Sermon ideas

See also  PostScript - Comments, prayers, questions and discussion on the week's news.

• The reading from Acts shows how the gospel is spreading as Philip moves his focus of activity from Samaria to south of Jerusalem. This is certainly not a seamless progression – just before today’s events is the stoning of Stephen, to which Saul assents.

• The Ethiopian is a traveller from a far-off land, a pious man prohibited from entering the Temple courtyards as a Gentile, and unable to become a Jew because he is a eunuch. Philip helps him make the connection between Isaiah’s suffering servant and the crucified and resurrected Christ. The key exchange between these two is this: ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ and ‘How can I unless someone guides me?’ How best might the Church of today continue Philip’s indispensable work of being a connection or bridge between different worldviews?
  
  
•   You could sum up this week’s epistle reading – and perhaps the whole Christian faith – in a very simple, almost syllogistic set of phrases: God loves us, we can love God, we can love each other. The simplicity only underlines the difficulties of achieving this from a human perspective. However, the passage also puts some pragmatic flesh on abstract bones: God showed his love by the death of Jesus as sacrifice for human sin, and it is only by loving (and by implication, caring for) our brothers and sisters that we can show that we love God. Our response therefore is not a disembodied love of God, but a real-world, hard-work love. Church communities, full of different human beings, are a kind of testing ground for such love – and often it’s far from easy.
  
  
• We should not be lulled into any false sense of comfort by this agrarian imagery of vines and grapes. These metaphors echo references in the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 5; Jeremiah 12; Ezekiel 19; Hosea 10; Amos 5) where Israel as the vineyard is uprooted in God’s anger. Here, in John’s Gospel, is the culmination of this series as Jesus himself takes the place of Israel as the true vine. This opens the challenge or opportunity to engage with texts that culturally may be problematic for us now.
  
  
• This passage from John’s Gospel is uncomfortable for the Church. If we take a more communal reading rather than an individual one in terms of pruning, we might ask of all those activities we think of as essential: What is really bearing fruit? How are they helping us to abide in God? How are they showing to others God’s love?

You may also find this week's All-age conversation useful.