Posted by stpauls on May 16, 2010 under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog | 
Luke 24:44-53 ~ Gospel Reading for May 16, 2010
Jesus said to his disciples, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
Posted by stpauls on May 9, 2010 under Sermons |
[This sermon was written and delivered by The Reverend Dr. Yazeed Said on May 9, 2010, the Fifth Sunday after Easter.]
“I will not leave you orphaned,” says Jesus, after he earlier said: “I am going to the Father.” “Peace I give to you,” “not like the world gives.” It is as if the lectionary is preparing us for the feast of the Ascension later this week, to the moment when Jesus is no longer going to be seen.
But, in fact Jesus at this stage in the Gospel of John is preparing for his death, addressing his disciples before he prays and intercedes for them as the story moves to his arrest. He had earlier warned Peter that he is not going to be able to make it with him, but rather he is going to deny him three times. Yet, the disciples are witnessing events that will draw them away from what they are used to; they are seeing into a depth and mystery into the life of Jesus that would take them to a very distant place and that will form them into the new community of the Church.
After the Resurrection, Jesus says to Peter that one day his discipleship will mean that he is led where he doesn’t want to go. He too must have his journey to the cross. But, Jesus asks them not to let their hearts be troubled. He has provided the peace, and the Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit is outpoured, they are given courage to speak in a way that will change the world. So, in one passage from John’s Gospel, we have the preparation for Jesus’ death, a foretaste of his victory and of Pentecost at the same time.
The events surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are the foundation and cause of the Church’s existence. The Church does not exist because of a gathering of those who agree on certain abstract ideas or moral teachings. The Church is not the gathering of the righteous either. The Church exists simply because of the death and resurrection of Christ. This is what makes the disciples “go out.” So Jesus says again in today’s gospel: “The one who believes in me will also do the works I do.” Stepping into the fellowship of Christ means going out with Jesus beyond the walls of our culture and our safety zone to where the cross is to be found. And so we follow and hear the stories of the Church and the Acts of the Apostles in this season of the resurrection more than in any other season, and today of Paul who goes, we are told, where the Spirit of Jesus leads him, to proclaim the good news, not that he affects but which has already been affected through Jesus’ life.
In other words, Jesus’ departure to his death tells us that in the depth of his vulnerable human life, even in his very mortality, there is peace and a new world, a vision of a heavenly Jerusalem, as we heard in the book of Revelation today. His departure to death is the hinge upon which a forgiven future opens, he is as we sing today “the Church’s one foundation.” And so for us here we declare first to the community around us that we are here because God has acted and has promised to be with us, and he does not break his promise. Even when there is need and suffering, he is there as the one who is hungry and in need himself, and the one who will satisfy all our hunger and all our need. We have known the power of his spirit. Earlier in the gospel, Jesus said that the Advocate “is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.”
Someone once said: “If you want to know how the Holy Spirit looks, then you have to look at the saints.” The spirit does not come in a visible form for people to see. He appears in the form of God’s people. How does the Spirit look like? He looks like you. He may even look like me! In us, the Holy Spirit has come alive, and it is that life that we must show to the world.
But, we have to be careful. To show that life to the world is not about being busy joining the legions of believers out there claiming to know all the answers to the troubles of our world, or claiming that they are more righteous than others. No, it means following where Jesus is, and this can provide us with challenges, individual challenges, the cost that we are prepared to bear for the sake of Christ, challenged in the resources that we can give skilfully and financially, simplifying our own lives for the sake of justice for all and for our environment, and giving time to God in prayer.
There are also communal challenges, facing change in the church, tackling the need to talk to people we are bit afraid of, whose language we don’t quite know, on the other side of town, or the other side of the age divide, not depending much on the leadership of clergy, and accepting that the world in which we live is not under our control and that we cannot solve everything in the world simply with well-meaning activism. As someone who lived in Jerusalem, I am aware of many people who all had the answers to the political problems there and were actively pursuing means to solve it all, when suddenly they came to realise that theirs is just another voice that is adding to the layers of competing voices. Our activism might be better served if it wer aware that the world is already in good hands.
“Let your hearts not be troubled. I leave you my peace, not like the world gives.” Instead of talking to people and joining the legions of so-called believers, we are called simply to follow Jesus and, in doing so, to learn that the hard labour of real, transforming change, and discovering the way that Jesus has already paved for us requires patient and prolonged work. In consoling our hearts, Jesus is not simply being optimistic about the world or human beings in a nineteenth-century sort of way. He is warning us of the dim reality that we also face, like he did with Peter, the ever and increasingly fragmented and unstable society in which we live, warning us that stumbling and failing is part of the business of being a follower of Christ. We are able to stand on our feet and face the world around us with all its troubles, because the Spirit is in us, because peace has already been given. It is not by achievement that we are able to do this, but by receiving what God longs to give us, the vision of his glory. Like Paul, we are called to be obedient to a heavenly vision, to listen and to follow. All our work is rooted in this vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, with the lamb at the centre of it. This is the energy of the Church, of its worship, work and service. Without it, we cease to be passionate about God and each other, and we cease to be committed to God and each other.
Let us pray that God may equip us, equip this Church community to go out on its journey with the vision of Christ crucified and glorified so that further generations in this place will have cause to thank God, not because you are successful in all that you do, but because you try to walk with Christ and breathe his Spirit.
Amen.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
John 14:23-29 ~ Gospel Reading for May 9, 2010
Jesus said to Judas (not Iscariot), “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.
“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 ~ Reading for May 9, 2010
In the spirit, the angel carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day– and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Acts 16:9-15 ~ Bible Reading for May 9, 2010
During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
Posted by stpauls on May 2, 2010 under Sermons |
[This sermon was written and delivered by The Reverend Dr. Yazeed Said on May 2, 2010, the Fourth Sunday after Easter.]
I was interested to see that the opening anthem for this morning was: “My Lord, what a morning!” And you may have woken up this morning and looked out of the window and instead of saying good morning to God, you ended up saying: “Good God, it is morning.”
And “here we are,” our annual gospel service.
How shocking?
Anglicans having a gospel service? Surely not.
My reserved anglophile cold-blooded nature tends to prevail here over my hot-blooded Arab character. But, it seems that this is not simply a present day reaction in some churches. You will be pleased to know that the early Church had similar reactions. When Peter went up to Jerusalem, we are told in the first lesson of today, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Peter was presenting something innovative and new to the first Church of Jewish Christians. How shocking!
The only difference today of course is that people hardly bother about what little difference is made or discussed in churches. Because, whether change is introduced or not, it is not relevant to the wider society, as modern human beings tend to continue to believe that life without God is better, and what an illusion that is! Of course, they tend to think too that churches are usually represented by rather bored elderly clerics preaching to a collection of baffled looking townsfolk sitting with their heads on their chests. And what an illusion that is too, especially if they come and join us here today! And of course, there are churches like that, no doubt, whose congregations would be equally shocked at our order and passions this morning. This is not to mention that to some I am wearing strange clothes. We say strange things, and sing strange tunes.
But, why does it actually matter? Why does it actually matter that there are passions and emotions about relating to different ways, whether having a passionate gospel service, or a dignified high mass, or indeed a dignified Holy Communion from the Book of Common Prayer?
It has to do a bit with the fact that people need to be shocked into joy, or shocked into sadness to make them act and move and do something important. We cannot do with low expectations. We cannot do with people dozing through an hour-long sermon. But, we cannot accept either that the Church is simply an optional extra in our social life, something we either chose or not and without which we can still be perfectly human. We cannot accept either of these options.
We want to show that when you come into Church, we need to see something fresh and new, we need to have a glimpse of what the reading from Revelations calls “a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.” We want to see a glimpse of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband. We want to see the home of God among mortals, that has caused us to have a new way of relating to one another, a new way of relating to the wider world, a new hope for our lives.
Both those who do not like to see something new in Churches, and those who do not consider churches to be relevant at all are people who deny that God can make things possible. Whereas Peter responds to the early Church: “Who was I that I could hinder God?” So, it is not that we simply are having a good time in Church. It is more that God makes it possible for us to think differently about our lives and our relationships. And this is why it is right and proper for Christians to shock those who hold power in society when they remind them of the cause of the poor, showing that justice and compassion are important priorities, and the society did not learn them from nowhere, they have come after all from our Christian heritage.
But, if the new heavens and the new earth, the foretaste of the heavenly city is shocking enough, it is because God remains above us all, above all our expectations, even if we call ourselves Christian. He is the one who makes us rethink ourselves, he is the one who reminds us that to know ourselves truly is to know that we have never and will never know ourselves truly. He is the one who constantly shocks and surprises us. He is not the one who is nice and tidy, and that we can control in any way possible. He always takes us out of our breath, and challenges our confused and dead routine.
But, of course human beings do not like to be shocked, do not like to be changed. They normally like to keep it all nice and safely under control, and so when Jesus shocks his people into newness and challenge, he too is rejected and killed. His words and his miracles were not a cause for making people feel comfortable.
But, in the gospel of today, Jesus speaks of his death in terms of “glory.” The glory that he received from the father, the glory that belongs to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit and that which is to be given to his disciples and friends, to those who love him, and which is reflected in them as they are commanded to love one another. This is the essence of all of our celebrations. The church exists so that glory may be revealed. This is why we are here. Glory seen in the midst of this society, that is often bored, frustrated and imprisoned imaginatively in all sorts of ways. But, the glory that we receive and for which we are here is a glory that makes us free; free to love one another, and free to love our neighbours, all our neighbours as ourselves. Glory. So, pile it on, dress up, sing those gospel songs, shout with joy to the lord, and I would have liked to add: swirl the incense too. But, not today perhaps.
Most importantly perhaps is that we are receiving glory as we come to receive the glorious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. And here what are transformed are not only the bread and the wine, but also we. We are shot through with the essence of God’s presence really present, and really transcendent. So, we are here not just because it is one of those things we do extra to other things we do in life. No. We come here because we need to receive God’s shocking and transforming glory. So that we may be witnesses to God as the God of renewal and shocks and surprises, who will do something about our boredom, and dozing off in Church. He has acted, and we are celebrating his action, and to him we give all glory and honour now and forever.
Amen.
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
John 13:31-35 ~ Gospel Reading for May 2, 2010
At the last supper, when Judas had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Revelation 21:1-6 ~ Bible Reading for May 2, 2010
I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them as their God;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.”
Posted by stpauls on under Bible Readings, Webmaster Blog |
Acts 11:1-18 ~ Bible Reading for May 2, 2010
Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?”
Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven.
“At that very moment, three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”
When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
