Sermon from June 9th

• I often wish that everyone could write sermons. I love doing this because it allows me a chance to really explore and dig into really great questions. Most of my sermons aren't actually final products, but steps on the way of exploration of the spiritual life. 
• Reflect on scripture, current events, the writings of the past.
• Sometimes I like to reflect a bit on certain words that resonate with the human soul. And that is what I am doing today. Some are universal and timeless. Words like: courage, truth, honour, love, justice, compassion.
• Other words are newer, have come about in the last century or so but speak to our current situation. Words like: creativity, authenticity, holistic, inclusivity and relevance.
• I want to spend a few minutes reflecting on the last of these words, relevance. And the reason is that the word relevant represents a bit of a tug of war in how we understand what the church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be.
• The word relevance means "pertaining to the matter at hand."
• There is a lot of debate about things like whether the church is supposed to be relevant to where people are today in their wants or their needs, or is the church more timeless, not running after passing fashions. And if the church is to be relevant, what does that mean?
• To think through this, I want to look at three different aspects of the concept of relevance by looking at three different stories: the first is the story of the Apostle Paul, the second was a conversation with someone in my youth group at my last church and the third is about the enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
• First, Paul
• The reason I wanted to look at St. Paul is that I wanted to look briefly at why we still read him. What I mean is that here is a man 20 centuries distance in time from us from a completely different cultural and historical context and yet we say he is still relevant for us. What do we mean by that?
• Who was Paul?
  • Who he was. Convert who became a great planter of church across the Mediterranean world.
  • Why was he so effective? He wasn't terribly charismatic. Reading between the lines, he was a great letter writer but not necessarily a very charismatic person.
  • • In another place he tells us that the love of Christ compels him. What does that mean?
    • We know he had a life changing experience.
    • Simultaneously realized that what he thought he was doing for God was truly monstrous, that he was a murderer, and also experienced the cleansing power of the love and grace of God. That in the same moment he knew his sickness, he was healed.
    • It was an encounter that he could barely put into words.
    • He had found an inner freedom like he had never known
    • He realized that at the heart of God is a love that is completely undeserved and yet giving
    • Called drunk on grace
    • He wanted to share that freedom that he knew
    • He was effective because he spoke about an experience that is timeless and common to all humanity:
    • The need to be loved and accepted, no matter our failings or our sufferings. The need to be healed of our brokenness, and he pointed to Jesus as the one to bring the healing.
    • The word religion incidentaly originally meant to bind, to connect, to root and it meant to connect us to the transcendent God. 
    • I think this is why Paul is still relevant. He points to this universal need for connection to God, and he found it in Jesus.
• The second story goes in a different direction: one of the relatives of a member of my youth group came up to me and said I needed to talk with her.
• About what?
• I think she is getting down on organized religion.
• I wanted to tell her my joke, don't like organized religion? Become an Anglican, there is little here that is very organized!
• I resisted.
• I told her I didn't think I might be the best person to defend organized religion.
• But the question raised a bit of a paradox for me. Here I was, a duly ordained priest in good standing serving in the institutional church. But it wasn't really the institutional church I was interested in talking about. I wanted to talk about Jesus.
• And yet for her, the institutional church was actually getting in the way of that. And I could sympathize.
• I could remember in high school going to a Bible Study with a very kind man, he was the basketball coach, and part of the pull was that he brought Little Ceasar's pizza every week. But he had a crisp clear answers to questions I didn't have.
• I wanted to explore, and he wanted to give answers. I wanted to be a seeker, he wanted me to make a decision.
• I left the church and wandered for a long time. But the wandering was good; I did come to faith in Jesus, because he had answers to not only my questions, but to the needs of my heart and soul.
• But because of my path, I understand people who are searching and I have an extreme sensitivity to ways in which he church hampers the search.
• So when I spoke with her, I listened closely to her struggles, her questions; told her some of mine, and tried to answer HER questions, being careful not to answer the questions I think she should have.
• And it resonated. It was a great conversation.
• For me, I want to talk about Jesus.
• I have found such joy and meaning in following Jesus. I know him to be a close companion; I know him to have compassion on my many, many failings and to forgive me; I know him to be a challenge to me, to help me grow spiritually and in maturity; I know him to fill me with the love of God, so much sometimes I feel as if I can't take it anymore; I know him to be the answer to my questions. And if others can know him like I know him; nothing gives me greater joy.
• But I also realized that her questions were not my questions, and if Jesus was going to be relevant to her, I had to let him speak to her heart where she was at, and what she needed.
• I realized she wasn't just looking for timeless truth, but truth that spoke to her questions and her needs.
• Jesus has to speak to her in a different way than he speaks to me, but I hoped I could play a small role in bringing them together.
• This was where I started really thinking about the question of relevance. And it colours my thinking on the subject.
• To me the real issue of being relevant is not so much what kind of music we play or what kind of words we use, but the fact that we as a church are slowly realizing that Jesus does not speak in only one way, with only one kind of music and one kind of prayer book.
• As I have now prayed with and spoken with dozens and dozens of people about Jesus, I have become crucially aware that people have different personalities, different cultural backgrounds, different spiritual needs and challenges, different sins they wrestle with, different questions that are on their hears and all of these effect how Jesus needs to speak to them. And relevance is perhaps creating as best we can a space for all of them to encounter the living God in their hurts, their sorrows, their joy, their hope, their whatever. 
• Final story: paradox of Justin Welby's Enthronement 
• About the AofC
• About the service: pomp, ceremony
• But what spoke to me was the words of his entry
• Staff on door:
• Justin Welby's Enthronement
• • "Who are you and why do you request entry?"
  • "I am Justin, a servant of Jesus Christ, and I come as one seeking the grace of God, to travel with you in his service together."
  • "How do you come among us and with what confidence?"
  • "I come knowing nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and in weakness and fear and in much trembling."
• Humility
• This was the language of St. Francis and it is no accident that there is a resurgance in his popularity.
• It is the language of the new pope, and that is why he is touching millions.
• I think relevance for us has to come through humility.
• That last line comes from Paul and ties the stories together. 
• The good news of the Gospel is only good news when it speaks to the universal need of the human heart, but paradoxically only in such a way that it speaks to the individual where they are and when it is brought in a genuine spirit of humility and service.