Easter 6 2005.
1st May.
Acts 17.22-31, Ps 66.7-19, 1 Peter 3.8-22, John 14.15-21.
I’ve tried really hard this week.
I mean, I tend to push the mission thing a bit, don’t I?
I think I end up preaching a lot about getting out and being church, about being a Christian in the world, about building up the church, but sometimes I forget about the internal stuff, the God and I stuff, the personal faith. Questions like where is God when I’m hurting? Where is God when I’m depressed? Where is God when my football loses again? Where can I find God in my life? Where can I get some good coffee? All essential questions of life, the universe and God.
Like I said, I tried really hard to find a sermon about this sort of stuff in the readings for today.
But I just couldn’t.
You see, its Paul’s fault. He’s just way too clever. The reading from Acts, where Paul is addressing the people of Athens, that great centre of Greek enlightenment, the hub of paganism, in a speech that is especially well crafted to be engaging and relevant. I mean, it’s just so much an example of how we can talk to others about our faith that it really can’t be ignored.
Its pretty obvious that in the wider Australian community, Christians don’t have a great image. We are often portrayed as fruitcakes who take great delight in saying no to anything enjoyable, spoilsports who are totally out of touch with the world.
Yet we know that most Christians are pretty normal people with the usual hopes and fears for themselves and their families. We are mostly not impossibly prudish, nor are most of us ultra conservative and dogmatic. We are pretty normal really. So where are all the people?
I mean, we try to be inclusive, inviting and open to all people. You’d think that this would be more attractive. But the funny thing is that it is the more inclusive churches that seem to struggle, whilst the churches with a more exclusive, dogmatic and conservative theology are often much more full of people, and consequently much more full of life. Why is this so?
Well, for a start, conservative evangelical Christians take a lot more seriously the task of telling others about Jesus. It’s as simple as that. They are more definite about the message and more focused on the task of evangelism.
And there is also the fact that we live in conservative times. It’s a time of unease, of fear, and the conservative reference points are what people are hanging on to. We are feeling fearful about the world in which we live, a world that is in a state of flux, and we seem to be searching out conservative reference points to hang on to. A reference point is a bottom line, something in life that is a constant that everything else is referred back to and compared to. The more conservative Christian denominations are very good at having strong reference points and communicating what they are.
Back to Paul. He was very skilful in his communication, a great preacher and teacher. We can see that he was great in the way that he looked at the community to whom he was directing the message, and found a reference point that he could use. He found the extreme religiosity of the Athenians, their habit of having a God for everything, and even having an unknown God just in case they missed one. Now that’s covering every angle. And he praised their spirituality, he affirmed their reference point, before giving his message, a message that aligned and developed their reference point. He was a very astute operator.
So what are the reference points in this community, in our area? I’m not sure what they might be, I mean I’ve only been here 5 minutes after all. But I’m sure many of you who have lived in the area for a while are more aware of what the reference points are. Anyway, with some knowledge of the reference points of the community, some knowledge of what the overriding concerns and needs are, we can actually be a bit more specific about what we do as a church in the hope of communicating with more people. So I guess this is something else to think about and maybe do some research of your own before the planning day at the end of this month. This will help us to identify, as a community, what it is that we can offer, and how we can educate ourselves to communicate more effectively.
I actually wanted to look at the other readings as well. Because we have a fairly dangerous reading in the 1 Peter reading this morning, I mean, the idea that in suffering we are blessed is a very difficult message. It must be difficult to feel blessed whilst suffering. Yet Peter does allude to something that is rather useful for us this morning. It’s in this verse “Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you”. The hope that is in us. That’s the key. I guess in troubled times, something that offers hope is a very good thing, an alternative reference point. Keeping hope alive is much more difficult when suffering, so hope becomes a beacon, standing out in stark relief to the surrounding feeling of hopelessness. That’s the thing about the Christian faith, there is always hope. Hope of a better day, a better life, a better world. Hope of something good to rise out of the ashes of something bad. Hope is something this world needs a lot more of. Every little example of hope is something to treasure. Every example of hope spreads more hope. If we show hope when we are out in the world, then we will help spread that hope. Hope is what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel reading, the hope that even though he was to die, and rise again, and go to the Father, He would not leave the disciples without assistance, without divine presence. He promised them the Spirit. Even in the Psalm this morning, which was pretty depressing really, the last two verses say this “18 But God has heard me: he has heeded the voice of my prayer. Praise be to God: who has not turned back my prayer, or his steadfast love from me.” This is hope. This is what the world wants to hear. And what Peter was writing about was being ready to express hope, to tell others why that community of Christians had hope, even in troubled times.
So what is the hope then? The hope that is within me, I think, is that God is with us, that we are never alone. Quite often we might feel God-forsaken – even Jesus had his moment on the cross of feeling that – “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet we are not alone. This is of course what Jesus promised. The hope he leaves them with is the knowledge that if they love him and keep his commandments, to love God and to love one another, and to tell others about that love, that they will never be without the divine presence, not just around them but within them. Jesus said “I am in the Father, and you in me and I in you.” This is the promise that the resurrected Jesus Christ kept, giving such hope to the community that it thrived.
So I guess the mission thing and the personal relationship with God thing are linked. It is the internal relationship with God that drives the mission. In order to be a community of hope we strive to be individual people of hope. In that hope we come together as a community, because hope-full people naturally attract each other. And as a community full to brimming with hope-full people, we will attract many more people in search of hope.
Wishful thinking? Well, one can only hope.
The Lord be with you.
