First Lessonacts 16:9-15

Sunday 1st May, 2016Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sentence

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.

John 14:27

Collect

Great and Loving God, Your will for us in Your Son Jesus is the peace which the world cannot give. Calm our troubled hearts, dispel every fear, and keep us steadfast in love and faithful to Your Word. Grant this through Jesus Christ, the first-born from the dead, Who lives with you now and always. Amen

First LessonActs 16:9-15

During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. From there we travelled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.

On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshipper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

Psalm67

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us,

That your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.

May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.

May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples justly and guide the nations of the earth.

May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you.

Then the land will yield its harvest, and God, our God, will bless us.

God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth will fear him.

For the EpistleRevelation 21:10-14, 21-22-22:5

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall with twelve gates and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of pure gold, like transparent glass. I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.

GOSPELJohn 5: 1 - 9

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesdaand which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie - the blind, the lame, and the paralysed.One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.

NOTES ON THE READINGS

First Lesson

This passage comes from the story of Paul’s second missionary journey, and marks the move from Asia to what we now call Europe. It would have been no big deal in Paul’s day, because it was all part of the Roman Empire. The point of interest, to me at least, is the sort of motivation that led Paul in choices of where he went or did not go. Originally, his idea was to loop back through the northern part of what we now call Turkey. This vision of the man from Macedonia[1] had Paul looking in this particular direction.

Some people seem to labour long and loud, trying to work out the Lord’s Will about this or that. As one who has never had clear direction as to where, I have always found that to follow instinct seems to work out well, especially when any mistake in direction can be corrected if necessary.

It is interesting to note, in the second paragraph, the factor that was often helpful for Paul. Knowing the Jewish capacity of finding somewhere quiet and private for worship in foreign places, he knew where to go to find if there were any ‘expats’ in the area. Where at all possible, he always began his ministry with Jews, and this place was no exception. Here he found a jewel.

Psalm

As a young chorister, I was used to singing this Psalm as a canticle in Evening Prayer, if I remember rightly. The old Benedictus. And although the words were so familiar, I still missed the point of them. So easily done.

The Psalm is a song of delight in JHWH, Whom to follow was to discover a way of life, a modus operandi that brought sense and peace and contentment. All this is so because God is ever the God of justice and truth. Where those qualities lie, life is seen to be valuable and with purpose.

There is an interesting and very Jewish connection between human life being settled and content, and that affect on the environment. It is, I suspect, part of the great Jewish capacity to realize that when God is on the throne, (in people’s lives and attitudes,) then all is well with the world. Jews lovingly see God at work and at hand at all levels of existence and experience. It is not a bad path to travel.

For the Epistle

How do you describe the indescribable? One can only try and present utter superlatives, and that is what John is doing here. It is his stunning vision of heaven. Please do not miss the point that in OT Jewish perception, cities were the epitome of evil. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, cities were the breeding ground of evil. Only in the relative openness of the country could life be at all good.

So note that the end of the Biblical story that started in a Garden, now ends in a city. And that city is portrayed as beautiful and as gorgeous beyond description. Please note, too, that the tree of life is no longer verboten, but is free and available to all.

If you want John’s thoughts spelt out for you, he is conveying his conviction that ultimately truth with triumph entirely over evil, God over sin.

Gospel

There are two rather ironic issues to draw from this little cameo; the first is the strange situation of a man whose life had been wasted by illness; the second irony is the remarkable obtuseness of the Pharisees.

Notice especially Jesus’ question to the invalid. Do you want to be healed? That may seem to be a strange question to put to such a person, but there is always the strong possibility with people that they LIKE to be ill. I knew a lady once whose name, Mona, fitted her to a tee! She actually enjoyed ill-health. She had done so for donkey’s years.

Jesus was not posing an idle question: He was presenting a challenge to the man Never lose sight of the fact that, when Jesus healed someone of this infirmity or that, the outcome was that the person may well have had a much harder road ahead as they came to terms with having to take responsibility for themselves. So the question for this man was not a simple one about feeling better. It was a huge challenge towards a very different life and lifestyle. His answer depended on his inner nature as a human being.

On the other hand, the opponents of Jesus showed themselves to be really quite idiotic. If that sounds too harsh, then try ‘quixotic.’ I have encountered so many ‘deeply religious people‘who have very similar and distorted views of what is important and what is not, in life. For those Pharisees, the apparently important issue was the Faith and its requirements. ‘It was a Sabbath,’ a holy cow, a taboo. I suspect that the real problem for them was who is in control who holds the reins, who calls the shots. Their faith was little other than a façade for their power. Small wonder that Jesus spoke so strongly against such people, against such distorted views of Judaism.

Why oh why Do people still try and emulate the Pharisees, when their Lord exposed the utter poverty of such an approach?

NOTES FOR A SERMON

One of the factors that may well turn people away from Christian Faith is the tendency of some preachers and Churches to focus and concentrate on guilt. It has to be said that any such focus, from where I sit as Christian and teacher of the Faith, is quite a false one, and one that is at a great distance from Jesus’ own emphasis.

Mind you, the real emphasis of Jesus can be just as discomfiting, because there is really quite some exposure of people, individually, to look honestly and deeply into their own selves. This is not to unearth something horrible, but rather to point up the need for transparency. [Current discussion on the need for governments to do exactly that shows up the need for it, for everyone’s sake.

I would begin with that rather unexpected incident with Jesus and the man who had been an invalid for 38 years. Now to put this in some sort of focus, stop and realize that the life expectancy of males in the first century was around 25 years. So this is an old coot, set in his ways, with a totally wasted life behind him. He was unable to work, unable to earn an income, and so unable to have a family, for no self-respecting lady would have much to do with that sort of bloke. No one with any sense could imagine that the question Jesus asked this person would have anything other than a positive answer. However …………

Mention is made in the notes above of the lady who I knew quite a number of years ago now, who was really quite a lovely person, but her name matched her attitude. Ask her how she was, and you would get a long list of complaints. Initially, I felt very sorry for the lady, but the better I knew her, the more I began to see that here was a person who enjoyed ill health. She would savour every bit of pain and every evidence of ailment. Fittingly, her name was Mona. I suspect that if Jesus had come to her and asked the question, she would probably have preferred to remain as she was. She had all her family running after her, including her long-suffering husband.

I am trying to illustrate the fact that the man in this story really did have a significant issue to face. Surely after 38 years going daily to the Sheep Gate pool, the routine was settled, the comfort zone was reached and any shift from that was uncomfortable to contemplate. If he was healed, he would then have to find whatever work he could to live on, and use muscles and brains that had never been coaxed in to life for all those years. It would have been one hell of a decision! I often ask people to stop and realize that, when Jesus healed someone, it would involve, almost always, a great change and call for enormous effort for the patient. Never imagine that it made life easy for such folk.

And that is the point, do you see? That is always the challenge that Jesus put in front of people. There was never the business of ‘here is something nice and easy to do and to follow.’ It was always a challenge, to move in different directions, to operate really quite differently, and to embrace a life and life-style that may well be quite unfamiliar.

This, do you see, is the real challenge of being a person of faith. So as you put yourself in the place of that invalid of most of his life, stop and ponder what the real challenges of being a disciple of Jesus is for you in the right here and now. Jesus does not offer you a soft and gentle ride, but one that shakes you to your roots. And as you engage in this pilgrimage, you will find it rather less easy to encourage others to come along with you, unless and until you have seen, like that bloke at the pool, that this Jesus has something very different and remarkable indeed, but one that calls for utter honesty in you.

I would have to say that, although my pilgrimage has been far from perfect, I could not imagine being on any other journey than this one, bumps or no bumps.

Sunday 8th May, 2016Seventh Sunday of Easter

Sentence

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.Acts 16:31

Collect

Almighty God, Whose blessed Son, before His passion, prayed for His disciples that they may be one as You are One; grant that Your Church being bound in love and obedience to You, may be united in one body by the one Spirit, that the world may believe in Him Whom You have sent; Your Son Jesus Christ our Lord

Amen

FIRST LESSONActs 16:16-34

Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.

When the owners of the slave girl realized that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace to face the authorities. They brought them before the magistrates and said, “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. Upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.