Watch this week's service on YouTube
Download the order of service here -25 08 24 Bartholomew
Read this week's Church News
The Readings.
Acts 5.12-16
Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico. None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women, so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he came by. A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured.
Luke 22.24-30
A dispute also arose among them as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. "You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
The Sermon
Prepared by The Revd Canon Dr Alan Billings.
When the lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus
asked him what the law told him to do? The lawyer replied: he should love
God, and his neighbour as himself. Jesus said this was right.
But the lawyer went on to ask: Who is my neighbour? Jesus replied with a
parable. The story of a Samaritan, not a Jew, who went to the aid of a Jew
who had been beaten by robbers and left at the side of the road. The
meaning could not have been clearer. Our neighbour is anyone who is in
need.
That is a very sweeping definition. Our neighbour is not just someone in our
extended family, or someone who lives down our street, or someone who is of
our race or religion, but anyone in need. We must do our best to meet the
needs of others, whoever and wherever they might be. It’s a tall order.
In today’s gospel, Jesus applies that principle to leadership. The disciples will
never be people with worldly power, but whenever they show leadership it
must not be the sort of leadership of those powerful men. They are only
interested in their own wants and will boss and bully others in order to get
them. Whenever the disciples step up and show leadership, it must be about
meeting the needs of others - service.
This value – meeting the needs of others – is something that the Christian
church has always had front and centre of its teaching. I’ll come back to it.
Last week, I met Fr Ron in his sheltered accommodation in Scarborough. We
chatted and agreed that old age brings few benefits. He is now 96. But the
one thing it enables you to do is to look back over your life and see it in some
sort of perspective. To see the changes that have taken place - which is very
hard to do when you are living through them. Not to grumble about them, but
to understand them.
I thought about one colossal change in this country that has happened in my
lifetime. We call, it secularisation.
But we easily misunderstand what secularisation means. We tend to think it’s
about people losing their belief in God – and that is part of it. Less than half
the population now say they believe in God. Many say they don’t. Some are
confused. Their faith is like a badly wired lamp. It flickers on and off.
But secularisation is about far more than the beliefs in people’s heads. It’s
about culture. It’s about the thousand and one things that influence all of our
lives every day as we live them.
What Fr Ron and I have seen over the course of our lives is the gradual loss
of a Christian culture.
For instance, when I was a boy, I went to Sunday school. So did more than
half the children of Britain. Not any more. But even if you didn’t go to Sunday
school, every school day began with an act of worship – again a thing of the
past. We sang hymns, we read Bible stories, we said prayers. Everyone knew
the parable of the Good Samaritan and what it meant, even if they didn’t go to
church. A Christian culture was formed and previous generations absorbed
the values of the Christian faith through it.
Central to that was the idea of meeting the needs of others – and this would
be reciprocal, mutual - for this is how we build each other up in love.
Brother, sister, let me serve you,
let me be as Christ to you;
pray that I may have the grace to
let you be my servant too.
But what happens when the culture is no longer Christian? What happens
then to Christian values, especially love of the neighbour, of whatever race or
religion?
We shouldn’t complacently think the values will survive even if the religion
doesn’t. My life began with a culture across the sea in continental Europe that
completely rejected those values and saw the destruction of 6 million Jews.
Are we beginning to see the erosion of that central value, love of neighbour?
Does this explain why emergency service workers, nurses and shop
assistants can be attacked and abused?
Does this explain why asylum seekers, including children, can face furiously
angry people prepared to set alight the building they are living in? This is
hardly compatible with the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Christian values were once absorbed through a common Christian culture.
Not any more.
Perhaps they now have to radiate out more and more from discrete Christian
congregations. Like ours.