Collect

Almighty God, through your only-begotten Son Jesus Christ you have overcome death and opened to us the gate of everlasting life:  grant that, as by your grace going before us you put into our minds good desires, so by your continual help we may bring them to good effect;  through Jesus Christ our risen Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  

Amen

 

A reading from The Acts of The Apostles   (8. 26-40):

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.)  So he got up and went.

Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’  So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’  He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.

Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:  ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’

The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’  Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.  As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

 

Psalm 22  (25-31):

1. From you comes my praise in the great congregation;  I will perform my vows in the presence of those that fear you.

2. The poor shall eat and be satisfied;  those who seek the Lord shall praise him;  their hearts shall live for ever.

3. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall bow before him.

4. For the kingdom is the Lord’s and he rules over the nations.

5. How can those who sleep in the earth bow down in worship, or those who go down to the dust kneel before him?

6. He has saved my life for himself;  my descendants shall serve him;  this shall be told of the Lord for generations to come.

7. They shall come and make known his salvation, to a people yet unborn,  declaring that he, the Lord, has done it.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be:

world without end.

Amen

 

A reading from The First Letter of John   (4. 7-21):

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.  By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.

God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

We love because he first loved us. Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

​

Listen to the Gospel of Christ according to St John  (15. 1-8):

Glory to you, O Lord

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.’

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ.

​

Reflection - AE

This reading from the first letter of John is one of the clearest descriptions we could possibly ask for of the identity of God as, and with, love.

 

‘Love is from God … God is Love.”

 

The clarification, just in case we didn’t know, that because of love he sent his Son to be with us.

 

God loves us, whether as Father, Son or Holy Spirit. He lives in us as Spirit, connecting to all the ideas about us being made in God’s likeness, and our conscience within us being connected to doing what’s right, being good, as God would wish.

 

His Son came to atone, and that word atone is rooted in ‘at one’.  He came to be at one with us, and so that we could be at one with him, because he loves us.

 

The other word which we can’t miss in this is abide.  It’s repeated again and again here, and it’s in the Gospel reading too - Jesus said “Abide in me as I abide in you.”

 

Abide’s not a word that’s used so often these days.  Mostly I can hear an older voice saying, “Oh, I can’t abide that woman,” a negative use, but meaning ‘I can’t stick being near her,’ so that same sense of abide as being with, just being together.  Abide a while, just stay here with me, spend time together.  In Jesus’s case, spend forever together.

 

It can feel quite passive.  Just be here with me.

 

A long time ago when our children were young we had some sweet friends, who used to come over from Canada to visit every summer.  They were elderly, both retired, not very mobile, and they used to say, “We’re so looking forward to spending time with you.”

 

The idea, with four young children, of just sitting down with anyone for hours at a stretch seemed unimaginable, and to be honest my heart used to sink a bit;  but it held that value of just being with those you love, not necessarily even speaking, just abiding.

 

But that makes it sound as if God’s love is only passive, as if Jesus was simply passive.

 

To some extent, he was - he was sent by the Father, he took time on his own to just think and pray, he offered no defence to the humiliation and agony of crucifixion.

 

But make no mistake, he also was and is fully active.  He was a willing partner in the coming to be with us.

 

He went out of his way to teach, to heal the sick, to seek out and move among the people he wanted to be with.

 

And he came back - to Mary Magdalene, to the Apostles, then again to Thomas, he cooked breakfast for all of them on the beach.

 

He came back to be with us, and through the Spirit he still is in us, abiding in us, always, but also actively, guiding us, listening to prayer, being right beside us in all we go through.

 

The other person we have heard about is the Ethiopian Eunuch.

 

Now he was an interesting figure, from a foreign land away away, a powerful figure there, highly trusted, highly intelligent, but quite unusual in the male-dominated Roman Empire, as a eunuch, physically ambiguous, and servant to a powerful woman, but he’d come all the way to Jerusalem, and he was reading Isaiah.  He clearly wanted to learn more about this other God, and to understand this scripture he was reading.

 

Like the Magi at Jesus’s birth, he had a made a difficult journey, both physically and in his head, and was fully open to learning, understanding, accepting God, he just needed a bit of help.

 

Like so many since the resurrection, he was an honest gentile who welcomed the chance to let God’s Spirit abide in him, open himself up to God’s word abiding in him, and to give himself to God.

 

He sat with Philip, then he got up and went into the water to be baptised.

 

Then he went on his way, rejoicing, and tradition has it that he took the Gospel back to Ethiopia, from where the Christian Church spread across North Africa.  He was one of the very earliest gentile disciples, and he certainly abided in Christ, and his words bore fruit.  He was fully joined to the vine,

 

So that gives us all clear guidance to being Christians now.

 

We all need to spend time focussing on God, being fully with him, whether in prayer, reflection, while walking or maybe weeding or ironing, but abiding intentionally with him.

 

But we also need to get up, get out there, as his hands and feet, showing his love through us to the rest of the world, where we will see it reflected back to us in other people.

 

It’s no good being just passive, closed in on ourselves, or thoughtlessly active without reflection on what or why we’re doing what we do.

 

But God is there, within us, to guide us wherever we go.

 

Amen

 

Post-Communion Prayer

Eternal God, your Son Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life:  grant us to walk in his way, to rejoice in his truth, and to share his risen life;  who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.  

Amen