In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I
wonder what your expectations are this morning of this sermon? Is it one that
is supposed to wow, challenge, disturb or encourage you? Is it supposed to set
the tone? Am I supposed to impress? For, although this is not my first sermon
here in this church, it is my first as the vicar of Bro Eleth. Ficer Bro Eleth
dw i. that is a title that will take a little time for me to adjust to. I have
had my nephews and niece staying with me this week. They sometimes when they
want something call me ‘Rev Kev: super uncle’ and have composed the following
ditty about me, which goes to the tune of Postman Pat
Vicar Kev, vicar Kev, vicar Kev and
his black and white dogs
Early in the morning, when Shaun is
always snoring, he will always sing his favourite hymn
I
hope I might always be a super uncle. I am not though a super Vicar. Like you,
I am called to this place, and in this particular place on the northern edge of
Anglesey will attempt to listen to God for myself and for you, but always with
you.
Listening
to God is of course part of prayer. If you think prayer is difficult, then you
are in good company. The Apostle Paul writes, ‘we do not know how to pray as we
ought’. This should encourage, not least because Paul penned some of those most
beautiful prayers in the New Testament. His experience though was that it was
not always easy echoes ours. I don’t know yet what your prayer lives are like.
Mine is shaky. I do want us to look at ways which we can create opportunity to
pray. I am advocate for prayer. In part, I stand before you because I have
prayed as I have heard God’s call to leave Bro Cybi, a place which I loved, to
come to Bro Eleth, places and people that I am getting to know.
Sermons
are bi-lingual, aren’t they? For at their best they try to interpret the
Scriptures so that we might listen to what God is saying together. It is
bi-lingual because we as human beings are attempting to hear the voice of the
divine, and although we are made in the image of God, we are not ourselves,
divine; which is quite fortunate in reality. The Scriptures were written down
in particular languages, not I am afraid were in English or Welsh, but Aramaic,
Hebrew and Greek and at a specific time. We therefore try to interpret together
what the writers of the Scriptures might be saying to us today. Indeed being a
bilingual community, we have much in common with the earliest Christian
communities.
I
would like you to have the reading sheet, and focus particularly on Paul’s
letter to the Church at Rome. This morning, I am going to have a broad canvas
rather than go into particular detail. I will at times do the latter.
The
first and blindingly obvious thing to note is that we are coming in half way
through a letter to someone else. Therefore we need to be careful lest we jump
to assumptions. The letters really were intended to be read as a whole, and
would in all probability have been read aloud in one sitting.
The
second is that Paul is a theologian, he is therefore someone who thinks deeply
and attempts to communicate simply. Paul’s vocation was to make sense of the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus to the people of his day, whether they
were Jewish or not, rooted in the stories of God or not, indeed I might add
whether they were interested or not.
I
blog, tweet, do Facebook and the like, but I am not great at understanding how
PCs work or the internet for that matter. It just works or it does not.
Periodically, I press something, and it asks me whether I might like to reset
something or change the normal templates. I usually resist such an urge.
For
Paul, Jesus has reset how the world is and should be understood.
Paul
has confidence in God.
What
then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He
who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with
him also give us everything else?
God must be for us, argues the
Apostle, he was prepared to give up his Son for us. Paul draws us on another,
that of the story of Abraham being prepared to sacrifice Isaac. Notwithstanding
the fact that this is a problematic story, when we attune ourselves to the
Scriptures we see that they interconnect. Paul connected the story of Jesus
with the stories of the Hebrew Bible that had fashioned and shaped him. They came
alive in new ways.
Some of us might be wondering what
having an eccentric new vicar will be like. What being one Bro Eleth might
mean. I trust and pray that in being together we might rediscover our stories
of faith, indeed that we might rediscover that God loves us and is for us.
For Paul, the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus give him unshakeable confidence in God.
He asks those he is writing to, who
brings charges against them? The answer is no one. As Christians, we can
sometimes feel guilty
-
There
are too few of us
o
How
can I share my faith?
o
I
hope the new vicar is not going to suggest that.
-
How
are we going to pay our way?
o
I
don’t want to do another fundraising event
o
It
is always the same people
-
What
can we do to maintain our lovely buildings?
o
Our
families have been here for generations
o
They
are all that is left that speak of the community that was
Such
things might seem relatively unimportant given that Paul asks us what separates
us from the love of God.
Paul
is convinced that God is for us and walks with us.
I
have three hopes
-
That
we will become a people of prayer
-
That
we will become people who know the Scriptures
-
That
we will become people with a story
It
may be that we are all those things already.
Perhaps
just a little fine tuning is needed.
I
hope I have passed the audition and you will walk with me into the future that
God has for us.
Let
us pray.
(Please note it may be that an entirely different sermon will have been preached)
