St John the Baptist, Littleworth
Feast of Christ the King 25th November
2018
Acts 8 v26-40 & John 18.33-37
A
question – what would have prevented you from attending church this morning?
Illness,
a cold perhaps or flu or a bad cough.
Perhaps
it would be bereavement. Maybe it could be family and friends visiting or for
you to visit family and friends.
You
might be going to play football or taking someone to play football or perhaps
you might be running in a 10k or a half-marathon.
You
might have heard who was preaching!
What
would have prevented you from attending church this morning?
Let’s
flip that around and now let me ask why did you choose to come to church this
morning?
Are
you on a faith journey to discover more about God and his people?
Something
that I hope is true for us all, albeit we will all be at different stages along
that path.
Maybe
you are here habitually.
Attendance
at church is not a bad habit – however it is good if we know something about
habits and why we are creatures of habit.
Basically
it conserves energy.
When
we do something repeatedly it becomes second nature, so much so that we often
do not think about it.
For
those who drive you will remember learning to drive and thinking that you are
never going to master the necessary coordination between eyes, hand and foot.
How
many times have you arrived without being conscious of the journey – you were
on automatic pilot.
That’s
a natural trait to conserve energy so we are not overthinking about what we are
doing.
Therefore
I would argue that although habitual church attendance is not a bad thing we do
need to stop from time to time and notice the journey.
Asking
questions like, why am I going to Church?
Am
I excited about attending church?
Am
I alive and alert and not on auto-pilot and expectant of what God might say or
even ask me to do.
And
being alive, attentive, focused, in the zone – whatever phrase you like to use
– how might you respond to God’s promptings.
We
heard this morning a fascinating story about Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch.
(How did he know he was a eunuch and does it really matter?)
Prompted
by an angel of the Lord, Philip traveled south along the road from Jerusalem
and Gaza.
He
encounters the Ethiopian in his chariot reading from the scroll of Isaiah he
had picked up when visiting Jerusalem.
There
are lots of signs and clues that here is a man searching.
Then
promoted again by the Spirit, Philip went near to the chariot and heard the man
reading from the scroll a passage that we now call Isaiah 53.
‘Then Philip began with that very passage of
Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus.’
It’s
most unlikely that you will meet many Ethiopian eunuchs traveling in a chariot
and reading from Isaiah – however you will meet people in your day to day life,
on your front-line, and we need to be alert to the promptings of the Lord.
Paul
puts this well in a passage from Romans and in ‘The Message’ paraphrase it
reads like this…
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and
walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God
does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so
well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.
Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and
quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down
to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops
well-formed maturity in you.
So
- why come to Church?
In
his 2015 Lambeth Lecture on Evangelism ABC Justin Welby said this…
"I want to start by saying
just two simple sentences about the church. First, the church exists to worship
God in Jesus Christ.
Second, the Church exists
to make new disciples of Jesus Christ. Everything else is decoration. Some of
it may be very necessary, useful, or wonderful decoration – but it’s
decoration."
I
would dare to suggest that in our habitual church attendance we can easily lose
sight of our great calling as the People of God.
Simply
put, it is to know Christ better and to make Christ better known.
By
way of a reminder we go back to Paul’s Letter to the Romans…
…"Everyone who call on the name of the Lord will be saved".”How then can they call on the One in whom they
have not believed? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not
heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?…
Don’t
get hung up on that word ‘preach’ – it can as easily mean to explain the Good
News as Philip did for the Ethiopian.
And
what is the Good News?
That
is a short question but one with big answers.
We
begin to see something of the Good News in the encounter between Jesus and
Pilate.
Today
on the Last Sunday before Advent the Church celebrates the Feast of Christ the
King.
And
here in this little exchange between Pilate and Jesus, two Kingdoms are coming
toe to toe – one exemplified in Jesus and the other in Pilate.
Pilate
stands for the Roman Empire and for the world organised outside of God.
Jesus
stands for the Kingdom of God.
And
these two kingdoms are diametrically opposed to each other and in the way they
operate.
If
we follow the story through we will see how the kingdom of Rome goes about its
business of rule and authority.
It
is with the sword, the whip and with crucifixion.
And
Jesus…
Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world.
If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders.
But now my kingdom is from another place."
My
Kingdom, God’s Kingdom, does not do business like the Kingdom of Rome, like the
worldly powers.
If
you don’t believe that check out Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and in particular
the Beatitudes.
This
is the Good News – that in Jesus, God took all the hate and the venom and all
that is evil and wrong in this world, Jesus took and absorbed all of that –
exemplified in one of the cruelest ways the Romans developed for executing
people.
And
as far as the world is concerned it is job gone – no more of this Kingdom of
God stuff.
But
then, but then, but then – on the third day everything changes as God raises
Jesus from death.
And
because of that third day as Jesus says to His disciples gathered on a mountain
–
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given
to me…
And
now go and make disciples – not habitual church goers or attenders – but
disciples.
And
that ‘go’ is better translated as ‘as you go’ – as you are on the way.
In your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping,
eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life
As
we do this we will encounter the equivalent of the Ethiopian - and if we are
prompted by the Lord how we will respond?
But
in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to
everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do
this with gentleness and respect,
1
Peter 3.15
And
isn’t our hope founded upon Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension.
That
in this series of events, Jesus’ life, witness, miracles, death, resurrection
and ascension, through these things and so much more besides but encapsulated
in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God demonstrates his redemptive
purposes for the whole cosmos.
His one eternal plan, God’s big story, sometimes
referred to as the meta-narrative.
For God so loved
the world, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish but have
everlasting life.
Why
did you come to church this morning?
I
hope and pray that you would answer so that I can meet with my Faith Community
and be encouraged as we build each other up in our most holy faith…
…until we all reach unity in the faith and in the
knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure
of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4.13
That
we might become disciple making disciples making disciples.
And the Greek word
for disciple, mathetes, means ‘learning as you go’ – we are always on a
journey, following The Way.
And
it is here, as the Body of Christ, that we will find strength and encouragement.
It
is here as the Body of Christ that we become aware of our need for each other.
That’s
why it is important that we gather as God’s people - so that when we are the
dispersed People of God, on our front lines, we will know how we could take a
passage from Isaiah 53 and talk about Jesus.
We do know how to give an answer
for the hope we have and we have learned how to do that with gentleness and
respect.
There
may be times when you do not come to meet with God’s people – but please let
that reason be genuine and not because attendance was an inconvenience – your
Church needs you!
As
Dianne Kershaw of The Order of Mission (TOM) in Sheffield once remarked, we
need to learn to walk in covenant and not convenience.
Because
it is only in the Church that the hope for our Nation can be found, however
that hope is only manifest when the Church is operating well – to quote from
Bishop Jack Nicholls…
“There
is nothing like the local church when it is working right. Its beauty is
indescribable; its power is breath taking. Its potential is unlimited. It
comforts the grieving and heals the broken in the context of community. It
builds bridges to seekers and offers truth to the confused. It provides
resources to those in need, and opens its arms to the forgotten, the
downtrodden and the disillusioned. It
breaks the chains of addictions, frees the oppressed and offers belonging to
the marginalised of the world. Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the
church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness. Still to this day, the
potential of the local church is almost more than I can grasp. No other
organisation on the earth is like the church. Nothing comes close”
Are
you ready brothers and sisters to begin to walk in covenant with each other and
not merely what is convenient?
Are
you ready my brothers and sisters to show that God’s people follow a different
King and belong to a different Kingdom?
Are
you ready my sisters and brothers to go and as you go to make disciples as you
proclaim the Good News, the Gospel, in both word and deed?
Are
we ready as the People of God to welcome into our midst the seeker and the
searchers?
Do
we have ways in which people can make the journey from little or no faith to
becoming a disciple of Jesus?
In
short we should regularly ask ourselves, just what we think we are doing for
God’s sake. And if we are not doing it for God sake then for God sake let us
stop doing it.
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