Marriage and Vicars

The elderly vicar was searching his wardrobe for a tie before church one Sunday morning. In the back of the wardrobe, he found a small box containing 3 eggs and a hundred pounds in £1 coins.

He called his wife to the wardrobe to ask her about the box and its contents.

Embarrassed, she admitted having hidden the box there for their entire 45 years of marriage.

Disappointed and hurt, the vicar asked her, “WHY?”

The wife replied that she hadn’t wanted to hurt his feelings.

He asked her how the box could have hurt his feelings.

She said that every time during their marriage that he had delivered a poor sermon, she had placed an egg in the box.

The vicar felt that three poor sermons in 45 years was certainly nothing to feel bad about, so he asked her what the £100 was for.

“Well,” his wife continued to explain, “Each time I got a dozen eggs, I sold them to the neighbours for £1.”

At the River

A Southern Baptist minister was completing a temperance sermon. With great sentiment he said, “If I had all the beer in the world, I’d take it, and pour it into the river.”

With even greater emphasis he said, “And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it, and pour it into the river.”

And then finally, he said, “And if I had all the whiskey in the world, I’d take it, and pour it into the river.” The sermon complete, he then sat down.

The song leader stood, very cautiously, and announced with a smile, “For our closing song, let us sing Hymn Number 518: ‘Shall We Gather at the River’.”

My Dad’s Richer Than Your Dad

Three boys are in the school yard bragging about their fathers.

The first boy says, “My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, they give him £50.”

The second boy says, “That’s nothing. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, they give him £100.”

The third boy says, “I got you both beat. My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon… and it takes eight people to collect all the money!”

Peach Brandy

A Baptist preacher went to see a member of the community and invited him to come to Church on Sunday morning. The man was a producer of fine peach brandy and told the preacher he would love to attend his Church IF the Pastor would drink some of his brandy and admit doing so in front of the congregation. The preacher agreed and drank up.

Sunday morning came and the man came to Church. The preacher recognized him from the pulpit and said: “I see Mr. Johnson is here with us this morning. I want to thank him publicly for his hospitality this week and especially for the peaches he gave me and the spirit in which they were given.”

Being Authentic
Luke 8:26-39

Lord God, take my words and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you, you who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Eve
Some years ago, I remember being riveted by a film based on a true story. I can’t remember the title, or even the name of the heroine for sure, but I do remember the essentials of the story, and I think her name was Eve.

Eve was a young woman who was having some problems, and went to see a psychiatrist. Things seemed to be moving quite well, until one day an entirely different girl showed up for the appointment. She claimed to be a friend of Eve’s, but was very dismissive of her, and completely different in character. Where Eve was shy and timid, the friend was loud and brassy and over-confident.

It became apparent that these two totally different people, who even looked completely different, were actually the same person. Eve had multiple personalities, and each personality emerged not as part of Eve, but as a completely separate and distinct person. As treatment went on, so various other personalities emerged, although none were so strong as the first two.

It turned out that Eve had had one of those terrible and terrifying childhoods, with a psychotic mother who was very unpredictable. And the only way the child could survive was to become a different person in response to her mother’s extreme mood swings. The different personalities had taken over to such an extent that Eve herself was unaware of what was happening. Whatever personality she was in at the time, she was unable to recognise that the other personalities were also her. She thought they were different people, outside herself.

Fortunately, after an immense amount of hard work and deep pain, Eve was able to come to terms with her condition and with her traumatic childhood, and she eventually discovered who she really was. And she was able to own the different personalities as part of herself.

Masks
We all wear masks to some extent, so that we’re slightly different people at work and at home, with our families and with our friends. Perhaps slightly different people in church, too. In different circumstances, we tend to show different aspects of ourselves. But most of us who have good, stable backgrounds don’t need to split off the different aspects of our personality. And so on the whole, we know who we are, and we usually recognise each other, whatever the environment.

Perhaps the one person who never wore a mask, was Jesus. It seems from the gospels, that he was always himself, that he never hid behind a façade. It seems that the inner Jesus was identical to the outward face of Jesus, so that people meeting Jesus met the real person, not an aspect of him, or one side of his personality. They met the authentic Jesus.

Authentic
Someone who is that transparent, that authentic, is very close to God, for there are no thick layers of defence keeping God out. This made Jesus very dangerous to his opponents, for at some deep level human beings know the truth when they hear it, even when they deny it intellectually. And the truth can sometimes hurt.

It also gave Jesus immense healing power, for there does seem to be healing in the atmosphere when we can be truly ourselves with other people. Which is one of the reasons why small self-help groups are often very effective.

Legion
When Jesus met Legion, that poor deranged Gentile who had so many personalities even he couldn’t count them all, the depth of Legion recognised the truth, the authenticity of Jesus, and he cried out. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between the two men. Legion, hidden beneath so many multiple personalities they couldn’t be counted, and Jesus, completely one, a total unity within himself. And the depth of Legion recognised the contrast.

Jesus healed Legion. And a nearby herd of pigs, unclean animals, took flight and were drowned, symbolising the “drowning” or the “death” of the “unclean spirits”, the illness, within Legion.

Legion begged to be allowed to stay with Jesus, but now he was healed, Jesus immediately sent him out as an evangelist. Legion didn’t need any training. He wasn’t given any help; simply the instruction to go home, back to his own town, and declare how much God had done for him. He simply had to tell his story, for genuine stories are very powerful. And he did it, too. He went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.

Crowd Reaction
But the reaction of the crowd who came to see what had been going on, is interesting. Everyone was naturally terrified of mad Legion. He’d been under guard, he’d been bound with chains and fetters, but he’d broken the lot and escaped into the desert where he lived a sub-human life amongst the tombs. You might expect, once he was in his right mind, people’s terror would abate in their delight at having him back amongst them, cured and sane again. But their terror didn’t abate. It seems they were even more terrified now Legion was healed.

Instead of welcoming Jesus, this great healer, this authentic person, and begging him to stay, the people begged him to depart. They couldn’t cope with his power. It was beyond their experience, and rather than explore the new dimension, the potential he was offering, they wanted to get rid of him. They wanted to remain where they were, where they were comfortable. They didn’t want to be challenged by Jesus.

Honesty
Perhaps too, they were terrified of his honesty, his authenticity. It can be scary to be faced by someone, who doesn’t know how to hide or disguise his or her true motives or feelings.

Children can sometimes be very disconcerting, for they say what they really think, and it can be unflattering. It’s much more disconcerting (but rare) to meet with an adult who says what he or she really thinks.

Perhaps when Jesus said we must all become like little children, if we wish to enter the kingdom of heaven, he was referring to this quality of uncompromising honesty.

And so Jesus went away. He does what people want him to do. He does what people really want in their hearts, no matter what their lips might say. So if people want to send him away, he goes. If people want to crucify him, he allows them to do that. Imagine sending Jesus away, with all the gifts he had to offer. Those people didn’t know what they were doing, and they lost out in a big way.

But the opposite is also true. Jesus comes where he’s wanted. He heals when he’s asked. And those who benefit most from his presence and his gifts, are those who are most authentic. Those who are the same on the inside as they are on the outside. Those who have managed to put aside their masks, and are fully themselves in every situation.

Amen.

Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas sermon

Donnerstag 25 Dezember 2008

‘There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus’; we’ve very likely heard those words many, many times in carol services, like an overture to the great drama of the Christmas story. The emperor Augustus would have been delighted, I’m sure, to be told that his name would still be recalled after twenty centuries – but more than a little dismayed that it would be simply because he happened to be around at the time of Christ’s birth. There were all sorts of things for which he would have wanted to be remembered, and many of his contemporaries were not slow in telling him about them. And in fairness he had quite a good claim to fame: he had, after all, restored order to the Roman state and consolidated its global influence as never before. For many decades, a kind of peace prevailed from Germany to Syria – enforced by typical Roman brutality when any signs of dissent appeared, but still probably better than the chaos of the Roman civil war that had been going on before. It made sense to hail him as restorer of peace, and to look forward to a long period of stability and prosperity.

It didn’t turn out quite like that, of course; but Augustus’s reign was for many people a sort of golden age. In later generations, new emperors set themselves the goal of bringing back something of that stability and confidence, and they would describe themselves on their coins and statues as the rescuers of the world’s good order – as ‘saviours’: something that had already been common among the kings of the Middle East in earlier centuries.

So if you’d asked people of Jesus’ day what the word ‘saviour’ meant, the answer would be pretty plain. It was someone who would bring back the golden age, who would put an end to conflict; you could almost say it was someone who would stop things happening. Salvation was the end of history, brought about by one unique charismatic leader.

Curious that, all these years later, the same language still survives. Twentieth century totalitarian systems looked forward to a state of things where all conflict was over and change and struggle stopped. On the other side, after the end of the Cold War, some scholars were writing about the ‘end of history’, and an American President spoke of a ‘new world order’. In recent weeks, we’ve seen some of Barack Obama’s advisers and colleagues warning about the level of messianic expectation loaded on to the President-elect – wisely recognising the risks involved in tapping in to this vein of excited imagination always just below the surface of even the most cynical society. We have certainly not, as human beings, grown out of the fascination of saviours who will restore the good times. The Lord has bared his arm and is once and for all returning to Zion; surely that is real salvation?

And as always the gospel comes in with a sober ‘Yes, but…’ The saviour arrives, but goes unrecognised. He is hidden in the form of poverty and insecurity, a displaced person. Instead of peace and the golden age restored, there is conflict, a trial, a cross and a mysterious new dawn breaking unlike anything that has gone before. He was in the world and the world did not know him. Yet to those who recognise him and trust him, he gives authority (not just ‘power’, as our translations have it) to become something of what he is – to share in the manifesting of his saving work.

So what’s happening here to the idea of a saviour? The gospel tells us something hard to hear – that there is not going to be a single charismatic leader or a dedicated political campaign or a war to end all wars that will bring the golden age; it tells us that history will end when God decides, not when we think we have sorted all our problems out; that we cannot turn the kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of God and his anointed; that we cannot reverse what has happened and restore a golden age. But it tells us something that at the same time explodes all our pessimism and world-weariness. There is a saviour, born so that all may have life in abundance, a saviour whose authority does not come from popularity, problem-solving or anything else in the human world. He is the presence of the power of creation itself. He is the indestructible divine life, and the illumination he gives cannot be shrouded or defeated by the darkness of human failure.

But he has become flesh. He has come to live as part of a world in which conflict comes back again and again, and history does not stop, a world in which change and insecurity are not halted by a magic word, by a stroke of pen or sword on the part of some great leader, some genius. He will change the world and – as he himself says later in John’s gospel – he will overcome the world simply by allowing into the world the unrestricted force and flood of divine life, poured out in self-sacrifice. It is not the restoring of a golden age, not even a return to the Garden of Eden; it is more – a new creation, a new horizon for us all.

And it can be brought into being only in ‘flesh’: not by material force, not by brilliant negotiation but by making real in human affairs the depth of divine life and love; by showing ‘glory’ – the intensity and radiance of unqualified joy, eternal self-giving. Only in the heart of the ordinary vulnerability of human life can this be shown in such a way, so that we are saved from the terrible temptation of confusing it with earthly power and success. This is, in Isaiah’s words, ‘the salvation of our God’ – not of anything or anyone else.

For those who accept this revelation and receive the promised authority, what can be done to show his glory? So often the answer to this lies in the small and local gestures, the unique difference made in some particular corner of the world, the way in which we witness to the fact that history not only goes on but is also capable of being shifted towards compassion and hope. This year as every year, we remember in our prayers the crises and sufferings of the peoples of the Holy Land: how tempting it is to think that somehow there will be a ‘saviour’ here – a new US president with a fresh vision, an election in Israel or Palestine that will deliver some new negotiating strategy…It’s perfectly proper to go on praying for a visionary leadership in all those contexts; but meanwhile, the ‘saving’ work is already under way, not delayed until there is a comprehensive settlement.

This last year, one of the calendars in my study, one of the things that provides me with images for reflection e very day, has been the one issued by Families for Peace – a network of people from both communities in the Holy Land who have lost children or relatives in the continuing conflict; people who expose themselves to the risk of meeting the family of someone who killed their son or daughter, the risk of being asked to sympathise with someone whose son or daughter was killed by activists promoting what you regard as a just cause. The Parents Circle and Families Forum organised by this network are labouring to bring hope into a situation of terrible struggle simply by making the issues ‘flesh’, making them about individuals with faces and stories. When I have met these people, I have been overwhelmed by their courage; but also left with no illusions about how hard it is, and how they are made to feel again and again that they come to their own and their own refuse to know them. Yet if I had to identify where you might begin to speak of witnesses to ‘salvation’ in the Holy Land, I should unhesitatingly point to them.

In any such situation, the same holds true. In recent days, I have been catching up with news of other enterprises in the Holy Land, especially from the Christian hospitals in Bethlehem and Nazareth, struggling with all kinds of pressure on them from various sources and with the chronic problem of desperately small resources, yet still obstinately serving all who come to them, from whatever background. And last week I spoke with someone helping to run a small community theatre project in Bulawayo, supported by local churches, working to deepen the confidence and the hope of those living in the middle of some of the worst destitution even Zimbabwe can show. Signs of salvation; not a magical restoration of the golden age, but the stubborn insistence that there is another order, another reality, at work in the midst of moral and political chaos; the reality that is the eternal ‘Logos’, St John’s Greek term that means not simply a word but a pattern of harmonious relation.

That is what is made flesh at Christmas. And our own following of the Word made flesh is what gives us the resources to be perennially suspicious of claims about the end of history or the coming of some other saviour exercising some other sort of power. To follow him is to take the risks of working at these small and stubborn outposts of newness, taking our responsibility and authority. In the months ahead it will mean in our own country asking repeatedly what is asked of us locally to care for those who bear the heaviest burdens in the wake of our economic crisis – without waiting for the magical solution, let alone the return of the good times. Internationally, it is remembering that our personal involvement in prayer and giving is utterly essential, whatever pressure we may rightly want to bring to bear on governments and organisations.

Isaiah looked towards the day when the guards on the deserted city’s wall would see the return of the Lord ‘face to face’. So much of our witness to salvation depends on this face to face encounter (and yes, that was one of the ideals that helped to shape the work of this year’s Lambeth Conference). We can’t pass the buck to Caesar Augustus, Barack Obama or even Canterbury City Council – though we may pray for them all and hope that they will play their part in witnessing to new possibilities. To follow the Word made flesh is to embark, with a fair bit of fear and trembling, it may be, on making history – not waiting for it to stop. And that means speaking and working for Christ in the myriad face to face encounters in which he asks us to be his witnesses – to see and to show his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

© Rowan Williams 2008

Two chaps met after many years, having been at Ecclesiastical College together. One had become a bishop, the other was a parish priest. They were discussing their differing ways of life and the parish priest said to the bishop: “It’s all right for you, you only have to have one really good sermon and you can go round the country preaching it again and again, whereas I have to preach a different sermon every week.”

To this the bishop replied that of course he did not agree and that he was quite capable of preaching on any subject, and if his old friend would like to write some words and put them on the pulpit he would preach them that evening.

It came time for the sermon at Evensong, the bishop went into the pulpit and looked down at the slip of paper. It carried one word: “Constipation”.

The bishop looked round the congregation and said: “My text tonight is, ‘Moses took the tablets and went into the wilderness’.”

A question of authority
Matthew 21:23-32

May I speak in the name of the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Authority in our culture
Our culture puts great store on authority. Those in authority are listened to simply by virtue of their position. We may grumble and groan about them, but on the whole we do as they tell us.

And conversely, we regard with suspicion those who appear to have something to say but who don’t possess the necessary qualifications to say anything.

It’s when you find someone who has no qualifications whatsoever, yet who clearly possesses a kind of inherent authority within themselves, that trouble really brews. People like Jesus, who “taught as one having authority” (Matthew 7:29) but who (as far as we know) had no formal training to be a rabbi.

Pharisees were big on authority
The Pharisees, who were into authority in a big way, couldn’t cope with the success of this itinerant preacher, who turned the time-honoured, traditional concept of religion on its head, but whom the ordinary people loved.

Perhaps it was because the ordinary people recognised Jesus’s inherent authority and found it to be so much more convincing than the authority of the Pharisees, that the religious leaders of the day hated him so much. They went out of their way to trap him, but always ended up with egg on their faces.

Brilliant put-downs
Jesus seemed to have a knack of brilliant put-downs. Brilliant, because they were so simple and so direct and so honest, and because they revealed the religious leaders in their true colours of jealousy and suspicion and hate.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees asked Jesus who gave him the right to preach and teach in the temple. It was an officious sort of question, the prelude to a humiliating order to move on. But yet again, Jesus beat them at their own game. He asked them by whose authority John the Baptist had acted.

John the Baptist
Since John the Baptist had only recently been executed by King Herod, an act that would undoubtedly have roused the fury of the people, the Pharisees themselves were trapped.

If they said John’s authority was only human, they’d be practically lynched, for John the Baptist was revered as a great prophet. On the other hand, they could hardly admit that John’s authority might be from God, for then they’d have to admit that Jesus’s authority might also be from God.

The Pharisees had no response to Jesus and they kept very quiet. But Jesus refused to allow them to escape that easily, so he told them a story about authority — or the lack of it.

Typical teenagers
It does my heart good to hear this story of the two teenage boys, because even after 2000 years, their reactions come across as so typically teenage.

When the father asks his sons to give him a hand in the garden, you can almost hear one boy replying, “Yes, alright, hang on a minute. I just want to finish this TV programme. I’ll come straight after that, I promise.”

While the other, suddenly finding some homework, says, “I’m not coming. Must finish my Maths, can’t possibly cut the lawn today.”

The father seems to have been a remarkably mild and tolerant man, for he doesn’t yell and scream at his sons, telling them to switch that television off and get out in the garden this minute.

Instead he accepts the two responses just as they stand, and leaves his sons to make their own decisions for good or for ill while he himself goes off to get started.

Even the Pharisees knew
It’s obvious even to the Pharisees, which lad complied with his father’s request. The Pharisees are forced to admit that the rebellious, defiant son who initially refused to do as his father asked but who then arrived to help out, was the son who complied with his father’s wishes.

Red herrings of attitude and appearance and lifestyle and rudeness don’t enter into the equation, because for Jesus the choices are simple.

It’s about love
Lifestyle and appearance and attitude have nothing to do with living the Christian life, which is just about love. People who appear to be the worst people in the world to human eyes, may know much more about God’s will than those who appear to be practically saints. Because those who learn how to love, can’t help but live in the open, accepting, and non-judgmental way, Jesus advocated.

Jesus sees past outward appearance
Jesus sees straight past outward appearances into the inner being. An inner being which knows how to love will be close to God, living and loving with him, but an inner being that has never discovered how to love will be unable to experience God.

And God, the father in the story, is gentle and accepting of whatever choices people make. The father didn’t berate the boys, either to admonish the rudeness of the lad who refused to obey him, or to admonish the slackness or laziness of the lad who failed to keep his promise.

God allows us free will
God allows us to do as we wish, without comment, without pressure, and without blame. The choice is ours, and it’s simple.

Either we open our hearts and minds and souls to God, in which case we can’t help but respond with love, or we spend our efforts worrying about appearances and lifestyle but forget how to love.

And put in simple terms, that may simply be a choice between the authority imposed by human beings, and the authority which develops from within and which comes from God.

Amen

How can we know when we are healed?
Mark 1:29-39

Lord God, take my words and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you, you who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lourdes
Most of us will have heard of Lourdes, the Roman Catholic shrine in southern France. It’s said that, 150 or so years ago, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a saintly young woman named Bernadette there.

Pilgrims, hoping to be cured of their ailments, continue to visit the shrine in large numbers. Over the years, many thousand have left behind their crutches as witnesses to the Lord’s power, to make them well.

Nothing new
This sort of thing is of course nothing new. Pilgrims throughout the ages have made their way to sacred places, such as Compostela and Walsingham, in the hope of finding healing, wholeness and well-being.

Many people dismiss such journeys of faith as piety gone astray, and as especially inappropriate in an age of medical advances such as our own. They say the time would be better spent visiting medical experts.

Yet many people have also come to the realization that healing is an essential element of the Gospel message. Christians have long treasured the scenes of healing found throughout both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Surely, the Lord will not disappoint those who today come seeking his power and favour in their own lives.

Jesus’ ministry began with healing
The ministry of Jesus began with healing. Think about the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. No sooner had Jesus called his disciples to his side than he cured a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 1:23-26).

Then, leaving the synagogue, he entered the house of Simon-Peter and his brother Andrew only to find Simon-Peters mother-in-law in bed with a fever. Our Lord took her by the hand and lifted her up. The fever left her, and she got back about her life (Mark 1:29-31).

A second chance
For those whose lives Jesus touched — whether they were perfect strangers gathered on the street outside the door, or whether they were close to him and his disciples like Simon-Peters mother-in-law— for all of them, healing meant a second chance, and hope where there had been no reason for hope.

In an instant, healing brought freedom from physical ailments, as well as inner change and transformation. It’s no wonder “the whole city was gathered” at Jesus’ door. The scene was probably not so very different from contemporary Lourdes at pilgrimage time.

Not an end unto itself
But in the ministry of Jesus, healing wasn’t an end unto itself. In the first words Jesus spoke, as recorded by Mark, he proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15). Healing heralded the coming of a kingdom that transcended this world of pain and death.

And most importantly, this kingdom was within anyone’s grasp, not in some far off place. It offered lasting spiritual integrity in a world of human weakness and sin.

All need healing
We are all still in need of healing, even at the peak of our physical vitality. You only need to turn on the television or open a popular magazine to find the latest fountain of youth or miracle cure touted and sold like kitchen knives at a market. But makeovers and the latest fad diets can’t assure us of happiness and fulfilment.

Real transformation, as understood in the Gospel, will never be a passing fancy. For paradoxically, the Gospel makes us acutely aware of our own ultimate frailty and death. Even those cured by Jesus became sick again at some point and eventually died.

In the moment of healing we come to experience God at work within our lives, but only if we recognize our utter dependence on God and the kingdom. We have no power to make ourselves well. Jesus’ message wouldn’t have resonated with the people of his day, much less our own, had he not first led them to embrace their own vulnerability and need for God’s love.

For Jesus, healing was not so much about breaking the laws of science, as it was about the power of God to change lives and make all things new.

Same etymological route
In our own English language the words “healing”, “health”, “wholeness”, “wellness”, and “holiness” all share the same etymological root, meaning “full” or “complete.”

At whatever stage of life we may be — whether child, adolescent, middle-aged, or elder — we recognize implicitly our own deficiencies and lack of completeness. We experience our need for something or someone beyond ourselves. We need the Lord’s strength not only to make us well, but also to make us whole.

Jesus cast out demons
Jesus “cast out many demons” (Mark 1:34). For some today, the quest for inner harmony and wholeness is undermined by the contemporary demons of addiction and other behaviours that lead to ruin and self-defeat, sometimes even to death itself.

But for those in pursuit of the kingdom, wholeness comes only in oneness with God. And healing, however or wherever experienced, makes that oneness possible. Jesus took Simon-Peters mother-in-law by the hand and raised her up from her sickbed, and she was made well.

Seldom was Jesus’ healing such an intimate and personal act. She came to realize, as no one else, the meaning of the kingdom and oneness with the Lord. But that closeness and oneness is ours to have as well.

How can we know?
How can you know when you have been healed? Seems like an odd question. For many, the answer is obvious: when the pain is gone, the fever has come down, and the disease is no more.

A better answer
But the Gospel gives a better answer. “The fever left her,” we are told of Simon-Peters mother-in-law, “and she began to serve them” (Mark 1:31).

As she was healed, she immediately began to serve others. Her focus changed from her own needs, to the needs of others.

When we can once again focus outside ourselves, when we’re ready to help others in their need, we’ll know that we too have been healed. We’ll no longer be slaves to our hurts and resentments. We will at last be made whole. And we shall live.

Amen.

Speak, for I am with you
Acts 18:1-16

Lord God, take my words and speak through them, take our minds and think through them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you, you who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Athens
Paul and Silas have set out on a second missionary journey, picking up Timothy along the way. But after being pursued from city to city by some troublemakers, who wanted to harm Paul, he’d gone ahead of the others into Athens, while they stayed a while with the believers in Berea. Paul spoke to a group of philosophers in Athens, but didn’t get a particularly enthusiastic reception. So he moves on to the next town: Corinth.

Corinth
Athens is the more familiar city to most modern ears, but in Paul’s day, Corinth had surpassed it in importance. The Roman military had attacked and destroyed major portions of the city in 146 BC, after its citizens had taken part in an anti-Roman uprising, and it had remained in ruins for a century. But in 46 BC, Julias Caesar passed through, and saw its potential as a Roman colony, so the city was rebuilt.

By the time Paul passed through Corinth, it was probably the wealthiest city in Greece — a major multicultural urban centre, with a population of some 750,000 people. It was a bustling seaport on the narrow strip of land that joins the southern part of Greece to the northern part.

In addition to the financial wealth of Corinth, it had a wealth of religious options as well — most of them pagan. A noted temple to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, was there. Prostitution was so rampant in the city, that the Greek word meaning, “Corinthian girl”, came to be a slang term for a promiscuous woman. Corinth was also a centre of homosexuality, with a temple to Apollo, the epitome of male beauty.

The city had no time for a little Jewish tent-maker called Paul, who wanted to tell them about another Jew, called Jesus. Things didn’t look very promising for him, but he persevered.

Friends and enemies
Paul made many friends in Corinth, and many enemies. He stayed with a Jewish husband-and-wife team, Aquila and Prescilla, with whom he shared the trade of tent-makers. They were in Corinth because that’s where they’d gone when, along with the rest of the Roman Jews, Claudius ordered them out of Rome.

It was a custom in New Testament times to teach every Jewish boy a trade. Jesus had been trained as a carpenter. Paul learned the craft of tent making, which involved working with leather, hair and wool. It may be that it was Paul’s shared trade with Aquila and Prescilla that brought them together at first — not necessarily a shared belief in Jesus. That may have come as Paul sat cross-legged in their shop and gossiped the gospel to the customers as he plied his needle.

Evangelising the Corinthians
Paul begins his evangelisation of the Corinthians, by getting involved with the local Jewish community, and its weekly worship. He engages in dialogue with Jews, and with Gentile sympathisers. When Silas and Timothy arrive from Macedonia, they find Paul already fully engrossed in the business of the word, busy testifying to the Jews that the Christ, the life-changing and world-changing Messiah of Jewish expectation, is Jesus.

But he failed to persuade the whole community; Jewish resistance became so strong that Paul gave up on them. Shaking out his garments was akin to shaking the dust off one’s feet, as Jesus had previously instructed his disciples to do when they encountered resistance (Luke 9:5).

Depressed by the attacks of his enemies, and the resistance of materialistic Corinth, to any talk of spiritual things, he went to bed miserable. Then in the night he had a dream. He saw Jesus, who told him to cheer up: “Don’t be afraid, but speak out and don’t stay silent; for I, Jesus, am with you, and . . . there are many in this city who are my people”.

Sharing good news
Well, Jesus was right. There were many in Corinth who belonged to Jesus, though they didn’t know it yet. The church grew there until there were several different congregations, in different parts of the city. Eventually it was one of the biggest churches in the country, and the good news about Jesus fanned out from there to build growing congregations all over southern Greece.

This wouldn’t have happened if Paul had given up when things were hard. But the story of Jesus was like a fire blazing up in his heart. He just had to share it. You can’t keep good news bottled up inside you.

The siege of Samaria
We’ve just heard a perfect illustration of this in the Old Testament story of the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6.24-25). All the people were trapped inside the city, while the army of the King of Aram was camped round it, waiting for them to starve.

The only people who weren’t inside the city were four men, and they weren’t allowed in because they were lepers. They squatted outside the city gate, starving like everyone else. Eventually they said to one another, “If we sit here, we die. If we go to the Aramean army camp, they might feed us, in which case we live a little longer; or they might kill us, in which case we die a little sooner. Might as well take a chance” (2 Kings 7:4).

So they hobbled up to the Aramean camp and found it empty — all the soldiers had done a bunk the previous evening, when they heard of an Egyptian army coming to attack them. The people inside Samaria didn’t know this, but the four lepers found food aplenty in the abandoned camp, and started to gorge themselves. But soon they realized they’d have to go back to the city and tell the others. You can’t keep good news bottled up inside you.

Don’t be afraid
You and I have some good news. It’s the good news that God loves us, every one of us, and that Jesus died on the cross to show his great love for us. You can’t keep good news like that to yourself, any more than the four lepers could’ve kept the good news of free food a secret from those who didn’t know about it.

There are many ways of sharing good news. God may be calling you to study until you can proclaim it from the pulpit. Or you may be called to gossip the gospel with your family, friends, and workmates. Or you may be one who proclaims God’s love, by showing love for your family and friends, your neighbours and people who are needy, until they can see the love of God shining out of you.

Whichever way God calls you to, don’t hold back because you think the task is impossible. Jesus says to you, as he said to the Apostle Paul, “Don’t be afraid, but speak out and don’t stay silent; for I, Jesus, am with you, and no one will harm you, for there are many in this place who are my people” — though they may not realize it, until you tell them, that Jesus loves them.

Amen.