to face.
And we need to be ready.
We need to know that we have lived as God wants us to live –
and when we’ve screwed up,

as we always do and always will,

we’ve come back to God and asked forgiveness,and asked God to renew us and refill us with his Holy Spirit.

We can only live one day at a time, but each day should, I hope, be bringing us nearer to the coming of the King.
Amen.

Christ the King

 I forgot to record the children's talk, sorry.  Scroll down past it for the recording of the main sermon.

Children's Talk:

Okay, so who can tell me something about sheep? Why do farmers grow sheep? What do they provide? (Meat; wool). We don't see many sheep her in London, do we? Sometimes we see pictures of sheep in the Bible, often we see a shepherd carrying one round his neck, like a scarf. Well, my brother is a shepherd, and he tells me that this is one of the best ways of carrying them, only what the Bible doesn't show is the very nasty things they are apt to do all down your front while you are carrying them!

Shepherds have to look after their sheep all the time. They can get horrible illnesses – their feet can get dreadfully sore, and sometimes flies can lay eggs in them, and the maggots try to eat them. And the wool can get all icky and manky, especially around their tails, so the shepherd tries to keep that area clean, and often shorn.

And quite often, there isn't enough grass in the fields for them, so the shepherd comes round with a tractor and trailer every day to provide extra feed for them – and yes, the stronger sheep do push the weaker ones aside, just like sometimes at school the bigger kids push the little ones aside. And when that happens, of course, the teachers intervene to make sure the little kids are able to have their turn in the playground, or at lunch, or whatever.

But the people the prophet was talking to would have known about sheep more than kids in school, so his picture made sense to them. And when the Prophet said that God would send a King to be their shepherd and take care of them, who do you think he was talking about? Jesus, of course! And today is the day when we think extra specially about Jesus as King, and we remember that He is also the Good Shepherd. Amen.

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Main Sermon:
Today is the very last Sunday of the Christian year, and it is the day on which we celebrate the feast of Christ the King.

I wonder what sort of images go through your head when you hear the word “King”. Often, one things of pomp and circumstance, the gold State Coach, jewels, servants, money…. and perhaps scandal, too. What do you think of when you think about a king? The modern monarchy is largely ceremonial. Our Queen reigns, but she does not rule. All the same, I’d rather be represented by a hereditary monarch who is a-political than by a political head of state for whom I did not vote, and whose views were anathema to me! But it hasn’t always been like that.

We think of good, brave kings, like Edward the Third or Henry the Fifth: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”. We think of Elizabeth at Tilbury: “Although I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, I have the heart and stomach of a King, and a King of England, too, and think foul scorn that Parma, or Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.”

Actually my favourite Elizabeth quote is when she was very ill, and one of her courtiers said to her, “Your Majesty, you must go to bed!” to which she replied, “Little man, one does not say 'must' to princes!”

Or we think of Richard the Lionheart – I’m dodging about rather here – who forsook England to fight against Muslims, which he believed was God’s will for him. Hmm, not much change there, then.

But there have been weak kings, poor kings, kings that have been deposed, kings that have seized the crown from others. Our own monarchy is far from the first to become embroiled in scandal. Think of the various Hanoverian kings, the Georges, most of whom were endlessly in the equivalent of the tabloid press, and cartoonists back then were far, far ruder than they dare to be today. You may have seen some of them in museums or in history books. The ones in the history books are the more polite ones.

But traditionally, the role of a king was to defend and protect his people, to lead them into battle, if necessary; to give justice, and generally to look after their people. They may have done this well, or they may have done it badly, but that was what they did. If you’ve read C S Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy, you might remember that King Lune tells Shasta, who is going to be king after him: “For this is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.”

And when we think of Christ as King, we come up against that great paradox, for Christ was, and is, above all, the Servant King. No birth with state-of-the-art medical facilities for him, but a stable in an inn-yard. No golden carriage, but a donkey. No crown, save that made of thorns, and no throne, except the Cross.

And yet, we know that God has raised him, to quote our first reading, “from death and seated him at his right side in the heavenly world. Christ rules there above all heavenly rulers, authorities, powers, and lords; he has a title superior to all titles of authority in this world and in the next.  God put all things under Christ's feet and gave him to the church as supreme Lord over all things.” Christ was raised as King of Heaven.

And it is the Kingdom of Heaven that he preached while he was here on earth. That was the Good News – that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He told us lots of stories to illustrate what the kingdom was going to be like, how it starts off very small, like a mustard seed, but grows to be a huge tree. How it is worth giving up everything for. How “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus does lead us into battle, yes, but it is a battle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” And through his Holy Spirit, Jesus gives us the armour to enable us to fight, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, et cetera, et cetera.

Jesus requires that His followers forgive one another, everything, all the time. Even the unforgivable things. Even the abusers, the tyrants, the warlords…. Even Jehadi John, and the other leaders of Islamic State.

And in that Kingdom of Heaven, he will judge the nations, so our reading tells us. We will be separated into the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. I gather that in ancient times, your flocks tended to be mingled, sheep and goats together, and sheep didn't really look like today's sheep, so it was not always easy to tell them apart at a casual glance. But the King has no problems; they are separated, the one group to be rewarded for the way they have fed the hungry, clothed the naked and so on, and the other to be punished for the way they have failed to do this.

It is often rather an awkward sort of passage for us, as we believe – and rightly – that salvation is by faith, we cannot earn it. No, of course we can't; it is God's free gift to us through Christ Jesus, we know that. But we also know that faith doesn't happen in a vacuum. If it means anything, it changes our lives. Things are never the same again.

We know all this. We have seen it happen, if not to ourselves then to our friends. We know all about the little voice that says “I need someone to go on Facebook and send a loving message to X”, or “I need someone to see to it that this church is kept clean and tidy”, or “I need someone to knit Christmas stockings and Easter bunnies for church funds”, or whatever. Even sometimes the bigger things: “I need someone to be a street pastor” or “I need someone to stand for election as an MP”.... we all know that voice.

Yet too often we ignore it. We go about our business as though we were no different from anybody else. We act as if the Kingdom of Heaven was something completely irrelevant to us. And worse, we act as if the King of Heaven was irrelevant. This poem was written sometime between 1603 and 1648 possibly by someone called Thomas Ford, and it is still true today:

“Yet if his majesty our sovereign lord
Should of his own accord
Friendly himself invite,
And say "I'll be your guest to-morrow night."
How should we stir ourselves, call and command
All hands to work! "Let no man idle stand.

Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall,
See they be fitted all;
Let there be room to eat,
And order taken that there want no meat.
See every sconce and candlestick made bright,
That without tapers they may give a light.4

Look to the presence: are the carpets spread,
The dazie o'er the head,
The cushions in the chairs,
And all the candles lighted on the stairs?
Perfume the chambers, and in any case
Let each man give attendance in his place."

Thus if the king were coming would we do,
And 'twere good reason too;
For 'tis a duteous thing
To show all honour to an earthly king,
And after all our travail and our cost,
So he be pleas'd, to think no labour lost.

But at the coming of the King of Heaven
All's set at six and seven:
We wallow in our sin,
Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn.
We entertain him always like a stranger,
And as at first still lodge him in the manger.”

“We entertain him always like stranger,

And, as at first, still lodge him in the manger”.

Must we? Shall we not follow this King, whose Kingdom is not of this world. He is the king who rides on a donkey, the king who requires his followers to use the weapon of forgiveness, the king who surrendered to the accusers, the scourge, and the cross.

Are we going to turn away from this world, and its values, and instead embrace the values of the Kingdom? I tell you this, my friends, most of us live firmly clinging to the values of this world. I include myself – don’t think I’m any better than you, because I can assure you, I’m not! We all cling to the values of this world, and few of us truly embrace the values of the Kingdom. We still lodge the King of Heaven in the manger. But He will forgive us as we acknowledge our failure and try again to embrace those values, which are so foreign to our own.

As we reach the end of one church year and look to the beginning of a new one, may the one whom we know to be King of the universe and ruler of our lives guide us in our journeys of welcome and forgiveness, that our churches may include all whom God loves, and our hearts may find healing and wholeness. Amen!