Sermon. St Mary's Great Ilford. 3 May 2015.

Easter 5.

Acts 8.26-40.

John 15.1-8.

[Editorial note: If you have the misfortune to read a number of my sermons, you'll see some themes - and jokes and saints - appearing, without new comment. This as I move from place to place, as a result of profound prayer, rather than laziness/compulsion, you understand. Will try to add some pictures in due course.]

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

As your guest here, I thought I'd bring a gift, namely teach you or remind you how to sign the Easter greeting:

[signed] Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Brothers and sisters, I make no apology for emphasising that it is still Eastertide. This is one of the many times when the Church is out of synch with the world around us. You probably cannot buy an Easter egg now for love nor money. In our supermarkets, it is already barbecue-tide. Yet the Church is right to have an extensive, fifty-day Easter. For at the deepest level, every day, every moment is Easter. We – and the whole cosmos – are living the light of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. A saint who saw this most clearly was St Seraphim of Sarov, who would greet everyone, at any time, with 'My joy, Christ is risen'. (Radost moya, Christos voskrese!). He famously would stand outside the church even on Good Friday, boldly eating sausages (forbidden meat), declaiming 'Christ is risen!' And he was right.

The Churches have had different practices regarding the readings for Eastertide, but Acts and/or John tend to dominate. As for us – and this applies each year, by the way, even though we otherwise have a three-yearly cycle. I suggest it is not hard to see why. Living, as we do, in the light of Christ's resurrection, we are keen to know-and-relive how the story moves on. What happened next. And so we read Acts. But, differently, if the resurrection of Christ is what it seems to be – God's unique affirmation and (I think we can say) vindication of Jesus, as the one uniquely worthy to be called the Risen One, then we are naturally led to ask again who this Jesus is, what is his character. And so we read from John's gospel, where Jesus always gives us more to ponder.

So our imagination has to move at different speeds. Acts, by and large, moves at a breathless pace. This happened, and then the Spirit came there, and then the disciples moved on, and then there was this crisis! But the passages from John are more like meditations. As it happens that Buddhists are on this very day celebrating Vesak, which marks the birth of the Buddha, I will allow myself to say it thus: it is almost as if John is demanding that we sit down, Buddha-like, and contemplate the meaning of Jesus' self and words. For a lifetime.

If that mix of the racing speed of Acts and the slow pondering of John is true in general, it is especially true today. Philip meets an angel, makes a journey, is led to meet a certain man, and runs to him. Runs! After the conversation, conversion and baptism (no Alpha course required), 'the Spirit of the Lord snatches Philip away' and he 'finds himself at Azotus' and evangelises more. This is exciting stuff.

I guess we all know Christians like this, and we know people, including among our leaders, who think the Church should be like this: always, in the very best sense, on the run! I am not saying that to disparage Philip, or those like him. There is something beautiful about his willingness to run to catch up with...

Well, notice what it is not. He does not run to catch up with the latest thing, fashion, theory or ideology – that would be unfair to Philip. But rather to catch up with the person, the child of Gd, the seeker after truth, who is concretely before him. Gandhi (and others) said that unless you find Gd in the next person you meet, you will never find Gd. We might say that unless you find the Risen Lord in the next person you meet, his resurrection is for you just a theoretical idea, a plaything. So thank Gd for Philip and his racing!

And so to John. We are to abide – the Greek is menein, to remain, to stay, to stay put - like branches firmly attached to the trunk of a vine. The language of 'abiding' is found eight times in this short passage. But how to do it? We are given no instructions.

Surely we abide through 'faith', which isn't something mysterious or technical. It simply means trusting Christ and trusting his words. 'Abide in me as I abide in you'.

If any of it is true, then this is true: Christ abides in us. Do we trust this? Rowan Williams was once asked, in the middle of all the turbulence of his time at Lambeth, what kept him going. He said simply: 'the sheer there-ness of Christ'. Praying as he did every morning before the Blessed Sacrament. Yes, one of the great blessings of the Catholic tradition (though not unique to it) is its emphasis on the sheer there-ness of Christ. Whatever mess we've made of our lives, however we have sought to hide from Christ, he is still there for us. He is here.

In every eucharist,

Christ abides in us when we gather,

Christ abides in us when we hear the gospel,

Christ abides in us when we take bread and wine at his command,

and Christ abides in us as we are sent out,

to find, as we've already noted, the self-same Christ in the next person we meet.

The sheer abiding of Christ is offered to us continuously and without exception.

I say again: we abide in Christ simply through trusting him and trusting his words. Now, Christ does require us to do something. Trust isn't just a feeling of being well-disposed. But the real thing we have to do is bear fruit. And we can trust Christ, that when we abide in him – in all the ways I've mentioned and more – then we will bear fruit. Importantly (and this is not often noted, in my experience), we may not be able to see our own fruit at all. A branch cannot see its own fruit. It just does what comes naturally. And so we are bidden to do what comes naturally inasmuch as we abide in Christ. We are called to trust that by abiding in Christ, we do bear fruit. There is an affirmation within the Orthodox liturgy: 'Christ is amazing in the saints', his people.

This confidence that we bear fruit isn't about improving our self-esteem 'because we're worth it'; it is actually about humility. It's not about overlooking our sinfulness; we do have to be 'pruned' or 'cleansed' as well (it's the same word in the Greek by the way).

But in all humility we trust the faith that Christ has in us.

I'm not promoting laziness or cynicism when I say that, whatever schemes and strategies the Church comes up with for effective 'mission', at heart what converts people is getting to know fruit-bearing Christians. (It's they who see our fruit, not us.)

Our friend St Seraphim of Sarov said this: 'Cultivate a peaceful spirit, and thousands around you will be saved.' Or let me give another 'entirely random' example. When was it? Ah yes, at the wedding of Prince William and Kate (hope they're doing well), the Bishop of London quoted St Catherine of Siena: 'Be the person God wants you to be, and you will set the world on fire'.

I realise the irony is that as your guest here, I am more 'Philip' than 'John'. I rushed here in time to get my instructions, and I won't 'abide' here in the ordinary sense of the word. No matter. It is an important part of the Easter message that all Christians everywhere remember that we are called to abide in Christ, and that he promises – promises – that we will bear fruit. We don't have (as it were) the 'luxury' of thinking of ourselves as only sinners, or useless, or failed, or worn out, or even only mediocre. Alleluia!

[signed] Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Amen.