Sunday Service 15th September

Change of heart, change of journey

25/8/24

Hymn 771: If you believe

Hymn 599: Holy Spirit hear us 

Reading:  Acts 26: 12-18: John

Hymn 554: Rock of ages

Hymn 522: The Church is wherever

Welcome to our meditation for 25th August.

Have you ever had a change of heart?

They are tough things to admit to, for one it means admitting that we have been wrong.

But often it is in that change that we find freedom.

But we will look at that after our reading and prayer from John.

Sermon

My wife was watching a detective programme and I was suddenly aware that a policeman said something really stupid.

There was a cordoned off area, lots and lots of police tape round it, and in the middle of the scene was a bit of canvas and underneath the canvas was a dead body. You knew it was a dead body because there was a bit of leg that was poking out of the canvas.

And the police man was chasing off the bystanders by saying, ‘Nothing to see here.’

NOTHING TO SEE HERE?

Of course there was something to be seen, there was a dirty great big dead body in the middle of the street...that is something to see.

The problem with that is that now we are distracted.

We see the leg of that dead person dangling out of the canvas,

we imagine that there is a mass murderer out there waiting in the side streets to catch us unaware and murder us.

all we can think about is how we can protect ourselves from this unknown stranger.

But maybe he or she isn’t a stranger,

;

What if it is our next door neighbour, what is it is that shopkeeper in the corner shops, what if it is the vicar?

Who can we trust, who can we believe?

Wait a minute, what if it is the policeman who told us that there was nothing to see?

If the murderer was the policemen that is exactly what he would say so that we put our guard down and then we were more vulnerable.

So now our whole life is living in fear, and that’s not the intention of the policeman.

Now we both know that what the policeman said, and what he meant were two different things.

What he meant to say was...

‘There is nothing here that needs to concern you.

You are safe and can carry on with your life.

You don’t need to worry because us police-people are dealing with this atrocity and we will keep you safe.

So get on with the important things of your life and don’t be distracted by this thing.’

Sometimes, when I read this passage, I feel like saying, ‘Nothing to see here.’

Because this passage is often a huge distraction to many people.

Because what people often read into this passage, and what is real in our faith, are often not the same.

The problem is that when I say, ‘Nothing to see here.’

You lot all say, ‘But there is flashing lights and God’s booming voice speaking and it awesome.’

And now you are distracted.

So let’s start off with what we often read into the passage.

It starts off as part of Paul’s defence case to Agrippa. He has been in prison and Agrippa wants to hear Paul’s case.

So Paul starts by stating how he got into the situation.

And he talks about being a Pharisee, someone who was a deep believer in God.

How he believed that God gave the law as a way for us to get close to God.

We could see God’s character in the laws, how they created a structure for us to live by and a way to treat other people.

To honour God’s laws was to honour God; to break God’s laws was to dishonour God.

And then this group came along who Paul regarded as heretics.

They stated that the laws only pointed to God’s nature as a God who cared for humans, and to honour God was to show that kindness to others.

In fact the showing of kindness was superior to obeying the laws.

The ultimate nature of God was not law, but love.

This threatened everything Paul believed in so he persecuted the Christians and on the way to Damascus had a vision of Jesus which changed everything he believed in.

And it was in love and kindness that he found a renewal of his faith.

And all that is just factual.

Except we wonder if that has to be factual for all of us as well.

If that’s the way Paul found Jesus, is that the way that we should find Jesus?

Well maybe not that exact way, because the only recorded version of Jesus working that way was with Paul.

But something similar, something dramatic, something that can’t be mistaken for anything else.

And you get some groups that say that, groups that say that unless you have had an experience like Paul, then you’re not really a Christian.

Unless you can name the date and time of that experience then how do you know you have any faith at all?

This has caused so much heart ache to those who have maybe been brought up in the faith all their life, and have gradually come to the realisation that they are in a relationship with God.

Or those who haven’t had a great dramatic experience, but have come to the conclusion that there is a God and they want to follow him as best they can.

To them there can often be that doubt, ‘Why haven’t we had such a awe-inspiring experience?

Does that mean we are lesser Christians, or not even Christians, because of that?’

I would love to be a Bible policeman and put a cordon round this passage, and as people come up to it just stand wisely and move people on with, ‘Nothing to see here.’

Because the truth is that there is nothing special happening here.

For a start this is not the be all and end all of Paul’s journey, there is the rest of his story to tell, and that is equally as important.

If we make this conversation experience the be all and end all then we are saying that Paul finished his journey at this point.

He didn’t need to learn anything more, grow any more, or reflect any more.

And that is just wrong.

Unfortunately though that is often the message we subconsciously take from this.

The result is the emotional experiences of people going to great revival meetings,

they find a wonderful emotional experience,

and then think that’s it,

they have gotten to the finishing line, they have become a Christian and that’s all there is to it.

Unfortunately the next day, or the next week, or the next month the monotony of life and  their mistakes catches up with them.

They don’t want a journey of slow growth, they want the emotional high again, and when they can’t get it they often feel the experience they had the revival wasn’t real,

that they were manipulated by clever preachers,

and instead of having a faith that helps them, they abandon the faith that could help them.

Here’s the truth of Paul.

He was a work in progress.

At Damascus he started a journey, but it was just the start.

Before his conversation Paul was clever and arrogant and quick to fall out with people.

Surprise, surprise, after his conversation he was clever and arrogant and quick to fall out with people.

But that was OK, because now he was on a journey.

There would be character flaws that carried on through Paul’s life, but here’s the thing, his faith allowed him to reflect and grow and change.

Let me give you an example...

Paul fell out with Barnabas, the one person who had stuck by Paul through thick and thin,

and the reason he fell out with him was that Barnabas wanted to stick by Mark.

Mark had deserted them before in one of their missionary journeys because he was young and homesick

Barnabas wanted to give Mark a second chance, the way he had given Paul a second chance.

Paul felt the work they were doing was too important to carry baggage.

So they split; Paul went one way, Barnabas and Mark went the other.

But that wasn’t the end of it, because all of them were works in progress,

all of them were on a journey of faith,

all of them had a chance to grow and learn as Jesus walked with them and they reflected on their lives.

Mark, on his journey of faith changed, he changed so much that his faith was so strong that he wrote one of the Gospels.

Paul, in his journey of faith eventually got to see Mark’s giftedness and took Mark on as one of his most trusted helpers.

That is the message worth seeing here.

Paul was on a journey of faith, a journey that would change him bit by bit, for the rest of his life.

As a work in progress Paul was always going to be someone who could make mistakes.

But as a work in progress Paul was always someone who could grow and learn from those mistakes.

And now it is our turn.

Our faith is never set in stone; our faith is never finished,

because being a Christian is not a destination to achieve,

being a Christian is a journey that we are on.

A journey of discovery, where we are always learning more about God,

always learning more about ourselves,

and in doing so always seeking to know and help our neighbour.

So what parts of life do you need to reflect on?

Where is God taking you next?

Who do you need to show God’s love to?

Or where do you need to grow?

The good news; God knows we are a work in progress, so he never gives up on us.

The bad news; we are a work in progress, so we don’t get to stop, there is always someone we can be kind to, something we can learn, some area we can grow in our faith.

Let us pray

Heavenly Father

When was the last time we reflected on our story?

Where were we born, and those who influenced us in our early days for good and bad?

What lessons did we learn?

Did our hardships harden us and make us cold to others, or did they soften us and create a greater compassion for what others go through?

What do you want us to learn, where do you want us to grow?

Where have we travelled; the places we have been and the people we have met, did they encourage us to be open, or did they encourage us to be suspicious?

What do you want us to learn, where do you want us to grow?

What was our greatest achievement, or our greatest regret?

And have we been stuck in that moment, living in the past instead of learning from the past to live in the present?

What do you want us to learn, where do you want us to grow?

We reflect on Paul and his long journey of growth and understanding.

We may never be as clever as him, we may never have the insights he learnt.

But we can grow closer to you today than we were yesterday.

We can share more today than we did yesterday.

We can risk love more today than yesterday.

May we grow to understand that our stories are... well... our stories.

No one else has walked in our shoes.

No one else has our history.

No one else has our understanding of God.

Each of us is unique, special, beloved.

We are not Paul, or Mark, or Barnabas...but we matter all the same.

More importantly, may we see that our story is part of Your story, and that others are uniquely part of Your story as well, so we are joined together in faith.

So from this time of worship may we go,

to show the life-changing presence of God in our lives,

challenging us, instructing us, saving us,

that we might make real the grace of God to transform our world,

one life story at a time.

Amen.