Sermon given at St Mary’s Parish Church, Whitchurch – Sunday 26th January 2014 (Ocatve of Prayer For Christian Unity)

May I speak and may we listen, in the name of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no division among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

St Paul – ever the optimist, appealing to the Church in Corinth to stay united, to not be divided by small things, to get on with the task at hand.

So early on in the Christian faith are signs of division and dis-unity. Signs which if we recall our Gospel reading (appeared much earlier) when Jesus’s disciples are arguing over who is the greatest, and Jesus says very firmly that “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all”.

Tough words for a group of people to hear –

Tough words for those disciples desperate for position and authority.

Tough words, perhaps for the Church of God on earth who so often treats God’s power as though it were it’s own self-created, self gained thing.

For Paul, the Church in Corinth was seen as having potential, it wasn’t to be left to self-destruct and divide itself into tiny pockets of Christianity…Paul knew Corinth well, after all he had spent eighteen months there (which in his whirlwind ministry is quite a lot of time).

So you see, Paul knew the potential and the enormous opportunities for the Gospel in that place that many others couldn’t yet realize. He mentions the people there by name, and had clearly grown fond of this place. So what Paul says to them is more than just a bashing over the head saying “get yourself together for God’s sake” but a deep desire for the people he had high hopes for to not let themselves get in the way of the task ahead.

And remember. Paul is not. At all. Afraid of a bit of Christian infighting – particularly when he believes that the truth is at stake…you can read Galatians 2:11-14 to see Paul really naming names when he sees that his mission to preach to the Gentiles is under threat.

But here, in Corinth, he is clear that the gospel isn’t just being undermined but it is actually being fundamentally misunderstood –

Why?

One reason. That the Christian community is divided.

They are lost.

They are consumed by their own preoccupations and led astray away from God’s purposes by the forces of evil whose chief and sole purpose is to see children of God fail.

Paul is not saying that loyalty to one missionary is bad – but your chief loyalty must be to Christ.

He’s not saying you can’t have your favourite leaders – but the leader who’s every word you must obey is Christ’s.

He’s not saying that competitive instinct is bad, but to define our own value by denying someone else’s is not of Christ.

The early Church needed to remember that whatever else matters – the most important thing to remember is that it was Christ, and Christ alone…not Paul, or Apollos or Cephas, but Christ whose death brought you salvation!

It was Christ who in your baptism brought you into the family of the Church.

It was Christ who through his life, death and resurrection, inspired the hearts of Paul and Cephas and Apollos to bring the good news to you.

And it is Christ who brings you together, despite all your differences as the Community of Jesus Christ on earth.

And the more you fight over who has the “best” version of the gospel, you are turning your backs on the crucified God.

Brothers and Sisters, that’s what Paul had to say to the Church in Corinth – I wonder what Paul might say to us, if he entered the doors of St Mary’s this evening and stood here before us?

Given Paul’s track record – we can be sure that whatever he might have to say to us –

We certainly won’t like it, and we certainly won’t find it comfortable listening.

One thing we can know is that Paul would be mad, and furious that so much of Christ’s work goes undone –

So little of the Gospel message reaches people’s ears not for any good reason,

but because we are so determined to define ourselves by our differences.

Our titles, Our ways of leading worship, Our buildings, Our traditions, Our interpretations of scripture – that we don’t get on with the one thing we can all agree on – that Jesus Christ is Lord. That he lived, was crucified and rose again.

Read the passage from Corinthians again and we could quite easily read it as:

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you, my brothers and sisters. What I mean is that each of you says, “I belong to Rome, or I belong to Methodism, or I belong to Anglicanism, or I belong to the Free Churches”. Has Christ been divided? Was Wesley crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of the Holy Father?”

I believe that we empty the cross of its power when our denominationalism prevents our working together.

We empty the cross of its power when the world sees a church divided against itself.

We empty the cross of its power when we refuse to let people fulfill their callings because of their gender or sexuality.

We empty the cross of its power when we refuse to bear witness to the larger Christ and the larger heart of God.

Because ultimately we cannot represent the unity of Christ or help others to understand what Christ can offer in all its fullness until we have done all we can to resolve the divisions amongst ourselves.

It is God’s will that the Church be one in Christ Jesus.

Friends, beyond these walls there is a broken world – a world where divisions are costing people their lives – a world where words like ‘community’ ‘together’ ‘unity’ are becoming dirty words.

And that world is watching the Church in this age – watching and listening to every single one of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ.

And know this – they are not only watching, but they are watching and deciding whether the God we proclaim to be alive, a God we say is for us all is truly alive at all.

So my challenge to you is this –

Pray for the Church, pray the whole Church not just the places you worship, but for the Church of God.

And whatever it is that you can do – to help Christian unity become stronger – do it, and know that God has called us all to that task.

And when it gets difficult, or seems impossible, or doesn’t seem worth doing just remember the words of Christ when he prayed for his disciples: “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe.”

And to close – in the words of Charles Wesley:

‘He bids us build each other up;

And, gathered into one,

To our high calling’s glorious hope

We hand in hand go on.

And if our fellowship below

In Jesus be so sweet,

What heights of rapture shall we know

When round his throne we meet!’.

Lord help us to build each other up – to hand in hand go on – till our fellowship below is nearer to God’s eternal and perfect kingdom.

Amen.

Covenant Sunday Sermon 2014 “I am no longer my own but yours”

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, Our Strength and Our Redeemer. Amen

“He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit”.

Jesus, spelling out in John’s Gospel what a relationship with him can bring about in the lives of those who follow him –

You will be linked to that which is true and living.

You will be connected to that which gives life and nourishment.

You will be pruned to be the best that you can be.

You will be cleansed.

  I’m not an avid gardener, and if you ever go past the manse fron garden you’ll know this fact – but when I think of pruning, I think of a massive, overgrown, messy hedge or shrub, and in my mind pruning is taking off all the bits that are unnecessary – those bits which make it look out of shape…Instead of being perfectly shaped in the way in which it was created to be.

Those who know what they’re doing will prune it so well, that it looks like something from the Chelsea Flower Show…perfectly shaped, not a leaf or branch out of place.

  Thankfully, I don’t think Jesus is saying that his Father will cut off our limbs, but he is saying, I think, that anything and everything that is in us, which should not be will be remedied for those who abide in Him.

“Apart from me you can do nothing”. He reminds us. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete”.

Exactly this time last year –

I was sitting in my room at Wesley House when the time came for me to make my way to see the Principal.

So I went –

I sat in her study, surrounded by books and an enormous desk. She turned in her swivel chair after looking at her computer and said: “Right Jarel, the stationing process this year really hasn’t been easy, as you know there’s been a shortage of stations so this has made things a little bit more complicated than usual”.

Then she said the words I had feared more than anything in the world: “OK, Jarel, erm, first things first…it isn’t London. It isn’t South East England either -“

At which point I thought “Good Lord, they’re sending me abroad aren’t they!!?”

She said: “It is a city though….it’s Cardiff”.

And then she handed me the paper with the stations details on it….

I took those papers back to my room and I didn’t read them for two days.

   When we were asked to start thinking about what to put down on our stationing forms, they said be very specific or you can’t complain when you don’t get what you want…

I didn’t think I could get more specific than putting down: “South East England, preferably London”.

But you see God had other plans,

The Methodist Church in all its wisdom had other plans too…

Those words from Isaiah “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither my ways your ways” really rang true. God and myself sat in total opposition.

Those two days – that felt like a year to me, from when I received the news and to the day when I finally decided that picking up the station profile off the floor and reading it might just be a good idea before the Circuit gets in touch…in those two days, all that went through my mind were the words from the Covenant Service.

Not the whole prayer, just the first line – which I think is actually the most important.

“I am no longer my own but yours”. 

And then perhaps the hardest part of the Covenant Prayer:

“I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal”.

Serious words those…

It is, the utter and complete handing over of one’s self to God.

The offering up of one’s own will.

The giving up of your own path – to live and follow the plans that God has for your life.

   In all those years when I sat in Covenant Services saying these words, I never once knew that it might mean me taking up a station in an unkown land.

That’s the thing though isn’t it –

It’s easy to say them when we haven’t experienced the sacrifice that God might sometimes require of us.

   The line ‘rank me with whom you will’ would mean something very different for Mother Theresa’s nuns working out in Calcutta than it would for me and you.

The line ‘put me to suffering’ would mean something entirely different to Martin Luther Kind and Nelson Mandela than it would for most of us.

‘let me be employed for you, or laid aside for you’ would have its own resonances for theological college staff who are leaving appointments because the Church has decided some Methodist colleges must close.

   Wherever you are in your walk in life, one line of this prayer will resonate more than any other –

But it is the first line that is key.

Because the essence of a Covenant is that God says “I am you God” and we say in response “We are your people”. It’s matrimony in a very real sense. It’s sacrifice. It’s giving in equal measure. It’s love.

The thing that separates Satanists from Christians is that offering up of one’s own will.

To follow Satan is to satisfy self, to conciously do the opposite of what is God’s will for your life – to be one’s own master.

To follow Christ is to submit to the will of God in order to be one’s true self.

So, if the covenant service acts to do just one thing, let it serve as a reminder that pruning isn’t painless and covenant isn’t cost free.

And let us remember that this God we hear of time and again in Scripture is a covenant keeping God (we wouldn’t be here now otherwise!), a God who has kept His promise and who will never let us go –

A God who came in Jesus Christ.

The God who comes to us now.

The One who will help us to say (and truly mean!) the words we will say in the Covenant Prayer later:

“I am no longer my own but yours”

Amen.

—————-

The Covenant Prayer:

‘I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you,
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you,
or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing:
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours. So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.’