This week’s Readings and Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
The Collect for This Week
God our redeemer, you have delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of your Son: grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life, so by his continual presence in us he may raise us to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
The Post Communion Prayer for this week
God our Father, whose Son Jesus Christ gives the water of eternal life: may we thirst for you, the spring of life and source of goodness, through him who is alive and reigns, now and for ever. Amen
The Psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 66, verses 7 to 18
7 Bless our God, O you peoples; make the voice of his praise to be heard, 8 Who holds our souls in life and suffers not our feet to slip. 9 For you, O God, have proved us; you have tried us as silver is tried. 10 You brought us into the snare; you laid heavy burdens upon our backs. 11 You let enemies ride over our heads; we went through fire and water; but you brought us out into a place of liberty. 12 I will come into your house with burnt offerings and will pay you my vows, which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble. 13 I will offer you fat burnt sacrifices with the smoke of rams; I will sacrifice oxen and goats.
14 Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul. 15 I called out to him with my mouth and his praise was on my tongue. 16 If I had nursed evil in my heart, the Lord would not have heard me, 17 But in truth God has heard me; he has heeded the voice of my prayer. 18 Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer, nor withheld his loving mercy from me.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and shall be forever. Amen
The First Reading for this Sunday is taken from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 17, verses 22 to 31
22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” 29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’
This is the Word of the Lord Thanks be to God
The New Testament reading for this Sunday is taken from the First Letter of St Peter, Chapter 3, verses 13 to 22
13 Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14 But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15 but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; 16 yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, 20 who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight people, were saved through water. 21 And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.
This is the Word of the Lord Thanks be to God
The Gospel reading for this Sunday is taken from the Gospel of St John, Chapter 14, verses 15 to 21
Hear the Gospel of our Lord, Jesus Christ, according to Luke Glory to You, o Lord
15 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. 18 ‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. 19 In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.’
.This is the Gospel of the Lord. Praise to You, o Christ
Note :All readings are shared from the Church of England Lectionary App and are subject to copyright . © The Archbishop’s Council
This week’s sermon is delivered by Rev Chich Hewitt
Today’s lesson from Acts 17 resulted in my experiencing deja vu. I looked back and found I had preached on this passage 18 months ago, in November 2024 when this passage had been chosen by someone for all preachers to use across the valley. I come to it again with fresh eyes and new material as well as material that bears repeating.
This passage is about communication, and I begin with an example from something which burns at me from inside - the neglected and critical issue of climate breakdown. When people are concerned about cost of living and wars, it is hard for people to relate it to their lives. One reason for it not receiving the place it should have relates to communication. Scientists are not good at communicating issues to people, whose eyes glaze over when they hear about modelling and probability. One climate scientist whom I follow is Catherine Hayhoe, a Canadian and an active Christian. She says that in conversation with individuals, she finds out from them what their interests and hobbies are, and relates the climate crisis to what is of interest to them. It is the way of meeting people where they are, rather than deciding where they should be.
It is an interesting incident on this major missionary journey that Paul undertook with Silas. The pattern was that the two of them went from area to area, preaching about Jesus in the local synagogues. Their message was direct and unequivocal - about Jesus’ death and resurrection and its implications. Some accepted this, while others were openly hostile. If their fellow Jews would not listen, they told local Gentiles who seemed much more open to this good news. There was suffering involved; in the previous chapter they were imprisoned and miraculously released in Philippi. The disciples and other followers then reached a plan where Paul was to spend a short time on his own in Athens.
It was there that something rather different took place. Paul was distressed to see many idols in the city as he began preaching, and word of this got around. Paul was invited to a centre called the Areopagus, which was an area where intellectuals met to discuss and debate. This was a very different forum from the one he was accustomed to in local synagogues. Philosophers met to debate issues, and we are told that the Athenians and visiting foreigners liked nothing more than to tell and hear what was new. It was like a cultured version of Hyde Park corner in London. Paul was invited to present his message to a group that was curious but critical. Some, we are told, called him a babbler, while others said he was a proclaimer of foreign divinities. It sounds as if they would listen politely, but their hostility would be intellectual. Paul needed to meet this audience where they were. He was meeting people where they were. Paul was a trained scholar and thinker and was up to the task. How did he do it?
He respected their thinking and began from there, rather than saying they had it all wrong. We know he was disturbed by all the idols, but he did not tell them to pull them down. Instead he commended them for being religiously minded, but noted he had seen, among their items of worship, an altar dedicated to an unknown god. This was his point of entry. ‘What you therefore worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.’ He told them God was bigger than any shrine. God gives all mortals life. He came close to mentioning that we are made in God’s image, using language of their local poets, who said ‘for we too are his offspring’. Paul said to them that while people were searching for him, he was never far away. Using their own language again, he said about God, ‘for in him, we live, and move and have our being.’ So far all was going well. But then he came to say that God was now dealing with human ignorance, and wanted people to repent. He had appointed a man for this task whom he had raised from the dead.
The proclamation of the Resurrection was and is a major point of challenge. We are told that some scoffed at this message, but others said, that they wanted to hear him again. He had clearly whetted appetites, and even gained followers. Two are named - a woman named Damaris, and a man with the delightful name of Dionysius the Areopagite. Luckily in those days he would not have had to fill in passport forms. That is as much as we are told. We are not told of any follow-up. ‘After that Paul left Athens for Corinth.’
Let us note again what Paul did. He did not criticise their beliefs. He took them from where they were, and using language and terminology to which they could relate, brought the message of Jesus’ resurrection, and God’s desire for us to repent. I once heard a Pentecostal preacher back in the 70s saying that Paul was too soft with them, and did not get enough converts. He apparently should have ‘socked’ them with the Gospel. I am not comfortable with that interpretation, and I think it says more about the preacher than about Paul, who was faced with a different and difficult audience.
Yet it does raise two issues. Should we treat all listeners in the same way, and do different audiences differ to the extent that they vary greatly in their interest in issues of faith? For me the first question is not difficult to answer. We should meet people where they are. It cam be highly insensitive to sit individuals or groups down and say effectively, ‘we are not interested in who you are, what your needs are, and what you think. Just keep quiet and listen.’ If listening is important, it is people of faith who need to do the listening.
The second issue is much more difficult. We need to take on board that some people or populations are open to faith issues and others not. During the sabbatical Gill and I had in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1999, as far as one can generalise, Southern congregations were seeking after Christian faith. Congregations were very large. What struck me at the cathedral where we were based was that, between two large Sunday morning services, each in excess of 200 people, there was an adult Sunday School, with between 50 and 100 people, depending on the topic. I asked what would happen if it did not exist, and was told that people would simply leave to find a church where it did happen. That active interest is a far cry from England and the North West.
That is not the world in which we live today, where we are seeking ways to engage with people who, if not hostile, are simply disinterested in Christianity. It is easy to become judgemental. What we should stop doing is to chastise ourselves for thinking we are getting things wrong.
Two weeks ago we had the lesson of the growth of early Christianity, and in a sermon at St Paul’s I said, rather than the cry of “back to the early church”, we should look forward. You cannot take a past model and put it uncritically into the present. What we can do is to relate aspects from the past into our future ministry, in the light of that wonderful verse from Isaiah, where God says to the prophet, ‘behold I am doing a new thing - do you not perceive it?’
Throughout the ages movements within the church have enriched it and even preserved it. For instance Benedictines, Franciscans, and Dominicans; the Moravian community, and beginning in the middle of last century, the Taize Community. In Britain there are the communities of Iona and Lindisfarne. In each case there was somebody, grounded in all that was good from the past, and hearing God saying, ‘I am doing a new thing - do you not perceive it?’ If it turns out to be right, we need to run with it; if God is in it, running alongside us, we will not become weary, but instead mount up with wings like an eagle. Amen.