Easter V 2010

Sermons 2010

This Flower Festival is a celebration of Life: and who can blame us for celebrating what is God's most precious gift to us. It was Dr. Johnson who said, "When a man is tired of London he is tired of life." Well, when we are tired of celebrating the gift of life, we are missing some important spiritual truths.

It has been said thousands of times already, but you have to admire these arrangements, don't you; and those who have created them. What talent! But what I notice is that you can look at an arrangement several times, you can think you have seen everything that there is to be seen, then all of a sudden, something new jumps out at you. There is a detail or a theme or a shape that suddenly takes you by surprise and then helps you to see the whole thing in a new and deeper way.

Life is a bit like that, isn't it? You think you've seen it all before and then, all of a sudden, surprise, surprise, something jumps out at you to take unawares. It's a bit like a politician, perhaps a senior politician, being out on the campaign trail, when all of a sudden a woman who has merely popped out to buy a loaf of bread, asks a question - and that and microphones conspire to upset things. Life is full of surprises! I wonder if we'll be saying the same next Friday morning!

You know the old story about the preacher and his choice of hymns for the Sunday after the election. If his party were elected, the opening hymn would be "Praise to the Lord, the almighty, the king of creation".

If the main alternative got in, it would be "O God our help in ages past".

If the un-tested third party got in, it would be "God moves in a mysterious way".

Well, I just hope that with all the speculation about three way splits, next Sunday I won't have to choose the hymn with the line "Three in one and one in three".

Life is full of surprises. The primitive church certainly discovered that this is always the case: because life itself is given and sustained by the God of surprises. After all, who was expecting Jesus Christ to rise from the dead - no one! This is one of the strongest arguments for accepting the truth of the resurrection!

Life is full of surprises because God is full of surprises, and the more we get to know this, the more we realise the truth of it.

We hear an account of a good example of this in this morning's lesson from Acts.

St. Peter found himself answering to the inner core of the ultra conservatives. It's ironic, isn't it? From the Gospels one gets the impression that Peter was the leader of the apostles. By the time we get to the 11th chapter of Acts, he is held to account by James the brother of Jesus and the rest of his sympathisers in Jerusalem - life is full of surprises. James's ultra conservatives considered that Christianity needed to remain within the bounds of Judaism. They saw no reason why followers of Christ should be let off rules to do with circumcision and diet. They were even called the circumcision party.

Little wonder, then, that Peter was in trouble - "Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?" As the rest of this morning's reading explained, he'd been minding his own business, praying in Joppa when he saw a vision. Basically, God told him that it wasn't for him - Peter - to say what food was unclean, he should leave that to God.

And then, surprise, surprise, as quick as a flash he has been asked to go to Caesarea where he finds a non-Jew who himself had had a bit of a surprise - he'd seen an angel in a vision telling him to call for Peter. Before anyone had time to catch his breath, Peter is baptising the man - the God-fearing Cornelius and his household.

Peter, like a man pleading for his life, asks the arch-conservatives, "Who was I that I could hinder God?" They were no doubt surprised to find themselves praising God with Peter, "Then God has given even the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life."

It's Peter's question that is most revealing here. "Who was I that I should hinder God?" If we don't want our lives to be upset, even turned upside down, by the God of surprises, then we would do well to stay away from church - and certainly a long way from its font. We would do well to get so caught up with the demands of daily living that we make no time for prayer or reading the Bible. We would do well to keep our focus of attention on worldly things. But then, having said all of that, there is no guarantee. After all, we are talking about God, not someone elected to a position of earthly power - whatever choice of hymn that might prompt - and we are talking about the God who is full of surprises.

Gerard Hughes, a RC monk and priest wrote a book entitled "God of Surprises." In it he talked about how different types of praying can reveal to us new things about ourselves and new things about God. We can never predict when God will speak to us out of the blue, when we might have a strong sense of him calling us to do something or stop doing something. But prayer, reading the Bible, worshipping: these things certainly help. Like looking at a flower arrangement: we can suddenly find ourselves surprised by a new revelation.

What the early Church was surprised about was that God's gift of resurrection life, a re-created life - the sort of life that is life at its very best: this gift is offered to everyone without exception.

Now, that is a truth worth celebrating!

With my very best wishes

John

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