Trinity Sunday Evensong: John 3:16

If you had to sum up the Christian faith in a single verse of Scripture I wonder what that verse might be. Have a think, and do tell me afterwards. I’d really like to know.     I guess that many of us would want to plump for something that gave us a reminder of God's  love...for that, surely, is at the root of pretty much everything that the Church proclaims, struggle though we may, in our human frailty, to make that love clearly known. When I was a teenager, I had a phase of frankly alarming evangelical zeal, which manifested itself in a desire to place stickers with cheery Bible texts all over my home town, reflecting this basic message. I don’t recommend this as a way of achieving anything much, except possibly a police reprimand for defacing public property – but for a while that summer most of the lamp-posts between my home and the school bus stop were decorated with smiley faces and the reminder “Smile, Jesus loves you”. Other stickers assumed a degree of familiarity with the Bible that in retrospect seems very optimistic – for they proclaimed quite simply John 3:16 – without any further explanation at all.
Nonetheless, there IS something about that verse. Gathering my thoughts as I prepared for this sermon, I remembered a moment early in my ministry as a deacon, when this passage came up in the morning lectionary Still new to the context, and rather weighed down by the formality that characterized the Parish Mass, I was well into the story of Nicodemus from John 3 when I realised that the reading continued over the page from the words I could see in front of me. In fact, they continued all the way to verse 16. To stand there in the midst of God's people and speak those words aloud was, suddenly, the most mind-blowing privilege..The words were so real that they almost burned on the page and I was allowed, even expected, to share them with others. It seemed to me then that perhaps sharing those words was the most important task of ministry, that everything we do and everything we say as ministers of word and sacrament is in some way or other a translation of this text – into other words, into symbolic action, into a whole way of life…
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not die but have everlasting life."
Today is Trinity Sunday. WE’ve just heard a wonderful Collect intoned, which may well have given you a deep sense of mystery but not much of a clue as to how that mystery might be solved. Listen to it again
Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy servants grace, by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty to worship the Unity: We beseech thee, that thou wouldest keep us stedfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.
WE are asking God to keep us steadfast, anchored deeply in this faith – but I suspect that if any one of us was backed into a corner and asked to explain exactly what this faith was, we wouldn’t choose to express it in terms of trinity OR unity. The doctrine of the Trinity, however many knots it may tie us into, is fundamentally an attempt to describe our human experience of God’s love. One theologian, Catherine Mowry La Cugna, puts it like this:
 "The doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately therefore a teaching not about the
abstract nature of God but a teaching about God's life with us and our life with each other. Trinitarian theology could be described as ...a theology of
relationship, which explores the mysteries of love, relationship, personhood and communion within the framework of God's self-revelation in the person of Christ and the activity of the Spirit."

In other words – God is love…Jesus reveals this…The Spirit enables us to share it…
or if you prefer “God so loved the world...”
We do get ourselves entangled when we try to sum all this up in an intellectual proposition – and that’s really not surprising. After all, we are exploring nothing less than the ground of our being, the one in whom all things hold together
This is not a mystery to be solved, in the grand tradition of Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple...but one to inhabit.
It’s all there in John 3:16
God so loves..not the good, not the chosen, not the Church – but the WORLD
The world which God made and saw was very good – the world whose beauty and potential still shines through for all our best efforts to obscure it. Sometimes its as simple and as impossible as asking God to lend us God’s eyes – so that we can really SEE and learn to love God’s creation.
God so loved the world...
But God does not love passively...that love finds its expression in action, in the sending of God’s Son...God’s self-revelation, - God showing us what God’s love looks like when translated into a human life completely and utterly shaped and informed by the presiding action of the Spirit.
Jesus is the complete and flawless expression of God’s love in human form…
We glimpse this perfection and are drawn into relationship by a love that we cannot resist
“He sent his only Son so that everyone who believes in him should not perish...”
We are made for this. This is our place of safety...the place where we will not, cannot be touched by the tangle of our faults and fears, the loud voice of our own insecurity and its equal opponent, our pride…

You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless til they find their rest in you…

Believing in Jesus is absolutely nothing to do with head-knowledge...with intellectual assent to the fact of his existence (in the way that we might believe historical or scientific truths that we don’t know from first hand experience). It is, rather, to do with where we put our trust...where our hearts find rest and lodging. In practice it means believing that self-giving love is at the heart of everything...and that this love is the strongest power there is, bringing joy out of grief and life out of death.

It means, too, LIVING this out as our core belief.
Not settling for anything less, - no matter how eloquently it may be expressed
What might that mean for you? How might it translate into your daily life?

Hold these words and ponder them in your heart…
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life…
Amen.
Let it be so.

Sermon for Pentecost and Pride

Pentecost and Pride – Coventry Cathedral 2019
Acts 2, John 14
When the day of Pentecost had come the people of Coventry Cathedral were all gathered together in one place and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire space where they were gathered and……
How did you feel as you heard those words?
What would that sort of dramatic outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit actually mean for us here?
Do you honestly believe it could happen?
Every year as we approach Pentecost, I’m conscious that I’m being pulled in two directions.
On the one hand, I feel safe within the familiarity of  Anglican liturgy. I come expecting to find God (in this community) amid the blend of Word and Sacrament, of beautiful music and well chosen words and I am seldom disappointed. I’m Anglican by choice as well as by chance, and I do value worship which is conducted “decently and in order”, no matter what those of you who’ve seen my last-minute dash in to Morning Prayer might assume…so imagining the sort of radical transformation that the Holy Spirit might bring to us is, on one level, more than a little alarming.
But on the other, I have experienced the joy of worship transformed and lives brimming over with radical love – the gift that I find in charismatic worship, particularl in the community that gathers each year for the On Fire conference. I know for myself how it can be when you are so filled with the Spirit that you know for a fact that there’s nothing in creation that can’t be changed by God’s power.
And surely, looking at the diverse challenges that face both church and society today not one Christian believer could fail to pray for the transforming power that enabled a group of fearful uneducated men to take on the world for Christ?
So, while I value what we have I know that we so often settle for less than our primary calling – to BE the church – a sign of God's kingdom, a powerful agent of transformation in a broken world...And I know that we will continue to fail, without a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit – in our lives, in our city, at this time.
So, I want radical change – but I’d like to keep some things the same. You see my dilemma – and I suspect that this is simply par for the course. We all know that encounters with God wont leave us untouched – and sometimes the changes and challenges ahead seem too huge to contemplate.
The good news is - I rather suspect the disciples felt the same. When the Acts reading begins, they are gathered together, waiting. Though Luke doesn’t say so, it’s quite possible that they are actually gathered together in the upper room, their unofficial Jerusalem HQ. This is holy ground for them, the place where they’d celebrated the Passover with Jesus, and hidden when the Lord was arrested and crucified. It was the place they had huddled in the fear and grief of Holy Saturday and the place where they heard the first rumours of resurrection. There they had encountered the risen one who came among them despite barred doors, there they had regrouped when he went from them, there they had watched and prayed for his promise to be fulfilled.  Holy ground indeed,the place where they felt themselves to be a community, still united despite the departure of their Lord.
Yes, they were a community in waiting, uncertain about their next step, but a community gathered in faith and hope nonetheless.
Does that sound like is? I really hope it does!
Of course, they were also a community under threat.
Outside the house, the streets were thronged with people once again – just as they had been at Passover…some sort of festival going on...different voices, strange sounds, hints of unfamiliar ways of living right there on their doorstep. Perhaps the disciples defined themselves as if set against the crowd outside. They were the ones with the special knowledge and experience of God, though the crowds were the ones with the courage and freedom to move about the city.
We don't really know, but we DO know that with the coming of the Spirit, everything changed.
Hiding no longer, they went gladly out from their place of safety, out to speak to the crowds, overwhelmed with enthusiasm for a message that just had to be delivered. They were caught up in the excited turmoil, which was so pervasive that it seemed to onlookers that this was a scene of drunken revelry.
Rather alarming, I think?
But alarming or not, it worked. This wasn’t simply a particularly raucous worship service from which everyone went home scratching their heads, thankful to get back to normal.
Lives were changed.
People heard the Gospel and responded to it. They recognised the authentic presence of God in those men and were stopped in their tracks.
For the disciples, the coming of the Spirit meant that they had to let go of the securities of their holy place and go out into the streets, among the crowds
The Spirit made that venture possible…and in doing so, opened up Salvation to the whole world.
Wonderful, inspirational....but perhaps a bit too far away from our expectations here this morning.
But, you know, Pentecost was not a once only event...The Spirit has been active throughout history, moving over the face of the waters at creation, transforming Ezekiel's dry bones, descending like a dove upon Jesus at his baptism.
And the Holy Spirit has not vanished from the world, not even from the Church!
At that first Pentecost, God reached out to communicate directly with everyone.
And God still does, though not always, of course, in the mighty rushing wind, the multilingual gifts and high excitement of the day of Pentecost.

We have to do the same.
Filled with God's life-breath, Inspired as God's church, this is our calling.
Knowing that God so loved not church alone but the whole world, we are to reach out to her in all her pain and brokenness and speak God's words of healing and forgiveness.
Knowing that our language may not be adequate, we are to listen to God and allow the Holy Spirit to translate so that we may more fully communicate God's love.
We speak so many different languages – of mind and heart and spirit – culture and community – yet all must hear the Gospel.
There is no official language for God rather God comes down and speaks our language, whatever it may be.
And God’s language is always, incontravertably, the language of love.
Sometimes the Church fails to make that as clear as she should. Sometimes all that outsiders can hear is our in-fighting...or self-protection...or judgementalism. Please hear me when I say that I do not believe that THIS is the message God has left us to share with the world.
We are treading on dangerous ground if what we do is at odds with what we aspire to preach.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments…the commandment to love God with our whole being – and the commandment to love our neighbours as ourselves.
Love, love, LOVE
Love unconditionally, love without judging, love without fear...What have you got to lose?
Love so that God's one supreme message of love is translated for everyone you meet to understand.
Today, the Church's birthday, we should not celebrate a monochrome church, full of people just like us. God’s love is broader, wider, deeper than we can ever imagine so  let us rejoice in the diversity of God’s people,  within and beyond our doors, and  reach out to share good news with them. Here at Coventry Cathedral this is easy for us – as our values include “Hospitality of people and ideas” and our CCN priorities, “learning to live with difference to celebrate diversity” - but that mission is not limited to us alone. It’s the calling of the whole Church – to make God’s love in Christ known to everyone we meet.
Our good news is rooted and grounded, wholly and eternally, in the love of God, from which nothing in heaven or on earth can ever separate us. So, let us make that love our language today, tomorrow and always
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Your love.
Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created,   And You shall renew the face of the earth.