Sermon on choosing... after the election

Sermon. 10 May 2015. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

Easter 6 (Year B)

Acts 10.44-48.

John 15.9-17.

'You did not choose me but I chose you.'

I have been thinking a lot about choosing. How I choose. And how others choose. This was especially the case on (when was it now... ah yes...) Thursday evening [general election day] and in the small hours of Friday morning. Yes, I fulfilled my constitutional duty and voted, and then kept a keen eye on the election results as they came in (I can't help myself).

'You did not choose me but I chose you'. Here's a funny thing. The Greek word for 'to choose' used in the above passage is eklegein (here: exelexasthe) and if you think you hear in that an echo of our words 'elect' and 'election', you are right. Our word 'election' comes from the Greek via the Latin. Eklegein means to 'speak out' in the sense of 'pick out' in the sense of 'choose'. So we might even translate:

'You didn't elect me, but I elected you!'

It sounds bizarre and wrong, doesn't it? That it might make any sense to speak of 'electing' Jesus! And I agree: it does not make sense. As if Christians 'elect' Jesus! The way we decide who to vote for is very, very different from the way we decide who to follow in our spiritual lives, or which faith to immerse ourselves in, to give our lives to. It is perfectly natural (at least many have often thought so) for people to try to persuade us to vote one way or another. But most of us, most of the time, are reluctant to try to persuade people to convert to our faith – at least not without some severe encouragement from the other person.

I don't think that is lack of courage on our part.

Rather, we are recognising this point: that we do not 'choose' our faith (if we 'choose' it at all) the way we may choose who to vote for. For most people, their faith identity is closer to their personal identity. It is experienced as a 'given'. It is who they are. It is how they were brought up. It's the cultural frame of reference which all the rest fits into. It's their first language of faith and hope and love, of longing and rejoicing and prayer. It is what makes sense. It is where they feel at home when they need to pray, or when they have a rite of passage to mark. Some combination of some of these ideas.

I haven't discussed this with you in any detail. But I am sensing that at least some of this is some kind of 'common sense' to you. I do not think this church in this community centre in this parish would flourish, if we thought we had a duty, always and everywhere, to try to persuade people of other faiths to convert to our ways of doing things. We'd be worn out in the misplaced effort, I suggest! We have people of other religions in our congregation, and as friends and neighbours, as people who serve us in shops, restaurants, and with other services. And of course we are fellow users of this community centre. And, to my knowledge, we have good relations, and really rather enjoy the good terms we have.

What do we make of the fact that the people we have to do with in our parish and in this very building are at least as likely to be Muslim, Sikh or Hindu, as they are Christian or without a religious background?

Sometimes it can seem as if we have a stark choice. And by the way you are almost as likely to meet this stark choice in the university and in books and articles as in churches. The choice is this: on the one hand, we might say the other faiths are wrong, and the sooner people convert to Christianity the better, for their own good; on the other hand, we might insist that all the faiths are equivalent and equal, just different routes to God, God who is above all names and all human ideas. I don't know if you feel you have to make that choice, or if you feel one of those options is obviously right.

I for my part wonder if there isn't a middle, or a third way. It may be that we are given a hint that there is, in the first reading from Acts. You have to put it in context to get the force of it though.

In today's gospel Peter is amazed that the Holy Spirit has been poured out even on the gentiles, and suggests that those experiencing the Holy Spirit are baptised. So, yes, a group of people from outside the Church (and outside Israel for that matter) are brought into the Church through preaching or at least teaching and then baptism. So far, so conversionary.

But! But what is not clear from the brief, brief passage is that this baptism comes at the end of a very dramatic story, with three miraculous or near-miraculous events to get us to where we are. First, an angel has appeared to the devout Roman, Cornelius, and intimated that he must meet with Peter. Second, this is when Peter goes for a snooze on the roof of his friend's house, and has a dream-vision of 'unclean' animals, which means not dirty but non-kosher animals, unfit for Jews to eat. Peter interprets this as telling him to think again about gentiles, about non-Jews. And, thirdly, there has just come the powerful appearance of Gd Holy Spirit, who has fallen on the gentiles, and done so long before - as Peter saw things – before they were ready for it. That is why he is amazed. So Peter is led to recognise that the Spirit is clearly active outside of the Church knowingly so-called. And the Spirit is active beyond the Church's judgements about where the Spirit should be.

Now, it is true that Christians tend to look for a united, reconciled world. In that sense at least we look for one harmonious faith community (not uniform but still free of violent disharmony) at the end of time, worshipping the one Gd. And since we believe it is not wrong to call Gd Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then we can indeed call that reconciled community 'the Church'. But! But for that Church - the Church of all - to be manifest in this world, it takes the special action of the Holy Spirit. And since we are not the Holy Spirit, nor are we holy and wise enough to spot the Holy Spirit infallibly, we can frankly leave all such moves to the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit's timings.

Outside of those special divine actions, it is not as if we have nothing to do. We can come back to one Christian virtue. I am referring to the Christian insistence on the importance of offering hospitality to all. Remember: some thereby have entertained angels unawares. This insistence on hospitality is an absolute. People sometimes present it as relative, saying (for example), 'we can't have our church meetings in their mosque, why should we let them meet on our premises', or 'they don't give Christians rights in Saudi Arabia, why should “they” have rights here'. Whatever the merits of these positions (if there are any), these are not Christian arguments. The Christian duty of hospitality is absolute.

I am not telling you anything you have not long known. For Christian hospitality was surely the motivating factor behind this centre, was Fr Froud's vision. I appreciate that the community centre as it has come to be is secular, and an independent trust. But that takes nothing away from the fact that the energy for it was a conviction that the Church should be offering hospitality to all in this place. What those to whom we offer Christian hospitality make of it is (almost) none of our business. Leave that to the Holy Spirit, whom we can trust.

After all, let me say it again: none of us chooses our faith-commitment like we choose who to vote for. After all, all of us who are here can do no better than meditate on these words:

'You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last'.

Amen.