EYES ON THE NEW AGENDA

 

Sermon delivered on the Fifth Sunday after Easter (Easter 5), the 9th May 2010 by Fr Nicholas JG Sykes in the congregations of St. Alban's and St. Mary's Church of England in the Cayman Islands in the service of the Holy Eucharist.

 

Scriptures:        Acts 16: 9-15               Revelation 21:10, 22 - 22:5                  John 14: 23-29

 

Revelation 21: 10 “In the Spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God ... ”

 

In the course of contemplating the General Election in Britain I was shocked to be reminded that only a short three years ago Britain’s Prime Minister was Tony Blair and not Mr. Brown. To me the days of Tony Blair now seem to belong to a former age.  Tony Blair’s first notification  in his constituency of his intention to resign had made mention of some things that  happened in his term of office that nobody could have expected. One of them was the event of September 11, 2001 when New York’s Twin Towers were brought down by suicide pilots flying highjacked planes into them along with their full complement of passengers. That was the kind of event that causes you to remember where you were and what you thought when you first heard about it. I was in the car park of the Marriott Hotel returning to the afternoon session of a Conference taking place at the time. The great buzz-word at the time and in the months and even years since that time, which most of the media pounced on and emphasised, was “diversity”. The event showed, they said, how essential it was that Americans should adopt the principles of diversity, and that schoolchildren should be schooled with increasing enthusiasm in the great principles of welcoming diversity. Watching this, I wanted to answer back to these folk that perhaps the whole problem was that they had been embracing more than a tad too much diversity. They had been unable to oppose soon enough the dangers of principles that were being fostered in schools of many levels that were diverse from the spiritual norms of a cohesive society - diverse in directions that were dangerously destructive to the very continuance of that society.  In fact I must personally conclude that the propagation of unbridled spiritual diversity as an unqualified good is a most serious error which no functioning society can support for very long. It is this that can be identified as a primary cause of being unable to avert the disaster of 9/11, and which could most positively function as a salient warning to the West.

 

All of us I am sure know what it is to have the course of our lives changed by some event or circumstance that we had not expected. There is scope at this time for serious reflection on how the unexpected result of a hung parliament in Britain has a great potential for changing the course of our lives here in Cayman considerably, whether it be for a long term good, or whether it might only be to postpone the evil. Perhaps the Church will look back on what has happened as a biblical "But God" moment - a moment in which God has seemed to intervene in the regular human course of things and set them off in a new direction. The Scripture readings today speak of visions, and visions when obeyed do often also change the normal course of life. We hear of a vision of Paul in the night: a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging for help.  Paul and Silas had not planned to go to Macedonia. They had planned to go elsewhere, but we read that the Spirit of Jesus had prevented them. From the vision they conclude that it is to Macedonia that God is directing them, and they make their headquarters at Philippi, the leading city of the district of Macedonia, though not the capital. From this vision, then, which brought about a change in their plan, comes the very significant Philippian ministry, albeit accompanied with violent persecution, and eventually the epistle to the Philippians, which is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of the New Testament. The Christians at Philippi formed the first congregation established through the apostle on European soil, and the epistle to the Philippians is one of the most cordial and affectionate letters that survive from Paul’s hand. Our first lesson shows how this ministry develops in a seemingly informal and unplanned way at first. When they have been in the city some days, they go on the Sabbath outside the city gate to the riverside where they suppose there is a place of prayer, and speak to the women who had gathered together, and one of them, Lydia, especially receives what is said, is baptised along with her household, and then presses upon them her hospitality. From these small and seemingly not very promising beginnings a lot developed later, and it became a founding root of European Christianity. Imagine that, then: our Western civilisation in one of its Christian roots can be said to have started out with an unexpected vision of a man saying to the apostle Paul, “Come over here and help us.” It is good to reflect, I think, that such a significant Christian element in Western culture started out as a positive response to a plea for help. That I believe to be an important element in the Christian witness to society today. Whatever challenges we may have to offer society, the Church should be found most content in a helping role. This characteristic element of the Gospel is nowhere more emphasised than in the writings of St. Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles. We should see the witness to Christ that the Church has to offer the society to be a fundamentally helpful thing to the society, just as it was at the beginning, because in part it incorporates a vision of what the society truly is and may become. And not by any means all the various diverse influences that may seek to make their mark upon a society will be as helpful as this element, the witness to Christ that the Church has to offer, or even helpful at all.

 

“In the Spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God ... ” The text of the sermon today forms a case in point of a vision that both affects society positively, and that incorporates a vision of the society as it truly is and may become. This Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God, yet it is still called Jerusalem, that flawed city  whose name speaks of peace, but whose house Jesus declared to be forsaken and desolate. What the connection is in time between the earthly Jerusalem and the new Jerusalem we cannot say, but that there is a real connection there can be no doubt. So it is that the vision and witness offered by the Church when she is most true to her calling will connect our fallen and desolate world to what by God’s grace it may still become.

 

The visions of the book of Revelation are to be those of all the people of God, not just of John. The new Jerusalem is described as coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, in which the glory and honour of the nations will be brought in and nothing false or impure. The church as we know it is far from being that now, but from the vision, the reality will one day appear. Jesus, even as an unknown stranger, says to His frustrated children, as do the apostles following Him, “Rise, take up thy bed and walk.” The Apostle Paul obeyed his vision, the crippled men encountering Christ and the apostles obeyed theirs, and we must obey ours.

 

In today's Gospel Jesus promises, "If a man loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to Him and make our home with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words. " If this is true for a man it is true also for a congregation gathered in His Name, and it true too for that society that acknowledges His reality. God has set us off upon a new direction. Loving and cleaving to  the Lord Jesus, we will make our home with Him; we will keep His word, and come to know that the Father and the Son are dwelling among us, and so, even in spite of diverse and contrary influences upon us, not be afraid.