Be Doers Sermon

Be doers of the Word

Whenever I go to the hospital now, I have to listen to the announcements about Swine Flu  -  I have to wash hands with anti-bacterial gel before going onto the wards. Keep the germs out. Don’t spread disease. Even The Church of England has given guidelines as to the use of the chalice at communion so concerned are they at the spread of disease.

Symptomatic of our present age – obsession with external dirt – programmes on TV which highlight war on dirty homes seem to be compulsive viewing for some.

And yet, as in Jesus’ day when he challenged the crowds around, We sometimes get hung up about such externals; we don’t always have the same concern for the things internal.

Holiness is not primarily about keeping the unclean out/ keeping out of harm’s way

= attending to the sense of holding fast to the God who is holy, whose Son JC comes among us that we might have life, and have it more abundantly, not despising or rejecting the world, but embracing it and transforming it through God’s love and mercy for humankind.

Todays’ readings remind us of how we are not to get ourselves into a holy huddle in church and cut ourselves off from a world we judge to be unclean but to cultivate a culture of social holiness, of Christians exercising the sort of ministry and mission engaged in by the Wesleys which attended as much to the fruits of the spirit as to the need for personal holiness.

The epistle to James, much despised by some sections of the Church over the ages because it seems to give undue weight to good works over and against faith, reminds Christians that we must make the fruits of the Spirit manifest in the lives of believers. The grace of God works in those who believe in the process of what we call sanctification, that growth in holiness which was so central a part of the teachings of the Wesleys. It’s not an ether/or but both/and. Justification and Sanctification belong to each other.

So the epistle gives us good advice. To be doers of the Word (the teaching of Jesus - the laws of God to be put into practice) in all we do. Faith and Love in Action at the heart of our Christian lives. Otherwise we’re like the person who looks in the mirror and forgets what we look like or even worse goes away and presents a different face to the world entirely. But there are Christians like that and a bit of them in all of us. People who come to church just once in a while, hear a good sermon, feel moved by the praise and the prayers, and then go away and resume their normal lives. People who pray in extremis, now and again when the going gets tough and they call in favours from the God they want on their side when the world gets tough. But how do they treat the widows and the fatherless and all those who call on their generosity and compassion? Can they ever for one moment stop thinking about No.1?

Now some will say that life is too busy, too frenetic – we need space to reflect and get things right with God. Time for ourselves and our relationship with God. But for some that will become an excuse – to engage in a false spirituality which only attends to my holiness, my feeling I read my bible and say my prayers and feel good about myself without much thought to those around.

Just look at the faces of the homeless and unemployed who walk our streets and hang around the Common. Just look at the strained faces of families under pressure. Just think of members of our family who face illness and anxiety. Just for a moment think of those around us here whose needs too are manifest. Do we choose to respond to their need, or concentrate on our own sense of wellbeing and of holiness in its narrowest understanding? 

God calls us to costly service which attends to our holiness in the social context – in family and community, in church and in the world outside – to be fellow workers with the Christ who is not afraid to eat of the things which come form the market washed or not, Jesus who pours scorn on the obsessive washing of the Pharisees as they ignore the things of the heart.

Christians who sit back and let others get on with the work of compassion and action and are content to feel good about their own sense of wellbeing are like those back seat drivers who are so concerned about avoiding bad drivers on the road or the potholes that lurk everywhere (and especially on Mill Road it seems) that they offer gratuitous advice even though they are not drivers themselves. Or people who continually moan about the faults of government, whether central or local, but who have never even voted let alone got involved in politics in any way. Or even church members who in our over stretched times still expect the ministers and preachers and stewards to do everything and shirk their own responsibilities as church members.

Be doers of the Word and not hearers only.

How then should we be involved? Just three suggestions for this morning at the start of a new connexional year.

1.    Evangelism : we are all evangelists as I think Leo Cheng reminded you a fortnight ago. How committed are we not merely to hearing the gospel but gossiping it as well. Telling our family and friends what we have heard. Sharing news of the activities of this strange organization called church to which we go week by week. Telling them of the opportunities for bible study and group discussion that we share together ( if you’ve not yet signed up for the new Disciple groups being formed and the Wednesday Evening sessions it’s not too late to do so!) . And remember that we spread the Word just as much by how we act as what we say, in the way we lead our lives. So let’s be a Jesus-shaped church modelling our evangelism on the way Jesus exercised his ministry.

2.    Social Concern and Witness: one of the marks of Christian discipleship is generosity – the way we’re prepared to give to others and for others, of our money and our time in the service of Christ. James in his letter picks out the orphans and the widows as examples of the concerns of the world, those who are more vulnerable and needy. Jesus in the parable he tells his disciples recorded in Matthew’s gospel Chapter 25 lists those who are the benchmarks of being his followers – how we respond to the needs of the hungry and thirsty, the strangers and the sick, the naked and those in prison. Our readings in recent weeks have highlighted the Christ  who is Bread for the World, feeding not only the spiritual but also the physical needs of those around us, giving them

·         The shelter of God’s protecting love

·         The touch of God’s healing love

·         The liberation of God’s redeeming love

·         The hand of fellowship to all God’s people whatever their condition

 

3.    Spirituality : Jesus shocks the Pharisees by what they regard as his laxity in observing religious rules and regulations. But in doing so he highlights the shallowness of their own concept of holiness, focussed on externals. It is not sufficient to be continually doing in our evangelism and our social concern without attention to the inner resources needed to feed our ministry and mission. Prayer and bible study and reflection feed the spirit which enables us to be effective evangelist and activists. Thomas Merton was a monk who showed that reflection by the Christian is a powerful form of activity as he prayed for contemporary issues at the height of his nation’s turmoil over Vietnam and Racial policies, at a time of concern also for nuclear weapons and the war on hunger. To be doers of the word doesn’t mean being constantly active in the world which leaves us drained and powerless to help anyone. Nor does it mean withdrawing into a false spirituality which withdraws from the world with all its ugliness and hate. Sometimes we need to step back from the world, to pray for it, to put the Word and the World side by side, to work and pray that the world may be filled with the Word of God. Our Sunday evenings the first Sunday of the month for the next year will explore different aspects of spirituality and what we can learn from different spiritual traditions in the life of the Church.

We as the people of God in his Church need to be filled with his Spirit, to listen to his Word and then to offer ourselves in service. But what you may be asking?  Well as a Church we’ve committed ourselves to key tasks for the year ahead flowing out of our Mission and Strategy document. I hope that if there are things that need doing, you will put your time and money behind these projects.

Francis de Sales once wrote that the true test of a preacher was that a congregation goes away not saying “what a lovely sermon!” but “I will do something about what has been said”. That is my prayer for you this morning. I hope that we can all commit ourselves to being doers of the Word, in our evangelism, in our social concern and above all in our prayer and spiritual lives which feed the life of the Church as well as our own individual lives.

At this threshold of a new connexional year we ask God’s blessings on all our activities together, that all may be co-workers in the Kingdom. We pray that we will give a welcome to newcomers in our midst and help them join not a holy huddle but a great movement of social witness proud to bear the names Wesley and Methodist at the heart of our being Church.