RonBlogMay 162010

Sunday 16th May, 2010 Seventh Sunday of Easter Sunday after Ascension
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 might be one as You and He are one; grant that Your Church being bound together 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, who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

FIRST LESSON Acts 16: 16 – 34

One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune-telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation." She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, "I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her." And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.
When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, "These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe." The crowd joined in attacking them and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened.
When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.
Then he brought them outside and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" They answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

PSALM 97

The Lord is king, let the earth rejoice: let the multitude of islands rejoice
Clouds and darkness are round about Him: righteousness and justice are the foundations of His throne
Fire goes before Him: and burns up His enemies on every side
His lightnings light the world: the earth sees it and quakes
The mountains melt like wax before His face: from before the face of the Lord of all the earth
The heavens have proclaimed His righteousness: and all the peoples have seen His glory
They are ashamed, all those who serve idols, and glory in mere nothings: all gods bow down before Him
Zion heard and was glad, and the daughters of Judah rejoiced: because of Your judgements, O God
For You, Lord, are most high over all the earth: You are exalted far above all gods.
The Lord loves those who hate evil: the Lord guards the life of the faithful, and delivers them from the hand of the ungodly.
Light dawns for the righteous: and joy for the true of heart
Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous: and give thanks to His holy name.

EPISTLE Revelation 22: 12 – 21

"See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone's work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star." The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let everyone who hears say, "Come." And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person's share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. The one who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

GOSPEL John 17: 20 – 26

Jesus prayed "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 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 that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

NOTES ON THE READINGS

First Lesson
This story of the Philippian gaoler is interesting in a number of ways, not least the way in which the circumstances of conversion of the man affected the Apostle’s ministry in the city. It reflects in another interesting way, in that those who demanded the arrest of the apostle changed their charge from the obvious one about losing their income, in an untrue but facile direction. Note that Paul was charged as a Jew, and doing what he was not. The healing of the young girl had nothing to do with ‘customs that are not lawful.’ So very often, people will move against others, not on their real grounds of complaint, but rather in terms that are likely to evoke support from locals who have similar hang-ups. Truth is the first casualty!

The conversion of the gaoler was followed by the baptism of all his family, - more likely ‘retinue.’ This sort of action by the Apostle must create some difficulty for those who seem not to understand the basis for baptism: entry into the Covenant rather than expression of their faith.

Psalm
Rather too often, I suspect, the psalmists of old tend to be misunderstood as they rejoice in God as King. It may all seem rather twee or naive to think in this way, but it is suggested that one thinks a little deeper. (We tend to assume that kings tend to prove their point and press or compel people into allegiance, but there seems to be no attempt on the part of the Divinity to compel. SO how does this work, if at all?)
That which seems to mark the huge difference between the Judaic-Christian Faiths from the run-of-the-mill religions is the constant emphasis on justice, integrity and compassion. As often repeated in these notes, please see that ‘righteousness’ translates not inner purity (which which I grew up!) but justice. This justice of course is not that ‘variety’ than demands retribution from the evil-doer, but rather takes all the factors into consideration, requiring humans to act truthfully and with compassion with each other.
Truth, justice, integrity, compassion. As Paul once wrote, ‘against such there is no law.’ And the psalmist (as with all OT writers,) saw that no matter how long these ancient verities might be suppressed by tyrants or peoples, they will re-emerge as important factors in the survival of any civilization. They are eternal. Hence, in the quiet logic of the psalmist, God is eternal. (A reverse argument if you like, but it does provide reality.)
So perhaps these psalmists were not all that silly after all!

For the Epistle
Pardon my cynicism, but I suspect, along with many commentators, that the curse laid on anyone who alters the ‘word of this book’ are not part of the original. First of all, they are quite un-Johannine, and also they provide quite an irregular jarring note on an otherwise powerful statement of faith.
As mentioned previously in the notes on Revelation readings, the focus in quite some of John’s writings have to do with goal not end. The Biblical goal of life is ‘to love God and to enjoy Him for ever.’ And life is distorted out of shape by human evil. Revelation looks to the final removal of all evil, and the achieving of the Divine goal. This goal is open to anyone and everyone who searches for truth – and justice. It is not for malefactors.

GOSPEL
I have more than a sneaky suspicion that this High Priestly prayer of Jesus, recorded in John 17, may well leave a lot of people bemused and confused. It does not seem to make sense for many, and is rather repetitive for others. This partly because (as mentioned earlier) we are not all that sure of the meaning of some of the words used. We have looked already at ‘glorify,’ and may need to pursue that direction some more.
One of the sadly misunderstood factors both of the Faith and of this prayer in particular has to do with being ‘One.’ This does not mean being peas in pods, but it does mean being reconciled. Christian history is riven with the failure to see the importance of unity, and much of the reason that ‘the world does not believe,’ is because Christians can never seem to be one in any sense of the word. Ask a Jew, Jewish people will say, and you will get three opinions. I suspect the answer for Christians is double that. And the divisions between Christian denominations and the plethora of sects makes the whole business laughable. Perhaps the lack of love is one of the great issues for us all.

NOTES FOR A SERMON

This Sunday after the Ascension has been marked, for many years now, by being in the middle of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It does not take a great deal of thought to see that, although this celebration is many decades old, there is little to show of any progress in the great debate. That this is tragic, even blasphemous, is underlined by the Gospel for the day, and, in fact, by the whole raison d’etre of the Faith.

Perhaps part of the reason that this goal has been bypassed is because there is a rather strange but immensely popular misrepresentation of the faith in terms of personal salvation. So much of the divide between denominations and others has been on what grounds the believer is ‘saved.’ This has led to an introversion of faith, a looking inwards for one’s own redemption, when the Faith (Hebrew and Christian, actually,) has its first focus on the world at large.

We have a great logos of material to underline where we are meant to be heading. From Abram’s call, to be a blessing to the whole world, to the repetitive emphasis in prophets, to the contrast between the Babel myth and Acts 2, and even Genesis 3, the Faith has been offered to the world as the means par excellence of dealing with what moderns call (or used to call) the human dilemma. Why is it, as in Murphy’s Law, whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Why ever is it that the ‘war to end all wars’ has done nothing of the sort?

Here lies the unity which is at the heart of the Biblical Faith, and the failure to reach out in that direction is also part of the very human dilemma mentioned above. Religious people are often at the very van of the process that militates against progress. ‘I am right and you are wrong’ is as much sin as is murder of genocide. And the philosophy that force of arms will produce a just outcome is as utterly stupid as are the people who promote such a view. There has got to be a better way, and – properly understood, if rather risky – is the offer put forward by the ‘faith of our fathers.’

There is some hope, of light at the end of the tunnel, but it will require people of goodwill to see past both their own prejudices and those of other people too. None of us have any monopoly on the truth, but I have a sneaky suspicion that this ‘faith once delivered,’ if seen for what it is, has the best possible solution that I have encountered anywhere, in any religion, philosophy or ism in circulation or past.

Reconciliation is the drum that I have been pumping for many years – decades! – now, and it still falls on deaf ears. Perhaps that is because the whole thing is seen as far too difficult; perhaps it looks like a daydream to many. However, it can be said with considerable truth, that because Christians of all sorts and colours have missed or bypassed the point, the world at large has considered that bubble pricked, and not longer worthy of any attention.
So where does that leave YOU?