SERMON PREACHED AT THE WAIAPU CATHEDRAL
OF ST JOHN THE EVANGELIST
NAPIER, NEW ZEALAND
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
(3rd May) 2015
Readings: Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:25-31
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8
I make no secret of the fact that I have often
found the second volume of Luke’s history fiercely disheartening. Like the infinite extensions of movies, Ice Age excepted, by which the second,
third, fourth extension becomes progressively more insipid (think of the Airport and Rocky series somewhere in the Dark Ages when I was still alive),
it has always seemed to me that Luke should have got out while he was ahead. In
Luke, the gospel-telling, he narrates a theologically infused, tight tale, with
powerful imagery and characters, nuanced especially for women in the church,
and leaves us with powerful images of the resurrection that we are called to
bear to the uttermost ends of the earth.
In Acts it turns to custard. In his attempt to tell
of the glorious and miraculous expansion of Christianity from Jerusalem through
the Roman Empire and to the theoretical ends of the earth (by which I do not
mean Invercargill) he pushes credulity and my patience beyond the pale. Every
time an apostle sneezes, it seems, thousands are converted. A recent glorious
three minute condensation of Acts in cartoon form conveys the problem well: “the
disciples are gathered together on Pentecost when the Holy Spirit arrives.
Tongues of fire hover over them, the disciples speak in tongues, Peter preaches
the first sermon, three thousand are converted. God: One. Satan: zero.” And so on. And so
on. Paul is converted. Paul preaches. Thousands are converted. Paul’s own autobiographical statements are
more circumspect.
The narrative depresses me: it has caused many
Christians to hype up their expectations of the gospel, to over-emphasize the
miraculous, to distort the impact of their own preaching ministries, while the
more pedestrian amongst us plod on with few if any signs of exuberant outcome.
Are we the unholy, the unspiritual? For many years I all but boycotted Acts. With
time I came to see the narrative for what it is – a highly symbolised portrayal
of the admittedly remarkable expansion of the gospel-message through the
labyrinths of the Roman Empire.
Sometimes I have been tempted to play off the
gospel writers against one another. I so much prefer John’s at first quiet but
increasingly strident narrative of love. Assuming that the Johannine Epistles
come from the same source as the Fourth Gospel, and I hold to more or less that
view, then we find a powerful if sometimes convoluted story of the embodiment of
love, and the challenge to the followers of Jesus to embody that love in turn
following the departure of Jesus from human sight. I find John simple to
follow: hang on to love, embody love, be love. If you fail to do that then you
fail in the Christian task.
For John no
less than for Luke the gospel is unstoppable. Where there is love there is God.
John – whoever he was – lived and proclaimed the gospel in a very different
culture to our own. But in a sense he
didn’t. Perhaps I’m wrong, and
socio-historical evidence would be hard to produce, but I suspect the need for
up-building love has never changed. John played carefully with linkages of love
and God: God is love and while, grammatically, that may not be quite the same
as love is God the telling of the gospel pulls the equation closer and closer
together. Where we, or anyone, exhibit the edifying forces of divine love,
justice, righteousness, there we are exhibiting the influence of divine love,
and God is at work in the exhibitor. But the love John’s Jesus exemplifies,
embodies and makes possible is no sloppy love. It is the unpopular love that
restores human beings, even the most broken, to their feet. It is love that
gives the unloved and unlovable a new start. It is love that that says even
those at the very bottom of the human chain of being are created in the image
of God’s love and can be given a place in the heart of God’s eternities.
There is an opposite of John’s equation. Where love
is not, God is not. I have watched this past week the outpourings of somewhat
naïve hope and the outpourings of somewhat embittered hatred towards the death
row candidates Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Under any circumstances I am
opposed to the death penalty, but, that aside, what has sickened me most has
been the hatred and anger directed towards those who have seen the possibility
of restitution and forgiveness in the lives of these and the other Bali Nine
“executionees,” not least my doctoral alma mater, the Australian Catholic University. There has been in many quarters a black and white “they knew
what they were doing, let them rot” attitude if not in the media than at least
in the column-square metres of feedback on media websites. There has been
little room for the belief that a human being who makes a dreadful mistake can
be restored, forgiven, presented with life once more. The doctrines of Jesus
who is God who is love are as unpopular today as they were in the first
century. Where love, with all its ramifications of forgiveness and rebirth, is
not, God is not, and a genuine Christ-centred gospel of hope and restoration
remains as critically unpopular today as it was in first century Roman
brutality.
For the Christ-follower, Christ-bearer, there is
an exhausting challenge. It is not easy to forgive, to restore, to nurture. It
is easier to perpetrate cycles of hatred and revenge. These, though, are not
the way of the cross, and it is to that which we are called.
Which brings me back to Luke’s second
volume, Acts. Forgiveness is and always will be the work of the Spirit of God
who makes the possibilities of God as they are embodied in Jesus available to
human beings. Restoration or even the slow lifelong journey towards full
humanity is and always will be the work of the Spirit of God. Luke got
that: the numbers of thousands of
converts may be symbolic, embellished even, though the exponential growth of
Christianity down through its early centuries gives him some credibility. But
his point was ultimately spiritual, not statistical: where we practice the
cruciform shape of divine, self-sacrificial love their lives will be changed
exponentially. Our job is to make our lives and our church communities an
embodiment of that love.
Amen.
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