Sunday 28 October 2018
FEAST OF ST SIMON & ST JUDE
9.30am Parish Mass
The last time I took a group to the Holy Land, I had a day on my own pottering around Jerusalem while they all went off to visit the Dead Sea and Masada. Once I’d waved the coach off at 8 o’clock I headed for the old city and to the Armenian quarter where by some fluke I managed to gate-crash the incredibly exotic funeral of the late Armenian Patriarch, His Beatitude Archbishop Torkom Mongoonian, the 96th successor of St James the Less, brother of Our Lord and leader of the church in Jerusalem.
The service took place in the Armenian Cathedral, and was anything but brief. After three and a half hours of spell-bindingly incredible singing, there was still no sign of the lid going back on the coffin, so I decided to slip out as easily and as surreptitiously as I had slipped in. The Armenian Church, as you may know, is among the oldest of Christian communities, and was adopted as the established national Church as early as 301AD. Armenian Christians were one of the first denominational groups to establish themselves once more in Jerusalem, and trace their history back to the Apostles themselves, and in particular, to Thaddeus… otherwise known in the Western Church - as Jude. The same Jude we commemorate today, together with his co-Apostle, Simon.
Simon is mentioned in all four roll-calls of the apostles listed in the gospels – twice being styled as Simon the Zealot, but otherwise without any biographical detail. One tradition of the church has them both travelling as missionaries to Persia where they were martyred, which seems to be the only reason they get to share the same feast day. As the preface to the Eucharistic prayer will reminds us a little later, the apostles were sent out to preach the good news – which of course they did at their own ultimate cost.
Simon is mentioned in all four roll-calls of the apostles listed in the gospels – twice being styled as Simon the Zealot, but otherwise without any biographical detail. One tradition of the church has them both travelling as missionaries to Persia where they were martyred, which seems to be the only reason they get to share the same feast day. As the preface to the Eucharistic prayer will reminds us a little later, the apostles were sent out to preach the good news – which of course they did at their own ultimate cost.
For us to celebrate the apostles, even the almost unknown also rans like Simon and Jude (who you may recall is the patron saint of lost causes) is to reaffirm our calling and commitment to that same apostolic ministry, costly though it may be. To celebrate the apostles, is to set as our priority the sharing of the good news, and demonstrating the inclusive and all encompassing love of God in Christ. To celebrate the apostles, is simply to strengthen our resolve to enable others to encounter the risen Christ. That is our imperative as a congregation, and as individual disciples.
Today’s gospel reflects the experience of the Johannine community as they struggle with growing pains as the divide between the expanding church and their Jewish heritage widens and sours. Of course in each of the gospels Jesus warns his followers that they will be persecuted and suffer because of their loyalty to him – but in John's gospel the language is far more harsh, polarised and extreme. “Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world” says Jesus “therefore the world hates you.”
In fact John chapter 15, sitting as it does at the heart of the ‘farewell discourse’, develops three crucial themes: Firstly abiding in Christ, focusing on the image of Jesus as the Vine at the start of Chapter 15. Secondly, loving one another as he has loved them – reiterating the command to love and recalling the scene just a couple of chapters earlier where Jesus washes his disciples feet. And thirdly the warning that they will be hated by the world. There’s a real sense that one flows from the other, and that the first two are the defence and antidote to the third. If we abide in Christ then we are interwoven together in him. So our relationship with Christ is the foundation of our love for one another – or at least it ought to be. And if the world hated Christ then the more we are identified with him then the more likely it is that we will be tarred by the same brush.
To celebrate the apostles as we do today, is simply to follow their example and to strengthen our resolve to enable others to encounter the risen Christ, whatever the cost.
I began by remembering my accidental attendance at the funeral of the Armenian Patriarch. It wasn’t just a spectacle to be enjoyed, but a great and humbling privilege to be close to a community for whom persecution – being hated – has been such a close and real experience. The Armenian Church suffered the first holocaust of the 20th century. A deliberate and systematic religious cleansing, beginning in 1915 and continuing through the years of the First World War at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. And of course that experience is still very close to the Christians of the Middle East today. But while they are faced with persecution, our greatest suffering as we fulfil our apostolic calling is likely to be indifference more than anything else. And yet it is our calling none the less.
I’d like to throw in two things with regard to our apostolic calling to enable others to encounter the risen Christ. Two ways in which we can make this a growing reality at St Saviour’s in the months ahead.
Firstly is in our continues engagement with the diocesan Reaching New People project. So far just under half of PCC members have been along to one of their Vision Days which help to open up a conversation about how we can engage more effectively with our local community and so draw others into the life of the Church. The next Vision Day is on February 9th and I shall be exhorting those members of the PCC who haven’t yet got involved to do so as an important part of their leadership of the congregation. But there will also be an open invitation to anyone in our congregation to come along – so save the date, February 9 2019.
The second is a little sooner and a bit closer to home. St Saviour’s has a long standing pattern of a monthly service of Healing on the third Sunday at 6pm, and that is an important strand of our Anglican catholic tradition – part of the sacramental toolkit with which we help others encounter Christ.
So picking up from Fr Tony’s sermon last week where he talked about the church being a place of WELCOME, ACCEPTANCE AND CARE, from December – as well as the service on the evening of the 3rd Sunday – on the 2nd Sunday of the month there will also be the opportunity for laying on of hands and prayer for healing here at the 9.30am Parish Mass.
Just as receiving communion is an encounter with Christ, so the laying on of hands and prayer for wholeness and healing for yourself, or on behalf of another, is an important point of encounter with our risen Lord. But before rife speculation breaks out, the logistics are both simple and private. After receiving Communion there will be an opportunity to go to the Lady Chapel for quiet prayer before returning to your seat in the nave.
For us to celebrate the apostles as we do today is to reaffirm our calling and commitment to that same apostolic ministry, costly though it may be. It is to set as our priority the sharing of the good news, and demonstrating the inclusive and all encompassing love of God in Christ. It is simply to strengthen our resolve to enable others to encounter him.
As a congregation, and as individual disciples that is our imperative.
So may Simon and Jude pray for us, may all the apostles and martyrs and saints of heaven pray for us. And may God’s Spirit challenge, inspire and equip us to respond wholeheartedly to his call. Amen.
So may Simon and Jude pray for us, may all the apostles and martyrs and saints of heaven pray for us. And may God’s Spirit challenge, inspire and equip us to respond wholeheartedly to his call. Amen.