Stir Up Sunday and the Great Commission

A Sermon for Evening Prayer – Sunday next before Advent

22 November 2020

This morning we celebrated “Christ the King” at St George’s.

Tonight at St John’s it is “the Sunday next before Advent”

We have arrived at the last Sunday of the Liturgical Year.

It also means we have just said one of the most famous Collects beginning with the Words “Stir up O Lord we beseech thee, “

“the wills of thy faithful people, that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee, be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

For those of you at this morning’s service from St George’s, as in instructed by Father James, you have no doubt spent your day in the kitchen, spoon in hand stirring the Christmas pudding.

“Stir up” in the Collect comes from Latin excita, stir up to greater activity.

Please keep our prayer to be stirred up to greater activity in the back of your mind as we consider tonight’s Second reading from Matthew – another famous text because it contains “the Great Commission” – Jesus’ commandment:

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

Two very clear messages:

Being stirred up to greater activity and the commission to evangelise.

How does these messages sit with us this evening?

A dark winter evening at a time of suppressed activity.

Evangelism – which for some of us might have shade of Billy Graham crusades or coercion.

All this at a time when many are feeling exhausted or lethargic.

The first thing to say is that I believe that COVID has stirred many of us up to greater activity.

Surprised?

Let me explain.

I suggest that this last year has seen the love of God flow between us with greater velocity – powered partly by, as Tom Stacey has described it “the artifice of Zoom.”

Just one example: We now have more people than ever before attending our weekday Daily Prayer services.

But is not just about Zoom

For non-Zoom users there have been regular telephone calls between parishioners. There has also been a retreat when almost 20 of us went to Lounde Abbey to enjoy fellowship and study. And we have, between lock downs, been able to return to our churches –with our hearts ever fonder.

A parishioner commenting on life in the United Benefice said to me the other day: “people are looking out for each other. There is a feeling of wholeness about the Benefice.”

So, perhaps without us even realising it, the Holy Spirit has stirred us up over this pandemic period, this period when there has been much discussion about mental health.

That’s the Benefice

What about the nation as a whole?

Life for the nation is going to get better with the encouraging news on vaccine development

The question thus arises from the Great Commission: How can we individually make know the gift of the love of God more widely known in this land of ours? What role can we can individually play with regard to the Great Commission?

What are we called by God to do?

You will not be surprised that I do not have all the answers. It is something I hope to speak more about in the coming months.

Tonight I will focus on one quality that I suggest, if we develop in our daily lives, we will have a better chance of growing the Kingdom.

The gift of reflective listening.

At the risk of sounding contradictory, I am suggesting that we should be stirred up to greater activity by reflective listening.

It is sometimes said “They are always on Broadcast and never on Receive.” meaning that person is always giving their opinion and never listening to others.

Twitter is also a wonderful example of this, being so heavily slanted to Broadcast.

Yet if God’s church is to grow, it has to be an assembly of people of difference and differing opinions, united by the bond of the peace of Christ.

The difficulty is that we are a fractured people and we are not very good (understatement) at listening to each other. In popular media the Church all too often appears hypocritical and insensitive  - I’ve been watching some of the early episodes of the Netflix “Crown” and in that church leaders come over as lacking empathy and being on the wrong side of history.

Our current Archbishops recognise this fracturing is a problem and have set up an initiative to do something about it:

They have launched an initiative called Living in Love and Faith https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/living-love-and-faith

a collection of resources to enable Christian teaching and learning about Human Identity, Sexuality and Marriage.

These resources are intended to help all of us, whatever our theological convictions, to think more deeply about what it means to be human and how to live in love and faith with one another as the Christian church in this land.

I’ve started watching the videos that are part of this course and I urge you to do so too.

For people to hear the message of the Church, for us to teach all peoples, to share the love of God, and for it to flow between us, we have to be people of empathy and people who listen, people who welcome.

So stir us up O Lord, we beseech thee to be people of empathy, who listen and welcome.

Let me close with another great commandment of our beloved Lord:

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.”

Fr. Peter Wolton

22  November 2020