Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Service Date:
26 July, 2009
I hesitate to say it's summer, in case it starts to rain, but it's surely picnic season, so I thought we'd have a mini-church picnic today.
I hope you were all given a bag as you came in, with some sweets in? Everybody got a bag? Yes? Everyone got some sweets in their bag? No? Oh dear, how can we fix this? [share]
Are we sorted now? Oh no, I've just thought. Can everyone here eat sweets, or do we have some diabetics among us? Can anyone help? [nuts]. Well, once you've found something you like, feel free to nibble!
This reminds me of one of the stories about Jesus, when he was on a picnic with his friends, which we'll hear now from the Gospel of John.
Reading: John 6:1-14
We don't all start out with the same gifts. Some of us had more money when we were growing up than others; some of us could run faster; some were more naturally patient, and that all makes a difference to us. That's why some of your bags were empty, some had sweets in and some had nuts instead. But in real life, no one starts out in life with a completely empty bag; because even before we're born, God loves each of us; there's nothing we could do that would stop that. And God has given each of us gifts to share with others.
There are two gifts everybody has, if we choose to exercise them. And they go together: generosity and gratitude. Everyone can be generous with something, whether it's giving time to listen to someone else, energy to help someone or even sharing bread and fish on a picnic. And everybody can be grateful, if we develop the habit of noticing the generosity of others, and appreciating it.
I'm grateful for the generosity of so many in this church who've helped me in many quiet ways, as well as all those who work so hard to keep our community going. And I'm sure you too have things you're grateful for. As a quick exercise, I'd like you to turn now to someone sitting near you and tell them about one thing that's happened to you in the last week, or the last month, for which you're grateful: someone giving you something when they didn't have to do so. It could be a smile on the bus; it could be a helping hand; it could be any number of things. As you've already shared your sweets, I'd like you now to share your appreciation of someone's generosity to you. And I'd like you to remember what you say, because in a while we'll be saying thanks to God, the generous giver who has made us generous too.
I hope you were all given a bag as you came in, with some sweets in? Everybody got a bag? Yes? Everyone got some sweets in their bag? No? Oh dear, how can we fix this? [share]
Are we sorted now? Oh no, I've just thought. Can everyone here eat sweets, or do we have some diabetics among us? Can anyone help? [nuts]. Well, once you've found something you like, feel free to nibble!
This reminds me of one of the stories about Jesus, when he was on a picnic with his friends, which we'll hear now from the Gospel of John.
Reading: John 6:1-14
We don't all start out with the same gifts. Some of us had more money when we were growing up than others; some of us could run faster; some were more naturally patient, and that all makes a difference to us. That's why some of your bags were empty, some had sweets in and some had nuts instead. But in real life, no one starts out in life with a completely empty bag; because even before we're born, God loves each of us; there's nothing we could do that would stop that. And God has given each of us gifts to share with others.
There are two gifts everybody has, if we choose to exercise them. And they go together: generosity and gratitude. Everyone can be generous with something, whether it's giving time to listen to someone else, energy to help someone or even sharing bread and fish on a picnic. And everybody can be grateful, if we develop the habit of noticing the generosity of others, and appreciating it.
I'm grateful for the generosity of so many in this church who've helped me in many quiet ways, as well as all those who work so hard to keep our community going. And I'm sure you too have things you're grateful for. As a quick exercise, I'd like you to turn now to someone sitting near you and tell them about one thing that's happened to you in the last week, or the last month, for which you're grateful: someone giving you something when they didn't have to do so. It could be a smile on the bus; it could be a helping hand; it could be any number of things. As you've already shared your sweets, I'd like you now to share your appreciation of someone's generosity to you. And I'd like you to remember what you say, because in a while we'll be saying thanks to God, the generous giver who has made us generous too.
Hymns:
R&S 406 comes from a longer hymn by Horatius Bonar, a 19th-century Scottish minister and Moderator of Assembly who spent his ministry in Edinburgh. The tune Richmond, written by Thomas Haweis, first appeared in 1792.Crowds followed Yesu was written by Tom Colvin, a Church of Scotland missionary in Malawi, in the 1950s. The tune Amazing Grace is so familiar as to need no commentary.
R&S 636 is also a contemporary hymn by F Pratt Green, first published in 1971. The tune Breslau, however, is much older, deriving from a 15th-century German folksong; Breslau is the capital of Silesia (now Wroclaw in Poland).
R&S 42 is another F Pratt Green hymn; this prolific hymn-writer comes from a Methodist background. The tune East Acklam is named after a Yorkshire village to which the composer, Francis Jackson, retired.
Sermon:
2 Kings 4:38-44; Psalm 145:10-18; John 6:1-14; Ephesians 3:14-21I think I may owe you all an apology. Ever since, at our last church meeting, some people seemed to be of the opinion that within ten years we'd not be here as a church, I've been worrying about what we should do, and as a result it may have felt of recent weeks as though you were being got at from the pulpit. If that is so, I do apologise. But this last week I've been away on retreat in Manchester, taking time to unwind, to eat, sleep and pray, and I want to share with you now some of the thinking I've been doing while I was away.
I don't know if you've ever been away on an individually guided retreat - if you've not, I recommend it to you - but the way it works is this: after the initial meeting, once a day you meet with someone who gives you a Bible passage or two to pray over, and the rest of the day is yours: to pray by walking or reading or painting or thinking in silence about what you've been given. And the passage I was given on arrival carries right on from a very old friend indeed: Paul's prayer in Chapter 1 of his letter to Ephesus, when he asks God on behalf of the church there that they may know the hope to which they have been called, and the riches of God's inheritance for them among the saints. Those of you with excellent memories may remember that this reading came in my first Sunday with you, on May 8th 2005, when I prayed that prayer for us all. But the passage I was given on my retreat, to my great surprise - with no hints on my part! - turned out to be the reading from Ephesians we have heard this morning. And as it's not a long reading, I'm going to repeat it now for you, in the Jerusalem Bible version I was using on retreat:
This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name:
Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth: until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.
Glory be to him whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen .
I used to take Paul's prayer as my prayer for you all. But last week I took it as Paul's prayer for me, as a Christian rather than as a minister, someone just as much in need of God's strength and guidance as ever I was when, as a church member, I sat where you are sitting now. And last week I heard it as if for the first time. My hidden self - that I took to be the self that I bring to prayer, the self I hide from others as too vulnerable for public display; the self whom God has made unique and called to follow Jesus; my best self. And it is through the power of God's spirit that this self of mine, and this self of yours, is to grow strong. Not through the latest management techniques, or the oldest theology, come to that; not through hard work or long hours or worrying; but through reliance on God's spirit, trust in Christ's desire to live in us.
This may sound like pious waffle, or even emotional manipulation. How can we produce in ourselves such faith, such trust in the power of God? The answer is, of course, that we cannot; but we need not try, if we accept the Christian claim that God's unconditional love for us - not for humanity at large, but for me, for you, in all our individuality - is true. The metaphors in this passage of being planted and built on love are powerful. Our roots go down into the rich soil of God's love. Our lives are founded on the immovable rock of God's love. From our creation in God's image, to Jesus' sharing of the whole human experience, to the Spirit's new life within us, the Christian record tells this story. Our part is to choose whether to take it seriously, or to dismiss it as wish-fulfilment.
Yet we do not have to take this leap of faith unaided. Protestant churches have traditionally been rather embarrassed by the idea of saints, seen as haloed semi-supernatural beings who seem to get in the way of our own relationship with God. But if we think of the saints as friends who have gone before us into a fuller experience of God's love, people whose generosity has mirrored that of God for us, and made us realise that we are lovable, that's another story. I'm sure you can think of people, some in this congregation, who through the years have shown you by the strength of their love what God is like. I know I can, in my short time with you so far.
If we were, all of us, to be completely convinced that God loved us, what difference would that make to your life? How would it affect our life as a church? Like Philip and Andrew in our Gospel reading, I know that so often I am tempted to think in terms of scarcity. We have only so many people. We have only so much time. We have only so much energy. Let's not take too many risks, in case something goes wrong. Blessed are those who don't expect too much, for they will not be disappointed.
Yet our God is not like that. The bank of God's love for us and for all will never go bust, because there is an endless supply. As our psalm testifies, The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing. God is the sower who goes on scattering seed on the path as well as the rich ground, because there is always more where that came from and harvest can come from the most unpromising ground. God is the power behind the fields ripening with corn, each head heavy with grain from just one seed fallen into the earth. God is the source of all human love and generosity, sometimes shown in the most unexpected places by the most unlikely people. And God's power, working within us, is able to turn us too into mirrors of God's loving generosity, doing through us more than we could ask or even imagine.
In our Hebrew Bible reading, a prophet of God threw a party in the midst of famine, saving his fellow prophets from food poisoning when one of them contributed the wrong sort of leaves for the pot, and unexpectedly shared his part of the harvest offering with a hundred guests. God's generosity to us urges us to be equally generous to others beyond our number, people whose paper bag seems to be empty, but may hold just what we need. And if God's generosity is the lifeblood of this place, I need fear no further how to ensure our survival, though our November church meeting will be looking at the way ahead; for whether we die or live, we belong to God. My concern will be my and our obedience to God's calling here and now. Glory be to God from generation to generation, in this congregation and in Christ Jesus. Amen.
