Easter 5
Sermon preached by the Revd Canon Richard Ames-Lewis
I am currently sitting on a local residents’ committee planning an event for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, which the nation will be celebrating at the beginning of June. My function on the committee has been to design the poster, and to my surprise my design has proved controversial. I produced what I thought was a rather nice design incorporating a fluttering Union Jack, which gave bold red, white and blue colours. But the committee turned it down. The Union Jack was disliked. The royalists on the committee said we ought to use the national Jubilee logo, which has the Queen’s crown on it. And the others said that the Union Jack was far too political, and far too British. Ours was to be an inclusive event, they said, so what would it feel like to see this poster if you were not British? Of course, I went back to the drawing board, and the poster now boasts the national Jubilee logo. I am sorry to say that this logo is in a dolorous purple colour.
I have been reflecting on this experience, both of what it means to live in Britain, a pluralistic country where many people do not call themselves British; and also how out of touch my presuppositions are, apparently, with the generality of public opinion. Jubilees in the past, like other national events, used to be celebrated with much flag waving, and I thought this one would be as well. But I reckoned without the fact that nationalism is becoming increasingly problematic, especially in this time of war. It’s associated with jingoism, militancy and disdain for other nations, in other words exclusiveness, and this, in part at least, is what our national flag, in a divided country, has come to mean.
Where does such a development take the Christian community? Perhaps especially the Church of England which, out of historical accident, is a national church with the Queen as our Supreme Governor. What does it mean for Christians to be “national” when membership of Christ overcomes all national boundaries? Are Christians to be divided up by our politics? Like everyone else I have looked with horror at pictures coming out of Ukraine, and the desperately painful bombed and ruined churches of the Ukrainian church betraying the dreadful dishonesty of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy.
Our calling is to be part of our society, and yet to be counter cultural. And to model a different way of living. As St Paul says to the Ephesians
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and slander and anger and wrangling, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” Eph 4.31-2.
Two ideas spring out of our readings this morning to help this reflection.
In the first reading, from Acts, we heard something of this in Peter’s experience. The problem there was Jews and Gentiles. Could it possibly be that the Good News was for all people, Gentiles as well as Jews? Did Jesus Christ die for everyone? Peter describes his vision, of God’s gift of the abundance of all created things for human enjoyment, far beyond the tradition and rules of Jewish law, which convinced him that God “makes no distinction between them and us”. No distinction, being inclusive. I like the use of the words “them and us”.
Then our Gospel reading takes us to the Upper Room and to the last supper. Judas has just gone out. It is dark outside, but inside the company is illuminated by the presence of Christ. Jesus begins to teach, and his teaching is summarised in his words
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13.34). Jesus loves us abundantly, therefore we are to love each other abundantly. Moreover, the way Jesus loves us is by sacrifice, by laying down his life for us. So our love for one another also is to go beyond mere human loving. Our love for one another makes no distinction, no them and us, no black and white.
The thing is, Jesus’s New Commandment was validated by his resurrection. Because he rose from the dead, and is alive among us now, we have continuous and unlimited access to his love, and love is the touchstone of our life as Christians in the light of the resurrection.
So we should follow the new commandment. The first thing is that is NEW! Every day we have a chance to live again in the light of the risen Christ. When we rise each morning we rise with Christ. As John Keble wrote, “New every morning is the love, our wakening and uprising prove.” How wonderful it is that the Easter season is always in the Spring, when daily we can enjoy new growth, new colour, new fragrance. We can see these as signs of the new love of God in Christ, each day, which is both new in the sense of fresh and in the sense of different. Love is never old but always new, never stale but always fresh, never still but always growing.
And the second thing is that it is a COMMANDMENT! Love is what we have to do. It is an imperative, “Love one another as I have loved you.” It is our calling as Christians, to love God, to love Jesus Christ, to love one another, to love our beautiful world, and to love our enemies. And we have to work at loving, enlisted as we are by our baptism in the army of lovers, “love to the loveless shown that they may lovely be.” And by this to model for the world a new and different way of living, By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.
We work at loving in our prayer life. Prayer is the language of love. Sometimes we might think, How can we pray to God who can allow all these things to happen? My reply is that we do not pray to God; we pray with God, through the risen Christ who is praying with him continuously, and we pray with the whole Church continuously at prayer. No doubt God is suffering with our world, just as he was when his Son was crucified, but he does not love us any less, and he cannot love us any more.
So because loving in this way is our calling, we can regard it is a task, a job we need to do. Someone said to me recently that for her prayer was often more like worry. With this danger, it’s worth remembering that our prayer lives need to be regular and organised, joining in with the whole Church if we can. And when it comes to what to pray for, again our prayer needs to be if possible dispassionate, almost unemotional. Things to pray for will include the big needs of peace, freedom and humanity, but also we shall be driven to pray for particular issues and special people, offering them up to God in Christ, who is already praying for them.
For though we may occasionally feel downcast, God is never downcast, and the risen Christ is always with us. In Augustine’s famous phrase We are the Easter People and Alleluia is our song!
Our alleluias resound at all times and in all places, for the heart of our prayer is the Eucharist, the meal of love. Here we receive our Lord Jesus Christ, food for our journey, tokens of his abundant love. He reminds us of our calling, he restores us in faith and he rebuilds our hope. Love will never come to an end.
The 18th century hymnwriter John Mason wrote
How great a being Lord is thine, Which doth all beings keep
Thy knowledge is the only line, To sound so vast a deep
Thou art a sea without a shore, A sun without a sphere;
Thy time is now and evermore, Thy place is everywhere.
