Here is my sermon from last Sunday. If you're interested in what the bible readings were that day follow this link. . We used the Jeremiah, Ephesians and John readings in the service. I seem to have had a bit of a song theme running through my sermons for the past couple of months. It has been largely accidental, and I wouldn't force it, but there are a lot of songs around that are saying some very deep things, and its good to connect our Sunday life with what is going on in the rest of the world. Of course, one of the problems in posting a sermon is that the writing style is different to a written article. So I offer the text with apologies to those of you that hate sentences starting with conjunctions!
Today, once again we come across part of God's plan. - we've seen over the last few weeks that it works over a vast timescale, that it is often surprising and that it turns the existing world power structures upside down.
I must admit I was a little wary of speaking yet again about God's master plan, and yet the readings steer us so clearly in that direction that its hard to avoid it really.
For today more of that plan is revealed. Jeremiah speaks of bringing us back from lost places. "I am going to bring them from the land of the north, and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor, together; a great company, they shall return here." The thing that strikes me most about what the prophet says here is this "I am going to bring them...."
Not "I’ll give them a map and see if they find their own way back" not " I am going to send someone else to do the hard work of going and get them." but "I am going to go and get them MYSELF". And that is what he did in Bethlehem, being born amongst us as a human being.
That is the unique thing about Christianity really. People often ask, what is the difference between Christianity and other religions, and there are a number of answers. but the one that I like most is the one which says "many other religions are about how we can try to find God. Through prayer fasting and other religious practices, and obeying laws and commandments. But Christianity is about how, in Christ, God came and found us. God came in Jesus to bring the lost human race back home, because the whole human race was drifting badly from the path that leads to life.
We were drifting and God offered us a baby’s hand to lead us back.
As Katy Perry sang.
Do you ever feel like a plastic bag
Drifting through the wind, wanting to start again?
Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'Cause there's a spark in you?
You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine
'Cause baby, you're a firework
(Here's the link to the whole song and lyrics)
God sees that firework spark in us. The one that can light up the sky like the ones we saw shooting upwards as the new year began the other night.
And how does God know just what that spark can do?
He knows because He put it there!
But a firework is just a grey cardboard tube with some powder inside it unless someone lights the fuse, someone ignites the light. And that's what Christ came to do.
So Christ came. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood, to bring us back from those lost places where we were drifting like plastic bags in the wind - And we could be very far away from home indeed - but He would still come and get us.
Jesus told us that that was his job description himself, just after he’d transformed the life of Zaccheus, the corrupt tax collector so radically that he offered to give half his posessions to the poor
“The son of man came to seek and to save the lost” .
We concentrate mostly on the save the lost bit of that job description. But the seek bit is important too.
And sometimes when he is seeking those far away from home, he uses us to help him in his work. Some of you may know that I have been involved in the work of Fresh Expressions for a while, which aims to go and bring church to birth in places far away from the church culture. Not to replace existing churches, but to work alongside them, to reach more people. to adopt a “go to them” agenda. The inspiration for that has always been from the Christ who became incarnate in Jewish first century culture and spent 30 years eating, drinking, and living with them, in order to find them and bring them home.
"Go to them" was also the kind of thing the choir did recently when we went to the market, and to Leeds General Infirmary just before Christmas to sing carols and bring the good news of the birth of Christ to ordinary people just where they were, even the couple that were very literally lost in a hospital corridor trying to find a ward that wasn’t listed on the map. And whenever we step out like that incredible things happen.
I don’t know whether the choir members noticed the effect they had on the people around them - but there were tears in many people’s eyes, and draws dropping and gasps of amazement. - “Don't worry- they’re happy tears!” one lady said to me.
The last time I stepped out in that sort of way was at Ash Wednesday last year. The Archbishop of York appealed for local clergy to go and help him by collecting prayer requests in town which he then prayed for in ten minute vigils once an hour in St Helens church in York city centre. It was called “Say One For Me”. People were amazed that we weren’t asking for anything from them, other than what they might want prayer for, and some tears flowed then too, as people who were simply having a bad time had a chance to talk about it as they filled in their prayer request card. I randomly met one of these people a couple of months later in town. She had asked for prayer for her agonisingly painful wrist and was thrilled to tell me that it had got better that same day and hasn’t been any trouble ever since. God came and met her by the fountain in the town and brought her what she needed at that moment in time. There is a definition of salvation which goes “simply allowing ourselves to be found” and that's what that lady did. The one who searches is the one who does the work.
Yet there is more to come once we are found. St Paul reminds us in the letter to the Ephesians that God’s aim is to
To gather up all things in him.
To adopt us so that we might become children of God
To fix us, through his healing blood, where sin has broken us
and to give us an inheritance - so as God’s children we get God's good gifts.
Paul reminds us that God started planning this before the very start of time. Our very famous gospel reading today reminds us of exactly the same thing too.
"But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God."
This is God’s amazing plan for us all. And we don’t have to screw up our foreheads and by sheer force of will make it happen, we don’t have to accomplish lots of difficult tasks, go on massive retreats, fast for years on end or climb a very high mountain. We don’t even have to be fit and healthy. Jeremiah tells us the fragile, the blind the lame are all being gathered too. We simply have to allow ourselves to be found and carried home on Christ’s shoulders.
So may the saving searching Christ work in us and through us, to seek and save the lost and bring us all safely home Amen.
