Transformation of life

Sermon – Easter Sunday - 08 04 07 – Evensong

Preached at St Alphege, Solihull 6.30pm on Easter Sunday 8th April 2007

Readings: Jeremiah 31:1-6 Acts 10: 34-43


I don’t know if your heard John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, speaking on the Today Programme yesterday morning. He made several very good points about contemporary culture, the desire for self-fulfilment and the problem of what he calls “secular illiberalism”. However the point he made that really caught my attention was this. He said,

The church has not been very good at clearly spelling out what the message of Jesus is about … God in Jesus has come in a human form, has died, rose again and his presence, in terms of the spirit, actually transforms lives.

What caught my attention was the outstanding one sentence summary of Christianity, “God in Jesus has come in a human form, has died, rose again and his presence, in terms of the spirit, actually transforms lives.” I thought this was brilliant.
Our second reading today also includes a very brief summary of Christianity. Peter, as recorded by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles, sums up Christianity in seven sentences. At the heart of it Peter says, “and they killed him by hanging him on a tree yet on the third day God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen.” Peter does not talk about the transformation of lives, but he does talk about the forgiveness of sins.
Yet, as I reflect on what John Sentamu said, and as I examine my conscience about the Church’s failure to get its message across, the bit that stands out to me is the bit about the transformation of lives. I think, on the whole, most people know what the church teaches about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Of course there some people just don’t believe it, but I think that the much bigger problem is that an awful lot of people don’t see why the death and resurrection of Jesus is relevant. Perhaps Jesus did die and rise again, but so what? Why does that make such a big difference? Why is it worth my while spending time on that question?
Well many evangelists make the point that the death and resurrection of Jesus are relevant and important because if you do not believe in them and call upon the forgiveness that they reveal, then you will rot for all eternity in the fires of hell. Well that certainly makes Christianity relevant! I have heard evangelists say that if you can persuade someone to believe in hell, then you can persuade them to accept Christ.
Now I don’t want to knock this tradition of fearing hell. It is a profound part of our Christian heritage. St Peter himself in his seven sentence summary reminds us that God has appointed Jesus as judge of us all.
However, it does seem to me much, much more important to proclaim our Christianity because of our hope of heaven, rather than because of our fear of hell. As John Sentamu suggests, it is the transformation of lives that makes all the difference, that creates a positive reason to engage with Christianity.
So what about this transformation of life? It may well be that we feel that we have done our best to be good Christians for many years, and in some ways we feel we succeed, but in other ways really don’t feel very “transformed” at all. In fact we feel very ordinary, mundane even. I think this is a very common situation in our churches today. Certain I, personally, have spent many years feeling like this. So how do we move on from this? How do we come to experience God’s transformation in our lives? What do we need to do to make it work?
Well based on my personal experience I would like to offer a couple of top tips!
First top tip! Seek always to grow in love for God and love for neighbour. As John puts it, “My dear friends, let us love one another because love comes from God. Whoever loves is a child of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). To love other people means to want their good, to seek to help them and support them in practical ways. We are called to love everyone, but to make that real and concrete the most important people to love are those who are right beside us, right now; our own family, our work colleagues, the people we meet on the street. And notice that this growth in love needs to be a mutual thing. “Love one another” is something we can’t do on our own. We need to seek out other Christian people who will try to love us, as we try to love them. We also need to love ourselves, forgive ourselves, be generous to ourselves and to be prepared to risk pain and difficulty in order to be true to ourselves.
My second top tip is to learn to believe in and trust ever more fully in God’s love for us. To trust that Jesus took on human flesh out of love for us. To trust that he died on the cross out of love for us. To trust that God raised him from the dead out of love for him but also out of love for all of us. And this is what we celebrate today – on Easter day. That God brings new life, new hope into even the most desperate and hopeless of all situations.
As we try to grow in love we encounter all kinds of difficulties and sorrows. We encounter people who we do not instinctively like. We encounter ambitions, or greeds or hurts or insecurities within ourselves or within others that can cause us to lash out at one another. We encounter people in situations that are sad or lonely or debilitating, and we find that we can’t solve these problems. These are our Good Friday moments. We need to learn to accept these sufferings, as Jesus accepted his sufferings on the cross. We need to learn to carry on loving through these sufferings, as Jesus carried on loving whilst on the cross. We need to continue to trust in God, even when we do not understand, just as Jesus commended his soul to God, even as he cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
And if we live our Good Friday moments well, then God will act. Unexpectedly we shall have our Easter moments. Moments of new life, new hope and new possibilities. Just as Christ conquered death, never to die again so will find that our own new life in Christ has an eternal quality, a quality that will survive death. This is what we celebrate today; Easter Day. This is what it means to be baptised into the death and resurrection of Christ. This is the pattern that we re-enact and mould ourselves into through our liturgies of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. This is how God transforms lives. So let’s seek this transformation of life. By loving others, let’s help other too to be transformed. If we do this then the Church will properly get its message across, as John Sentamu has suggested. But more than that we will also make our contribution to the renewal of society and contemporary culture that is so badly needed.