the word | hughdbryant

Sermon for Morning Prayer on 21st April 2024, Fourth Sunday of Easter

Acts 4:5-12, 1 John 3:16-24

https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=580609123

I want you to think about the morning after the morning after the morning after the night before. Or possibly, the morning after that.

Think of something that has happened, something that you’ve been involved in, that was really a big deal. Something that really made a difference.

Maybe it was the day you got married, if you did. Or the day when you won an Olympic gold medal. Or the day when something really momentous happened in the world outside. Perhaps you can even remember Armistice Day, or perhaps more likely, the day after the Brexit referendum. In all those cases, things changed; things changed really radically for ever. Nothing would be the same again. In our Bible lessons today the context is another of those enormous events as we enter into the world of the very first Christians, in the first, the earliest, churches.

The momentous event was of course Easter, Jesus’ resurrection. They had either experienced meeting the risen Christ themselves or they had met people who had. That’s one reason why I always find it very exciting to read the Acts of the Apostles, written by St Luke, as book 2 of his gospel, in effect; and St Luke was certainly around at the earliest time even if he didn’t actually meet Jesus. St Paul describes him as the ‘beloved physician’ and there are certainly moments in the Acts of the Apostles, describing St Paul’s journeys, where the third-party narrative, ‘they’ did this, ‘they’ did that, turns to ‘we’ did it, so we can infer that Luke was there.

So it is a very immediate, personal account of what it was like to be an early Christian. And so we are seeing the Easter people, the first Easter people, picking up their lives and carrying on after the amazing events of Easter. And we hear that they ‘met constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, to break bread and to pray. A sense of awe was everywhere and many marvels and signs were brought about through the apostles’. They held everything in common, as we heard in one of the lessons a couple of weeks ago.

And then the part which we heard read today: Peter and John had healed a man who had been crippled from birth, who was begging at the gate of the temple. Peter said, ‘I have no silver or gold; but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk!’ And the man who had been crippled from birth sprang up, stood on his feet and started to walk.

Needless to say it attracted a lot of attention, and Peter said this to the crowd: ‘Why stare at us as though we had made this man walk by some power or godliness of our own? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has given the highest honour to his servant Jesus… And the name of Jesus, by awakening faith, has strengthened this man, whom you see and know, and his faith has made him completely well.’

The chief priests and the Sadducees, just as they had done with Jesus himself, took exception to this and considered it to be blasphemy. They arrested Peter and John and put them in prison. And the passage describes what happened when they were asked to explain themselves.

It’s very reminiscent of a similar episode when Jesus himself was tackled about healing somebody on the sabbath day. Again, to use a contemporary expression, the disciples pushed back against the criticism. What was wrong with healing somebody who was sick? You might be tempted to say, what does it matter who the doctor was? Just be grateful that the cure worked. But the high priests were concerned that Peter and John were giving credit to Jesus in a blasphemous way. But they insisted that it was Jesus who was the divine agent and it was the sick man’s faith in Jesus which had brought on his healing.

Let’s go back a minute to the question of the morning after the morning after the morning after the night before. Nothing was the same after Easter. Whom could you trust? There were so many people claiming that they were the true believers, that they had an inside track to understanding the story of Jesus.

So let’s look at the first letter of John, the first ‘Epistle General of John’ as the King James Bible puts the heading. It’s possible that the John who wrote the letter was the apostle, or certainly was the same person who wrote Saint John’s Gospel. Although he would have had to be pretty old, it’s not impossible. Some scholars do think that all three of them are the same individual.

Again we are in the world of the very early church, and it’s clear that in that world it was commonly expected that the end of the world was round the corner, and all the references to salvation and eternal life referred to a last judgement at the bar of heaven which was just about to happen. All the more reason, the early Christians felt, to be sure that you were a true believer, that you were one of the people who were truly saved, the elect.

And this is what the letter, John’s first letter, is all about. In one of my Bibles there’s a sub-heading describing the letter as a ‘recall to fundamentals’. It begins with these words: ‘It was there from the beginning; we have heard it; we have seen it with our own eyes; we looked upon it, and felt it with our own hands; and it is of this we tell. Our theme is the word of life. This life was made visible; we have heard it and bear our testimony; we here declare to you the eternal life which dwelt with the Father and was made visible to us.’ Do you remember the beginning of St John’s Gospel? ‘In the beginning was the word’. And it is all about love. The ‘word’ is Jesus, and Jesus is love; and the key to being saved is whether you are ‘in Christ’, which is a rather mysterious expression which is generally reckoned to mean whether Christ is in you.

In John’s First Letter there are a series of illustrations of what it means to be in Christ and to be in the light of Christ. ‘A man may say I am in the light; but if he hates his brother, he is still in the dark.’ Only the man who loves his brother dwells in the light. And then this great passage that we had read to us as the second lesson, contrasting two examples, one, the greatest example, that greater love hath no man…, And we ought to lay down our lives for one another, the supreme sacrifice; and the other, because we can’t be in a position to offer a supreme sacrifice every day, the everyday salvation, the everyday expression of love, which you will remember from the sentences before the traditional Holy Communion service, ‘Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?’ If a man has enough to live on, and yet, when he sees his brother in need, shuts up his heart against him, how can it be said that the divine love dwells in him? That’s how it works. God is love.

God is love; God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If we are in Jesus, in the Son, we are in love, love is in us; and the test of that is how we show that love. Let us love our brothers and sisters, let us love our neighbours. If we are Easter people, if we are like those early Christians on the day after the day after the day of the great event, what difference does it make to us? Is it still buzzing in our minds? Does it still draw us irresistibly to do things that we didn’t do before? Let us pray that it does.

Amen.

Sermon for Holy Communion for Thanksgiving at St John’s, West Hartford, 28th November 2013
Deut. 8:1-3, 6-10 (17-20), James 1:17-18, 21-27, Matthew 6:25-33

Carved on the inside of the pulpit at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge – I should say, ‘Cambridge, England’ – carved by the great preacher Charles Simeon, were the words, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus’ (John 12:21). In other words, the preacher’s job is not to leave you with an impression of the preacher, but to try to leave you with an impression of Jesus.

That having been said, I think I ought to tell you a little about myself, so that you can decide whether indeed I am qualified to be addressing you today. The bad news is, of course, that if you come to an unfavourable conclusion, I am standing here, six feet above contradiction …

In your notices for today, your Rector, Hope, kindly introduces me as a ‘maritime lawyer in England, a lay Reader from St Andrew’s in Cobham, Surrey’, who went to the same college as your Assistant Rector, and ‘who has charge over the chaplains at Guildford Cathedral.’ I have to admit that my legal practice ceased seven years ago now, so I’m a very bad guide to the ins and outs of the DEEPWATER HORIZON oil spill or the COSTA CONCORDIA tragedy; not only that, but it have also recently stopped organising chaplains at the Cathedral.

The reason for that is that I am now heading a team which is setting up, and will on 13th December launch, a food bank in Cobham, Surrey – from where I bring you greetings from the congregations at St Andrew’s in Cobham and St Mary’s in Stoke D’Abernon, which are the two parishes where I minister as a Reader. I’ll come back to the food bank in a minute.

The elephant in the room is that I am an Englishman, which probably disqualifies me from preaching to you Americans on one of your two greatest holidays, which are quintessentially American. We do eat turkey, but only at Christmas. Self-destructive urges are referred to as ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’. Christmas. Do your turkeys vote for Thanksgiving? Maybe they do. There is a Presidential pardon, I hear, so there must be votes in it somewhere.

So having said all that, which I suppose amounts to a rather laboured disclaimer, let’s turn our minds to the Word of God for today.

We are here to give thanks to God for His bountiful gifts. Although Moses in Deuteronomy speaks to the Israelites looking forward to the Promised Land, we’re already there: we have reached the Promised Land. You certainly have. Part of your history certainly involved a great journey from England to reach your Promised Land, and now here you are enjoying it. It is indeed a good land, where you will ‘eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing’, so obviously you shall ‘… bless the Lord your God for the good land He has given you.’

But here’s the bit which I want to talk about this morning. Moses said, ‘Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth”, but remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth.’ In the Letter of James, ‘Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above; coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.’ We have just sung the wonderful hymn based on that passage, ‘Great is thy faithfulness, … there is no shadow of turning with Thee’.

In St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, ‘Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. …. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.’

The question is whether it is us who are the authors of our own success or failure. Moses in Deuteronomy says very clearly that it was not because of the Israelites’ excellence or hard work, or whatever it was, that they had been saved from Egypt; it was because God had blessed them.

When I was in Hartford last, Hope and Bill asked me whether I had seen a film about Margaret Thatcher, called ‘The Iron Lady’. They said it was a very good film, and that Meryl Streep had done a wonderful acting job.

Now one of the things that I’ve noticed in my travels is that our friends in different countries very rarely see each other’s leaders in the same light as they are seen domestically.

Actually, perhaps we would all agree about President Kennedy. And yes, I can remember where I was when the news came through. Even at the tender age of 12, I remember the feeling of shock and disappointment which those events in Houston 50 years ago caused. I think that we probably would all agree that he was a great man, cut down in his prime, and that he had not been in office long enough to realise all the things he promised.

But when Hope and Bill told me what a wonderful film ‘The Iron Lady’ was, I had a different reaction. They, like all my friends outside the UK, thought Lady Thatcher was someone who should surely be celebrated, and that the film had done a good job of celebrating her. But I surprised them: I said I had no intention of seeing the film, however excellent it might be. Far from celebrating Lady Thatcher, I really thought she did a great deal of harm.

That is perhaps rather a harsh thing to say from a pulpit, but I stand by it. I can expatiate for a long time on the reasons. In essence, Margaret Thatcher believed that everyone had the seeds of their own success or failure within them: it was up to you whether you prospered or starved. She did not care for people who were not able to be active in the market, perhaps because they were old, or ill, or disabled, or not intelligent enough, or just poor. She even said to a journalist once, ‘There is no such thing as society’. She ruthlessly suppressed the powers of the labour unions, greatly reducing the protection available for ordinary employees. Thousands were put out of work. Industry was decimated.

One of her ministers suggested that, if one was out of work, one should ‘get on one’s bicycle’ and go where there was work. This was highly offensive, because the people who were out of work – at least metaphorically speaking – had no bicycles, and there was no work for them, anywhere.

According to Mrs Thatcher, it was up to you if you succeeded. According to Moses, and indeed according to Jesus, it isn’t. As we heard from Deuteronomy, Moses said, ‘Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth”, but remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth.’ Jesus said, ‘Look at the birds of the air’.

And that brings me to the food bank. When I was preparing to come here, Hope sent me an advance copy of your notices for today, which I’ve referred to already. In it, I see that last Sunday you an interfaith Thanksgiving service, joining with the Congregation Beth Israel from down the road. The offering suggested was an offering of non-perishable food for the West Hartford Food Pantry.

It might surprise you to know that, in the UK today, there are over 400 food banks. In the Borough of Elmbridge, where my home, Cobham, is, (which is said to be the second most prosperous borough in the country after Kensington and Chelsea), our food bank in Cobham will be the third food bank in that rich borough.

In England we used to have a ‘welfare state’. We had a safety net, and we prided ourselves on it. Nobody would starve if they were out of work, or disabled, or old, or suffering from anything else which prevented you from being able to have enough money, from your own efforts, to buy food. The state would provide a safety net. You would never starve. ‘Consider the lilies of the field’. It made sense.

That has gone. The present British government has so reduced the scope and effectiveness of our welfare state that there are large numbers of people who need to go to food banks for emergency non-perishable food: in other words, they are starving. There are people starving in Britain. I hope you find that as shocking as I do.

So we are following your good example, and setting up food banks. It is a very Biblical thing to do. In his letter, James says, ‘Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this; to care for orphans and widows in their distress’. Earlier on in the same passage, ‘Be doers of the Word, and not merely hearers.’

So after all, I think that, where I come from, we’re not that different from you. Christian people are trying to be ‘Doers of the Word’, we are trying to look after the orphans and the widows in their distress. And I pray that God will bless us – and you – in this work. At this wonderful time of Thanksgiving, with God’s help, let us all continue to ‘do the Word.’

The Morning After

A Turkey