These are the notes from Richard's Week 2 sermon at St Mary's plus Questions at the end for discussion

First Century Acts for Twenty First Century Apostles

Sermon 2: Conversion

Acts 15.6-15: Lydia and Paul

Two thousand years of Christian history sparkles with accounts of those whose conversion was the most significant moment in their lives; and so can recall it minutely. Conversion Narratives of 

C S Lewis - In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God and knelt and prayed

John Wesley - In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter to nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for my salvation.

Martin Luther - I felt myself absolutely born again. The gates of paradise had been flung open and I had entered. There and then the whole of scripture took on another look to me.

Leo Tolstoy - Suddenly I heard the words of Christ and understood them and life and death ceased to seem to be evil, and instead of despair, I experienced happiness and the joy of life undisturbed by death. 

All share a sense of a sudden turning. Smitten by Holy Spirit. The heart and the will working in tandem.

Such moments held up as normative and something to which we should aspire. Possible inadequacy if this is not something we have experienced.

As such, conversion can seem like a scary word – charismatic, not a ‘St Mary’s’ word.

However sudden conversion experiences are not the norm. c.f. the emphasis on explaining Saul’s (St. Paul’s) experience. This shouldn't prevent us from embracing ‘conversion’ as a foundational Christian experience and concept. It’s about change, changing one’s beliefs, changing to a godly life. For some that happens suddenly, for some it might take a lifetime. To pretend that it is only for the charismatics is to ignore the possibility of that change in ourselves or others around us.

Story of Lydia provides a model that we might relate to more.

Context – Paul was at a low ebb. Everything seemed to be going wrong. The Lord Jesus had sent him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, but his mission was fizzling out. First there was that argument with Barnabas over John Mark and the sundering of their long partnership. They had both said things they had regretted. And now every path in Turkey seemed blocked. He and the young Timothy had had to hurry through Phrygia and Galatia and Mysia. Every synagogue, every house, every door was closed to them. No-one seemed to want to hear. And as for Bithynia, well that was a no-go area from the start.

Paul found himself in Troas with nowhere left to go. He had run out of people to meet and he had run out of ideas. He had feared that this was the end of the road. All those hopes of doing the Lord’s will and expending himself for the gospel throughout the empire ending in a small town in Turkey.

And then there was that dream; somehow the spirit spoke and everything changed. Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Athens, Rome Gospel took flight again. Crossed another boundary to Greece and heart of Greek speaking world. And from there easy step to Rome and heart of everything, centre of world.

Holy Spirit takes charge and the gospel takes flight once more.

Philippian context – Roman colony; only a small Jewish community and no synagogue; Paul puts himself at a meeting place; Lydia a foreigner and a business woman – an unlikely starting point? – God has always dealt with the unlikely.

Process of conversion in Lydia –

a)                  Lydia already God fearing; foundations have been laid – unlikely that Richard Dawkins would experience sudden conversion! (you never know, you never know)

b)                  Paul and his words act as the catalyst – someone needs to speak the words of grace or live out the gospel ; who is or has been that person for you – responsible for conversion , for change – may be more than one?

c)                  Holy Spirit instrumental; he opened the way for Paul to reach Philippi; he opened the heart of Lydia; was her heart ‘strangely warmed’? Are there times when you can point to the Holy Spirit working in your life to move your Christian story on?

d)                  The part played by baptism; sign and seal of our new birth. The words (I turn to Christ), actions (drowning old) and symbols (darkness to light) in baptism all reinforce ‘conversion’. Most of us won’t remember our baptism or what it was all about. But we have all been baptised, have all received something that is an important part of conversion.

e)                  Ongoing Formation: Lydia asks Paul to stay with her: Conversion as a lifelong experience; not a single moment; growing into ‘the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ’

If serious about mission and taking part in God’s goal to reach out to his world, then there is a need to be serious about the conversion of others. Conversion as not just a word about the past but a promise for the future.

Need to think about how we can play our part in someone else’s conversion through being a catalyst – being that person who twenty years on someone might say ‘I would never have been a Christian if it hadn't been for the kindness that …showed me when I was really down; or the welcome given and the interest shown in me when I came to church. Don’t turn down those opportunities to be that catalyst

through prayer (might think my strong days are over; we can all pray for the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those we love, that their heart might also be ‘strangely warmed’,

through baptism (N.B. a baptism here is something in which we all share),

through ongoing influence – those who are young in faith of our community or family and friends.

Questions

1. What do you understand by the word ‘conversion’?

2. Is conversion an experience or concept to which you relate? Have you or someone you know had some kind of ‘conversion experience’ similar to Saul or Martin Luther or John Wesley?

3. Paul met Lydia at the riverside, where people naturally gathered. Where are the riverside places in your own locality?

4. Can you point to the five factors of Lydia’s conversion in your own story or the story of others?

5. We know no more of Lydia. Use your imagination to continue her story.

Paul's notes and questions from his week 3 sermon at Blackford and Wedmore

First Century Acts for Twenty First Century Disciples

Sermon Three (Holy Trinity and St Mary’s) – Peter’s dream (Acts 11v1-18)

Summary of Sermon:

·         The unfolding challenges if the 1^st century church from reading Acts –  e.g. leadership and persecution

·         Also the great challenge of ‘inclusivity’. Who’s ‘in’ and on what terms. Who’s saved?

·         Peter being asked to justify the baptism of Roman centurion Cornelius and his household by apostles back in Jerusalem.

·         Are they concerned about trying to hold the community together?

·         Or are they letting a narrow parochial vision hinder God’s saving purpose?

·         ‘Tuning in’ to God’s saving purpose takes time and needs prayer, reflection, listening and experience of the ‘other’.

·         Caution over reading the Bible in a narrow literal way but in the light of God’s prompting through experiences – as with Peter.

·         The only judge is Jesus, we can never determine who’s ‘in’ or who’s ‘out’.

·         The Book of Acts is full of the diversity of those called to be God’s people.

Resources: www.inclusive-church.org

Questions for Reflection or Discussion

1.       Should a desire for Christian unity and communion across denominations or different cultures influence our church’s views on ‘inclusivity’?

2.       In what ways might our church try to ‘tune in’ to God’s saving purpose for the community in which we are called to serve?

3.       Do our experiences and encounters with others influence the way we interpret and use Scripture? If so, in what way?

4.       Be honest, how judgemental of others are you? When was the last time you made a judgment about someone you then regretted?

5.       ‘Inclusivity’ of churches is a massive topic ranging from disabled access to church buildings to provision of hearing loops to the attitude to people with learning difficulties to welcoming of a convicted paedophile to whether the church would ‘permit’ a gay youth worker. Try listing the different questions you may ask in considering ‘Is my church inclusive?’ [Think of all the possible ways individuals or groups may feel excluded or even just ‘uncomfortable’]

6.       Is seeking to be ‘inclusive’ always a Gospel imperative? When might it not be?

7.       Can being too ‘inclusive’ lead to some feeling ‘excluded’? Think how this might occur.

Acts 11.1-18

Peter’s Report to the Church at Jerusalem

11Now the apostles and the believers^* who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers^* criticized him, ³saying, ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’ ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵‘I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” ⁸But I replied, “By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.” ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, “Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.” ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, “John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?’ ¹⁸When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, ‘Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.’

This is Paul's sermon from Blackford and Wedmore on 4th October

First Century Acts for Twenty First Century Disciples

Sermon Three (Holy Trinity and St Mary’s) – Peter’s dream (Acts 11v1-18)

As the story of the early church unfolds, as we read through Acts, it faces quite a few challenges. Challenges about leadership and challenges from persecution. Probably not unexpected for the beginnings of a new community that was proving quite controversial to the established order of the day.

But one of the great challenges it faced was that of, what we might call today, ‘inclusivity’. Who’s ‘in’ (and on what terms should they be ‘in’) and who’s ‘out’? Questions not just about membership of the organisation but, much more importantly, salvation itself.

The short passage we have heard this morning retells the story of Cornelius’ conversion that has already featured in some detail in the previous chapter.

Peter, now back in Jerusalem, is being called to account by his fellow believers for his actions in baptising Cornelius and his household. Cornelius was a good man. He had been searching for and even praying to God. He had been generous to the poor. But that wasn’t really the point.

Cornelius was a Gentile, who remained firmly outside of the Jewish faith. Not only that, he was a military commander of the hated Roman army of occupation.

The question to Peter, now back in the centre of the church, back in Jerusalem, from his fellow apostles and believers was straight to the heart of the matter: ‘Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?’

‘Justify to us, the sort of people with whom you are prepared to sit down and share table fellowship.’ ‘With whom are you prepared to break bread?’

It is easy to criticise Peter’s questioners as being over legalistic. Too concerned about keeping the correct dietary codes. But we should remember that Peter, himself, was originally hesitant about his encounter with Cornelius. Their concerns may spring from, not from wanting to exclude as such but, a desire to hold together the fragile infant community.

We can see many echoes of this in our own times, with a desire to be very cautious, on issues such as women’s ministry and sexuality, for fear that our communion, our community may fracture. Our relationships with our fellow Christian denominations and inter-faith partners will grow colder.

With whom are we prepared to break bread? Or maybe the question should be: ‘who is capable of salvation?’ Peter’s encounter with Cornelius gives us some startling insights to that question. Let’s just pick up on a few of them.

‘The Spirit told me….not to make a distinction between them and us’. Peter is referring back to the amazing dream he had. As he recalls earlier: ‘God has shown me I should not call anyone profane or unclean’. Peter seems a bit surprised that God’s call to him, to be part of God’s saving work, should take him in this particular direction – to the home of the ‘unclean’.

But Peter shouldn’t have been surprised. God hadn’t just changed his mind. As far back as Abraham, God was saying, about him, Abraham, and his descendants, ‘in you all the families of the earth will be blessed’.

Peter, and his fellow apostles, seem to have got wrapped up in a sort of religious parochialism seeing the world as split between the ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’. God’s purpose in this story is to get his church ‘on side’. To tune in and be part of his work of salvation.

That can be a ‘messy’ and longwinded process. This requires us, that is ‘us’ as a community, to be open and listening to God. And that may take some considerable time – God’s time, not our desire for neat instant certainty. It’s that unfolding process of ‘visions’ or ‘dreams’, prayer, reflection, listening to others, experiencing the hospitality of the ‘other’ through which the Spirit leads Peter on to this unexpected course.

Just think, in Church history, how long it took us from believing slavery was part of God’s ordained order for mankind, supported by Scripture, to knowing the opposite.

It is also interesting to note that Peter only turns to Scripture after he has been guided by his many experiences. That’s not to deny the centrality of Scripture ‘in tuning’ into God purpose but really to question a total reliance on a literal reading without giving room to our experiences.

Peter speaks of Cornelius’ household: ‘If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us’… and here he is referring to having witnessed the gift of the Holy Spirit being poured out in them through their ‘speaking in tongues and extolling God’…’who was I [he said] that I could hinder God?’ And so he did not withhold the waters of baptism.

We see this often in Acts, the will of God being seen in the form of something quite wonderful -experienced rather than understood direct from a Biblical text. We could say that we are being asked to read Scripture in the light of God’s prompting in often ‘messy’ and unexpected events and the people we meet.

So often it is issues of inclusivity – who’s ‘in’ and who’s ‘out’ – who are the ‘saved’ and who are the ‘damned’ – that are judged on a very narrow and literal view of Biblical text. That’s not the way the Word is working through the events of Acts.

Peter seems to sum everything up in a few remarkable words spoken after his experiences in the household of Cornelius. They are words that have inspired me ever since I first heard them and helped me on a journey back to faith. ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality’ [10.34].

It is so incredibly easy to fall into the trap of thinking as the ‘Chosen ones’ – God’s elect. And by extension to consider those who fall outside our framework of beliefs and doctrines, or even lifestyles and customs, are not of the ‘chosen’. There are many labels by which the excluded have been given over the years – ‘conservative’, ‘liberal’, heathen’, ‘Jew’, ‘gay’ or ‘divorced’.

Sometimes it is spoken aloud, sometimes it may be so subtle that even those within the ‘chosen’ do not even acknowledge or realise it. But it’s still there. This all too human desire to exclude the ‘other’.

Peter’s, great revelation as a result of his experiences, is that it is Jesus alone, and no other, who is ordained by God as ‘judge of the living and the dead’ [10.42]. To believe or act otherwise, directly or implicitly, to become a ‘judge’ of who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ is a great blasphemy and a great sin.

Reading through the whole Book of Acts, or just reflecting on the examples of Lydia, whom we encountered last week, and Cornelius this week, it is amazing the great rainbow diversity of people whom God calls to be among His people. Have we, the church of today, lived up to that openness to embrace the Gospel’s radical message of inclusivity?

Paul Kingdom 4 October 2015