Light In The Darkness
Sermon
Those who follow the police soap "The Bill" on television, will be familiar with The Bronty. The Bronty is the local sink estate of high rise flats, prostitution, drug peddling and addiction, out of control children, and anything else you can think of that's really bad! Although there's been a clean-up operation there recently by the local police, for many episodes it was a no-go area. Officers who did venture onto The Bronty were likely to get beaten up or worse, with their cars regularly trashed in the few minutes they were left unattended.
There appears to be no Christian presence on The Bronty, which isn't a great surprise. Even the police who do attend go in twos, and most ordinary people hesitate to set foot alone on The Bronty. All of this is, of course, fictional, but is probably a fairly accurate representation of how things are in some of our inner city areas.
How is it possible to bring Christianity to such an area? A couple of nuns were faced with this challenge in real life some years ago. Their response was to actually live on the sink estate. They had a flat in one of the high rises with the broken lifts and the graffiti-daubed walls and the discarded needles and the broken glass. They didn't wear any habits, but just lived there as ordinary people, and became neighbours to others who lived there. Gradually people started to talk to them, and to tell their troubles to the two nuns. And gradually a real cameraderie began to develop, with people meeting together for coffee and a chat.
People were amazed that anyone would choose to live in such an area, and wanted to know why the two nuns had made such a choice. That was the opportunity those two nuns needed. They began to chat about Jesus, and before very long a simple church started in the nuns' flat. It grew from there until the whole estate was transformed, and from being a sink estate it became one of the most sort-after locations in the area.
But it needs very committed Christians to be prepared to give up their own lives, as those two nuns did, for the sake of others who are generally regarded as the dregs of society.
This is more or less what happened in Corinth 2000 years ago.
Corinth was a seaport, and therefore a commercial crossroads, full of followers of various pagan cults and those who followed no religion at all. It was also a hotbed of moral depravity, not unlike The Bronty.
St. Paul established a Christian community in Corinth about the year 51, on his second missionary journey. Through the book of Acts we know that Paul went first to the synagogue, the Jewish religious centre of the city and that to start with he had some success among the Jews.
But it seems that the Jews soon turned against him (Acts 18:1-8), so Paul spent a year and a half among the Gentiles (Acts 18:11), who were numbered amongst the city's poor and underprivileged (1:26). And like the two nuns, this was where Paul was successful. When he left Corinth some eighteen months later, he left Apollos, an Alexandrian Jewish Christian, to look after the community (Acts 18:24-28).
It was around three years later in AD 55, while Paul was in Ephesus on his third journey (16:8; Acts 19:1-20), that he received disturbing news about Corinth. The very new Corinthian Christians seemed to be reverting to their former ways. They were the very first generation of Christians, so had no-one except the church leaders on which to model their behaviour. Paul learned that the community was splitting up into factions of those who followed Apollos, those who followed himself and those who followed other leaders.
But that was just one of the problems. Paul also learned that one of the Christians was living publicly in incest (5:1-13). Other members were engaged in legal conflicts in pagan courts of law (6:1-11), and some were enjoying religious prostitution (6:12-20).
And the community's problems didn't cease when they were actually in church for worship. In the celebration of the Eucharist some members got drunk on the Communion wine, and others discriminated against the poorer members (11:17-22). Women didn't bother to dress properly for church (11:3-16), and perhaps were quarreling over their right to address the assembly (14:34-35). And charismatic 'prayer' such as speaking in tongues, was used more as an ego trip than as a form of worship (14:1-40).
Paul also had to deal with matters which offended some members, such as the eating of meat that had been sacrificed to idols (8:1-13), the place of sex in marriage (7:1-7), and whether or not people should bother to get married at all in view of the possibility of Christ's imminent return (7:25-40). And to cap it all, some members of the community, despite their belief in the resurrection of Christ, were denying the possibility of life after death for anyone else.
Paul had to respond to all these problems in his letter to the Corinthians and he takes the whole letter to do so.
The letter provides one of the best insights we have into the life of an early Christian community, and it paints a grim and bleak picture. Things were not good. The Christians were behaving in a far from Christian way and the new start of Christianity seemed to have disappeared almost without trace.
Yet Paul isn't fazed by any of this. He sees much more of the good than the bad, and he starts his letter in today's reading by praising the Corinthian Christians, reaffirming them and their faith, and reassuring them that even they with all their faults will be found blameless when Jesus returns, because God has called them and God is faithful.
Today, on Advent Sunday, we start the Church's New Year. You may think that things aren't brilliant in the Church today, that Christianity is regarded by the rest of society as largely irrelevant, that young people have virtually disappeared from the Church, that Christians are now in the minority. But look what happened from that awful beginning in Corinth and in those other early churches - Christianity eventually grew and flourished so much that within four centuries it became the state religion.
St Paul saw only the light of Christ, not the darkness of Corinth. And we too need only to look to the light of Christ and retain our faith in our God who is always faithful. And we need dedicated Christians like St Paul and those two nuns, who are prepared to live Christian lives amongst their neighbours and chat about Christ when the opportunity arises.
God is faithful, and if we are also faithful to him, this Advent could mark the start of a very bright new year indeed for the Church.
There appears to be no Christian presence on The Bronty, which isn't a great surprise. Even the police who do attend go in twos, and most ordinary people hesitate to set foot alone on The Bronty. All of this is, of course, fictional, but is probably a fairly accurate representation of how things are in some of our inner city areas.
How is it possible to bring Christianity to such an area? A couple of nuns were faced with this challenge in real life some years ago. Their response was to actually live on the sink estate. They had a flat in one of the high rises with the broken lifts and the graffiti-daubed walls and the discarded needles and the broken glass. They didn't wear any habits, but just lived there as ordinary people, and became neighbours to others who lived there. Gradually people started to talk to them, and to tell their troubles to the two nuns. And gradually a real cameraderie began to develop, with people meeting together for coffee and a chat.
People were amazed that anyone would choose to live in such an area, and wanted to know why the two nuns had made such a choice. That was the opportunity those two nuns needed. They began to chat about Jesus, and before very long a simple church started in the nuns' flat. It grew from there until the whole estate was transformed, and from being a sink estate it became one of the most sort-after locations in the area.
But it needs very committed Christians to be prepared to give up their own lives, as those two nuns did, for the sake of others who are generally regarded as the dregs of society.
This is more or less what happened in Corinth 2000 years ago.
Corinth was a seaport, and therefore a commercial crossroads, full of followers of various pagan cults and those who followed no religion at all. It was also a hotbed of moral depravity, not unlike The Bronty.
St. Paul established a Christian community in Corinth about the year 51, on his second missionary journey. Through the book of Acts we know that Paul went first to the synagogue, the Jewish religious centre of the city and that to start with he had some success among the Jews.
But it seems that the Jews soon turned against him (Acts 18:1-8), so Paul spent a year and a half among the Gentiles (Acts 18:11), who were numbered amongst the city's poor and underprivileged (1:26). And like the two nuns, this was where Paul was successful. When he left Corinth some eighteen months later, he left Apollos, an Alexandrian Jewish Christian, to look after the community (Acts 18:24-28).
It was around three years later in AD 55, while Paul was in Ephesus on his third journey (16:8; Acts 19:1-20), that he received disturbing news about Corinth. The very new Corinthian Christians seemed to be reverting to their former ways. They were the very first generation of Christians, so had no-one except the church leaders on which to model their behaviour. Paul learned that the community was splitting up into factions of those who followed Apollos, those who followed himself and those who followed other leaders.
But that was just one of the problems. Paul also learned that one of the Christians was living publicly in incest (5:1-13). Other members were engaged in legal conflicts in pagan courts of law (6:1-11), and some were enjoying religious prostitution (6:12-20).
And the community's problems didn't cease when they were actually in church for worship. In the celebration of the Eucharist some members got drunk on the Communion wine, and others discriminated against the poorer members (11:17-22). Women didn't bother to dress properly for church (11:3-16), and perhaps were quarreling over their right to address the assembly (14:34-35). And charismatic 'prayer' such as speaking in tongues, was used more as an ego trip than as a form of worship (14:1-40).
Paul also had to deal with matters which offended some members, such as the eating of meat that had been sacrificed to idols (8:1-13), the place of sex in marriage (7:1-7), and whether or not people should bother to get married at all in view of the possibility of Christ's imminent return (7:25-40). And to cap it all, some members of the community, despite their belief in the resurrection of Christ, were denying the possibility of life after death for anyone else.
Paul had to respond to all these problems in his letter to the Corinthians and he takes the whole letter to do so.
The letter provides one of the best insights we have into the life of an early Christian community, and it paints a grim and bleak picture. Things were not good. The Christians were behaving in a far from Christian way and the new start of Christianity seemed to have disappeared almost without trace.
Yet Paul isn't fazed by any of this. He sees much more of the good than the bad, and he starts his letter in today's reading by praising the Corinthian Christians, reaffirming them and their faith, and reassuring them that even they with all their faults will be found blameless when Jesus returns, because God has called them and God is faithful.
Today, on Advent Sunday, we start the Church's New Year. You may think that things aren't brilliant in the Church today, that Christianity is regarded by the rest of society as largely irrelevant, that young people have virtually disappeared from the Church, that Christians are now in the minority. But look what happened from that awful beginning in Corinth and in those other early churches - Christianity eventually grew and flourished so much that within four centuries it became the state religion.
St Paul saw only the light of Christ, not the darkness of Corinth. And we too need only to look to the light of Christ and retain our faith in our God who is always faithful. And we need dedicated Christians like St Paul and those two nuns, who are prepared to live Christian lives amongst their neighbours and chat about Christ when the opportunity arises.
God is faithful, and if we are also faithful to him, this Advent could mark the start of a very bright new year indeed for the Church.
