Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 17.22-31; 1 Peter 3.13-22; John 14.15-21

The parishes of the diocese are wrestling at present with the questions our bishop has put to us about how we can grow the Church. We had a meeting of our deanery with bishop James a few weeks ago when we gave him the answers to the questions he'd put to our Parochial Church Councils over a year ago now. Most people chosen to speak at the meeting told us in great detail of the many things and the work they were doing in their parishes. And wonderful and varied things they were too. A huge amount of good work is being done in God's name by very good, committed and dedicated and godly people. There's no doubt about that.

After we'd all spoken, the bishop told us how Church attendance is very much in decline. And it seemed to me that he'd told us that most of what we are doing, albeit great and good work, isn't contributing at all to increasing the numbers of people who are coming to church. There are one or two exceptions here and there but by and large, it's true that church attendance is still very much in decline. So what IS to be done? Where is the answer?

I think and believe that we are facing the same sort of situations that St. Paul and the other apostles faced in their time in preaching the gospel especially to the gentiles. There's all sorts of religion out there in the world. People are attracted to a whole range of 'spiritualities'; most of which have nothing to do with Chrisitanity. And so the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News of Jesus is foreign and alien to them. And even if they've heard of Christianity, they know nothing about it.

Earlier this week, on Thursday, we celebrated St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury. He was sent by Pope Gregory from Rome in the year 596 with a group of monks to re-evangelise England. Christianity had been around in Britain since at least the 2nd century due largely to some very zealous Celtic monks who preached the gospel tirelessly and fearlessly. And also during the Roman occupation especially when the emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity. But the faith, following the Roman occupation, having waxed strong in earlier centuries began to wane and so Augustine was despatched to England re-invigorate the faith. He wasn't a confident man and wanted to turn back. But the Pope wouldn't let him and so reluctantly but in faith he got on with the job.

I have a feeling that the present age had a feel of what both St. Paul and St. Augustine encountered. There's much weird and wonderful spirituality out there in peoples' hearts and minds but it's a far cry from our faith. And there's lots of stuff out there too that's simply heresy in Chrisitan terms. And by that I mean that there are many who claim to be Christian but they don't believe in the Holy Trinity, that Jesus is God, as we do. And this sort of thing the early Fathers of the Church did so much to fend off and stamp out in their own time. But also too now we have so many different interpretations, even within the true Faith itself, of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus that people new to the Faith don't know what it is they are supposed to believe to have a true Faith. There's so very much confusion out there in the minds of people who are attracted to the Faith. And this is an added dimension to the difficulties that early preachers of the gospel had.

So, we have a situation now in this country very much like those early years after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It's true that St. Paul looked at the prevailing culture and used what was in it as a peg on which to hang the gospel as we hear in the Acts of the Apostles today. But he didn't beat around the bush. He went straight to the point. There were no gimmicks in St. Paul's preaching. And I think that we will only get more people into our churches when WE  understand more fully what's at the heart of our Collect and readings and post-communion prayer today. It's what's at the heart of this Easter season which will shortly be coming to a close.

The Collect speaks about the significance of the resurrection for our whole life. Through the resurrection the Collect says, 'God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His Son.' That's the gospel, in a single sentence. Yes, it might need explaining to the uninitiated, and that's our job, yours and mine. But we'll only be able to do that if we understand what it means by having experienced Christ's resurrection in our own lives, in the way the gospel speaks of it. We can only pass on what we know as real and true for ourselves. And St. Paul explains that 'in Him (God) we live and move and have our being. God is so close to us that we abide in Him. When we are convinced of that and we know that then we can show others. St. Paul says, in the Acts of the Apostles that God put everyone where they are in the world so that they 'would search for God and perhaps grope for Him and find Him.' God wants those people to have that relationship with Him through which they will experience the resurrection of Jesus in their lives, making once dark lives where they 'groped' for God, full of the glory of the light of Christ, where at last they will see. And it's for us to help them into that relationship, not least through our own conviction, as St. Paul did for the people in his age and St. Augustine five centuries later in his.

We don't have to do all the work for others who don't know God in Christ, in fact we can't even begin to show people God, they have to discover Him for themselves having seen that our lives are lived in Him and the difference that makes to us. It's through what we say to them, through how we live our lives in front of them that they might, as our post-communion prayer will say towards the end of the service; come to 'thirst for (God), the spring of life and source of goodness'.

Then and only then, when people experience these things this passing from darkness to light in us and in themselves, these things which are the movement of the Holy Spirit of God in different ways in them and us, will people not only come, but stay. And when they stay, both they and we too, more and more of us together, will learn to love God more and give Him the praise, glory and worship that is due to Him from now until the end of the ages.