Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:7-19 1 Peter 3:8-22 John 14:15-21

May the words of my lips, and the meditations of our hearts, be always acceptable in Your sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer.

“If you love me you will obey my commands” – John 14:15

The retired Australian diplomat, Dick Woolcott, tells of a trip that he and his wife Brigit made to the United States. They were in the city of Memphis, Tennessee. There, a very wealthy citizen had built a replica of the Parthenon in Athens. The Woolcotts were interested to see the replica and caught a taxi.

The cabbie, hearing where they wished to go was bursting with civic pride. “You know buddy,” he told Dick, “There are only two of these buildings in the whole goldarn world, and they say this one’s in much better condition than the other one!”

So I’d like you to imagine the Parthenon in Athens. But I’d like you to imagine it in 50 AD, in the time of St Paul. So this is a Parthenon that’s in much better condition than the one you may have seen.

The Parthenon is the Temple to Athena, or Minerva, the patron deity of Athens. It is on the sacred rock the Acropolis, or ‘higher city’. When Athens was first founded, centuries before, the Acropolis was the city itself but as Athens has grown and spread, the people have sprawled out and the rock is reserved largely for religious purposes.

To the east of the Acropolis is the Areopagus, or the Hill of Mars. To the north of this hill is the busy marketplace, or agora. Paul has been preaching to the people of Athens in the synagogue and in the agora. The action now moves south to the Areopagus.

I’m imagining a fine autumn day. The sky is a paler blue than in Canberra. Here on a dusty hill with meagre grass St Paul is conversing with the Greeks. He is speaking in terms they can understand. He is pointing to their idols. Such idols are forbidden under the second of the ten commandments of Moses but Paul, a practising Jew as well as a Christian, isn’t making a big song and dance. He uses the idols as a way of telling the people about Jesus.

In the first lesson read to us, Paul starts by praising the Athenians for their uncommon scrupulousness – it always pays to compliment people you are trying to persuade – including having an altar to the unknown god, in case any divine being has been left out amidst the multitude of shrines. Nevertheless, he explains that God does not live in idols – instead He is the Creator of the universe. And that the world is to be judged, and judged justly by a man of His choosing, Jesus Christ.

People are different from one another and so it was for the women and men of Athens. There were three responses. Some scoffed. Others needed thinking time or more information. “We will hear you on this subject some other time.” And some joined Paul and became believers.

We don’t know whether those ‘come back later’ Athenians did become Christians or not. I’d like to think some did. They will have started their Christian journey later than those who believed immediately. But does it matter to us today if a woman or man started their Christian journey 1950 years ago or only 1949 years ago?

It matters to me because it’s a reminder that we all start our Christian journeys at different times. Aalthough our pilgrimages may share a common pattern, we will be in different places at different times, one from another. This is paradoxical because as a church, as a pilgrim people, we are travelling together in the same direction.

This has been brought home to me over the last three months at the Alpha course. As many of you will know Hazell – assisted by Sylvia, Trisha and Joan – has been running this course. I’ve enjoyed it. Sitting down to an evening meal here in the church, talking with half-a-dozen to a dozen parishioners about everything under the sun. Then a video lecture presented by the Reverend Nicky Gumble, projected up here on the big screen. Then another conversation, shorter this time, over coffee about things that matter – questions of faith – about what we’ve just seen on the video.

Listening to Nicky Gumble is, I suspect, a lot like listening to St Paul. Both have a lawyerly way of arguing. Both had Jewish fathers. Both came to the Christian faith as adults. I suspect Nicky tells more jokes although each tailors their message to the understanding and needs of their audience.

The Alpha course is designed to get people started on the Christian pathway. I don’t want to spoil any surprises for those of you yet to enjoy the course but Nicky makes the case for the relevance of Jesus, the truth about Him, how we can respond to Him and what our next steps should be. Having just completed the course, it was probably inevitable that today’s readings would speak to me of the Christian journey.

The idea of journey as a spiritual metaphor is even older than the Church. In Exodus we see the children of Israel in slavery in Egypt. They cross the Red Sea, become lost in the wilderness before crossing the Jordan to the Promised Land.

The most famous description of a Christian journey is in John Bunyan’s _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ a prose allegory of a soul in search of salvation. Some of you will have read of Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction through the Slough of Despond, the Hill of Difficulty, the House Beautiful, the Valley of the Shadow of Death and Vanity Fair before reaching the Heavenly City. As the names suggest, not all the stops on the path to the heavenly city are attractive. Which leads us to today’s Psalm:

For you have proved us, O God: you have tried us as silver is tried. You have brought us into the net: you laid sharp torment on our loins You let our enemies ride over our heads, we went through fire and water: but you bought us out to a place of liberty.

“We went through fire and water.” I’m going to come back to water later but let’s look at fire. The idea of the “refiner’s fire” appears in several places in the Old Testament. It occurs twice in Isaiah. In Chapter 1:25 and also 48:10. In that latter verse the writer has God say: See how I tested you, not as silver is tested, but in the furnace of affliction; there I purified you.

Note that it is not the suffering that creates or restores the relationship with God. In verse 17 we are told: If I had cherished wickedness in my heart: the Lord would not have heard me.

What the Lord has heeded is “the voice of my prayer”, the psalmist’s prayer of repentance. The test in our lives is not adversity but how we respond to that adversity.

The refiner’s fire, by purging away impurities, makes a beautiful thing. But for the one being purged, the experience is unpleasant and it helps to focus on the end result. This the psalmist does, by reminding us that God brought us out to a place of liberty and, in the final verse of today’s psalm” Praise be to God: who has not turned back my prayer, or his steadfast love to me.

I mentioned earlier that we are all travelling at different stages of our pilgrimage, things will happen to us at different times and different ages. Thus we are not all being refined today on the First of May or that we all reach the Slough of Despond at the age of, say, forty-two.

In the first letter of Peter we are exposed to a great mystery. Part of our Christian journey may take place out of time itself. This shouldn’t surprise us – God is eternal while we are, at present, bound by time and space. Let’s have a look at today’s epistle, the better to explain what I mean.

The passage from chapter 3 of the First Letter of St Peter today was mostly about obedient Christian living. Be unified. Be full of brotherly and sisterly affection. Do not repay wrong with wrong. This doesn’t guarantee freedom from suffering, of course. In verse 14 we hear: And yet if you should suffer for your virtues, you may count yourselves happy.

And again in verses 17 and 18: It is better to suffer for well-doing, if such be the will of God, than for doing wrong. For Christ also died for our sins once and for all. He, then just, suffered for the unjust, to bring us to God.

A word about persecution at this point. We know that both St Paul and St Peter were martyred. And we know of Christians being persecuted even today, often somewhere nearby like Aceh. But persecution has been the Christian’s lot at in all times and all places.

I mentioned John Bunyan earlier. A poor man, a brazier or tinker. He fought in the English Civil War on the winning side. After the war he married a pious woman who brought him to Christ. Although not widely read he became a preacher of an independent congregation in 1657. Three years later a terrible thing happened. The English Republic was overthrown and there was a king, once again on the throne. The state church was re-established. It became illegal to worship other than in the Anglican style. Bunyan spent 12 years in Bedford gaol, supporting his family while incarcerated by making shoelaces.

In writing this sermon I’ve had more than a dozen books at my fingertips. While in gaol Bunyan only had two – the Bible and “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs”. Yet armed with only those two volumes, and a vivid imagination, this humble man wrote an enduring classic.

And now comes the mystery I spoke of earlier. We can understand how Christ’s atoning suffering and death can help us who can look back to Him, believe, repent and follow His example. But what of those who died before Jesus, who could not change and model their lives in relationship with Him?

The way Peter describes it is this, “And in the spirit Christ went and made his proclamation to the imprisoned spirits. They had refused obedience long ago, while God waited patiently in the days of Noah and the building of the Ark.” Peter then goes on to say that the ark as prefiguring of baptism – being pulled through the water as a sign of salvation, of being saved.

It seems to me that there are three water related metaphors in the epistle. First, in the Genesis account Noah and his family were physically saved by the ark. Second, baptism is a physical sign of salvation – of the cleansing from sin that Jesus’ death made possible and the new life that God gives us through the Holy Spirit. And third, St Peter is saying that God, through Jesus, has power even among those, drowned in the Great Flood, whose time on earth has already expired. This is made explicit later in the epistle, after the reading we had today, in 1 Peter 4:6, “Why was the gospel preached to those who are dead? In order that, although in the body they received the sentence common to men, they might in the spirit be alive with the life of God”. This is a mighty image of the power of the Gospel – a love so powerful it can redeem even those who were drowned by God’s earlier judgement.

Christ can bring us through fire and water without constraint. Note that this is usually metaphoric fire and water – Peter makes it clear at v21 that the purpose of baptism is not to wash away physical dirt but for us to make a sign – an “appeal made to God in good conscience” that is to “to bring salvation through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Baptism is, of course a starting point, a sign of admission into the Christian family. We can imagine those joining Paul in Athens, who became believers, being baptised. What comes next?

In the gospel reading today we heard Jesus Himself describe, in part, our spiritual journey. “If you love me you will obey my commands; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another to be your advocate, who will be with you forever – the Spirit of Truth.” He goes on to say, “I will not leave you bereft; I am coming back to you.”

Jesus says these things during the last supper. Jesus and his disciples have eaten an early Passover meal and Judas has just left to betray his master. Jesus is giving his final discourses – He knows of His coming death on the cross- and he is explaining to the disciples what is to happen after He dies.

It is night-time in the upper room. Any light would come from a little oil lamp, flickering in the darkness, illuminating Jesus’ face. The eyes of the eleven remaining disciples would be turned to their teacher.

These disciples are, in a very real sense, new Christians. They have known Jesus for, perhaps, three years. They have been called by Him to be disciples, they have followed Jesus, heard His teachings, seen His signs and wonders and have been sent out by Him. With Jesus about to ascend to heaven He tells His disciples where they are going next. They will receive the Holy Spirit – an advocate or champion who will support, help and intercede for them. “The world cannot receive him” Jesus says, because the Holy Spirit cannot be perceived by sinful humans who do not believe, love, trust and obey Jesus.

This Spirit is not separate, not different from Jesus. When speaking of the Spirit Jesus says, “I will not leave you bereft, I am coming back to you. In a little while the world would see me no longer but you will see me.” This unity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit now forms part of our understanding of the Holy Spirit. Theologians would say they are “consubstantial” – of one substance.

But here is an added promise, and a signpost of what is to come, “Because I live, you will live too”. Of course, the disciples did live after Jesus’ death and resurrection – so Jesus is speaking of a special kind of life – a spirit-filled life that is beyond the mundane. This special life has further consequences: “The one who has received my commands and obeys them” – this is how John defines love of Jesus; it is the love of a disciple – “he who loves me will be loved by my Father; and I will love him and disclose myself to him.”

We are being pointed to an enduring relationship with God here, with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A distinctive life, and a relationship of love with God.

We’ve been taken on quite a journey today. From Athenians hearing, in terms they can understand, arguments for the Lordship of Christ. Out of the fire and water of the psalm into a place of liberty. This place of liberty, this freedom in Jesus that we now enjoy, St Peter reminds us, is not necessarily free from persecution or other suffering. But we retain confidence in what is to come “the hope that is in you” as Peter puts it. And this hope is nurtured by the Advocate and champion that Christ has given us as we respond to Him in faith, love, trust and obedience.

And so as Christians, as members of Christ’s Church, we continue our spiritual journey, our pilgrimage of life. In the Church we travel corporately, as the body of Christ. And we travel as individuals as well.. Each individual is, at any time, on a particular point of their appointed path. We have signposts – the Bible and the creeds. And we have guides and encouragers, both human and spiritual. Humans in fellow pilgrims on their own journey. And spiritual in the Advocate, in Jesus and our certain knowledge of the love of the Father.

We are like John Bunyan’s pilgrim, Christian, as we journey on the pathway. Whether we are presently in the Valley of the Shadow of Death or the House Beautiful we can be sure that if we journey in faith and hope and love we shall reach, at last, the Heavenly City.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Sydney Webb