Sermon for Sunday 10th May 2009

Today's lessons: click to read

God so loved the world

This week Renos and I have been at the clergy conference in Swanwick in Derbyshire. The theme for the conference was ‘God so loved the world’. We heard four fascinating and inspiring addresses from Christians who are leading public figures. Professor Sir Gillean Prance, former director of Kew Gardens and a world renowned botanist spoke about climate change; Dame Anne Owers, Chief Inspector of Prisons, talked about prisons and justice; Major General Tim Cross, head of the UK’s team for the reconstruction of Iraq spoke about terrorism, war and justice, and John Wyatt, Professor of Ethics and Perinatology, talked of life and death, and euthanasia.

It was very encouraging to hear people in such prominent and influential positions in public life talking about how the gospel inspires and guides their thinking. We were reminded how important it is for all of us as Christians to be engaged in society. And at times we were alerted to the fact that, if we are not engaged, then the prospects for our world are dire. Because the constant drive of secularism and self-interest threatens Christian commitment to justice and compassion for all. Dame Ann Owers reminded us of our shared responsibility for the world as it is today. How, when we think of prisons and the walls that separate us from the imprisoned, we tend to hold a fixed, one sided perspective.

Once when driving through London with her children she went along one of the roads behind Buckingham Palace. As you probably know there’s a very high wall topped with barbed wire around the palace gardens. Her son asked “Mummy, who lives behind the wall?”

“The Queen”

“Mummy, what will she do to us if she escapes?”

Differing perspectives would be found too if we asked an Israeli and a Palestinian why there is a concrete security barrier separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza.

Sometimes when writing a sermon the lectionary gives us difficult readings. We struggle to connect the reading with our lives of faith. Today is the opposite. In our three readings there is enough material to keep a preacher going for weeks (but don’t worry, I’ll stick to the usual time!) And there are lots of very interesting things going on at the moment that warrant our attention. I’ve just returned from a visit to Gulu in Northern Uganda with the Cobham Uganda Partnership. And from a brilliant clergy conference. Later on today eleven young people and adults from our parishes are to be confirmed by the Bishop of Dorking. And today Christian Aid Week begins. As I sat at my desk I thought ‘where on earth do I begin?’

The answer I found was to go back to our texts. Because the teaching draws all these different threads together. Did you notice how many times the word ‘abide’ crops up in the readings from 1 John and John’s gospel? In I John – ‘we know that we abide in him, and he in us…God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God…God is love and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’ And then in the Gospel reading ‘Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit…’

The starting point for our lives, each and every day, is our conscious sharing of the life of Christ. As Martin Warner wrote in the Church Times, ‘incorporation into the divine life of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is the means by which we bear fruit’. It is very tempting for us simply to rely on the knowledge that God loves us. Tempting to receive his love, and share it with our fellow Christians in the church, without having to change our lives too much. But the message of the evangelist who wrote John’s gospel and the letters of John is that we are not simply the subjects of God’s love. We are channels for it out into our world. In fact we cannot genuinely receive it without responding – because John writes that ‘he removes every branch in me that bears no fruit’.

The message of the clergy conference is that God’s love for the world becomes known when we involve ourselves in the world as individual Christians and as parishes. Yes, we need to focus on building and sustaining healthy churches. But alongside that we have to look out from our parishes and engage in society. Obviously we can’t all be inspectors of prisons or world famous scientists. But every single one of us can play our part in bearing fruit. Christian Aid Week is hard work for the collectors who post envelopes and collect them, or who this year stand outside Sainsbury’s with collecting tins. But it is a real work of love – abiding in Jesus and bearing fruit. And if you can’t collect perhaps you can be generous with your gifts of money.

We may sometimes think the problems of the world are so great that we can’t make a difference. But a visit to Gulu in Northern Uganda can change that view. We visited a training college for primary school teachers. The situation there is very difficult. There are 400 students with just 8 lecturers. Many of the classrooms have no furniture so students have to carry desks and chairs around the campus all the time. The college is residential but there are no proper accommodation blocks for the male students. There are toilet blocks but no running water to flush them. So there are also dry latrines, but the girls’ one has collapsed leaving them without sanitation.

And yet the students are, for the most part, bright, enthusiastic and ambitious. They dream of a better life after the years of war and atrocity. The relatively small amounts of money we raise in Cobham will make a huge difference to the college, improving the quality of the teachers and in turn changing the lives of the pupils they will teach. The Cobham Uganda Partnership came out of the faith of a small number of Christians. People who abide in God and God abides in them. They are bearing much fruit because that is what happens when we accept God’s love..

For the six young people and five adults to be confirmed later today are accepting God’s love. Their journeys of faith are just beginning. As their faith is nurtured in this Church community we hope and pray that they will increasingly understand that God is love and those who abide in love, abide in God, and God abides in them. Bearing fruit is also about bringing more and more people to know the love of God. Just as Philip brought the Ethopian nobleman to faith. They become part of the vine, part of God’s great love, and begin to bear fruit in their lives.

We should never be daunted by God’s love and the responsibility it brings. Jane Williams says that the choice between being and doing is a false one – we are either alive with the life of God, where there is no distinction between what God is and what he does, or we are not alive at all. Professor John Wyatt told of a friend whose father suffered with Alzheimer’s. He lost most of his power of speech and ceased to recognise people. But she knew he still prayed. One day when he was sat in front of a television watching songs of praise she asked ‘what to you say to God’. He replied ‘hello’.

Even when our ability to bear fruit is diminished by time or by the many of traumas of life, we can still abide in God. Through our prayers, through scripture, through being loved and living lives of love – love for God and love for neighbour, God becomes known. God is only silenced when we see what God is, but don’t invite that love in. As John writes ‘the commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also’. A dynamic command that calls us to be concerned for our community and concerned for our world. A call given to the clergy of the Diocese this week. And a timely call for us as Christian Aid week begins and as we celebrate the new faith of those from our church being confirmed today.