Words for Worship

Ministry Today

Being part of the Miracle

 

Text:

Luke 14.15-23

 

Introduction

 

For most of us in our modern urbanised country,

it is hard to get really anything out of an annual thanksgiving for the harvest.

 

Hens, for example, are far removed from the eggs of Tesco’s and fast food chicken McNuggets. Yet there are other God given gifts in our lives – fruits that we should give heartfelt thanks for. And it is these essentials of life that remind us why others in the third world have true joy at a good harvest.

 

Let’s look at some people enjoying their unexpected gift of good things now

As we read Luke 14.15-23

 

Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor

, the crippled, the blind and the lame.’

 

 

Imagine being invited to a fantastic party, one that you would never dream of being invited to, with fabulous food, entertainment and wonderful decoration.

 

Perhaps you would feel nervous, knowing that you didn’t have the right clothes to wear or that you would say the wrong thing?

 

However, you swallow your nerves and go along to the party, and what a party! You soon realise that you should never have worried. You are welcomed completely and treated like royalty. You are given the best wine and shown around the banqueting hall, and told to help yourself to anything

and make yourself at home. You meet the hosts and they thank you

from the bottom of their hearts for coming to their party. They seem genuinely pleased that you have come and they take great interest in you,

making you feel important and special. You are invited to stay forever, to get to know the hosts and the other guests, all of whom are also bowled over by the generosity and welcome they’ve each received.

 

And you decide to stay; after all it’s either the party or the dark streets

from which you came. You thank God for the people who ventured out to your dark street and invited you to the banquet. From now on you have a much better option for your life, from now on you have something to live for.

 

For now you give thanks for harvest of Christ’s church.

 

Main Sermon

What do you feel about the slogan – be part of the miracle?

 

Well, it could be what miracle?  

 

And the reply would be given in bald facts; facts that sounds like a school sum;

facts like half of the world’s population now lives on less than £1 a day; facts like there are 2.8 billion humans alive today; fact indeed that 9 out of 10 Christians live in poverty. Therefore 9 out of 10 Christians are truly praying for a good harvest – praying for the miracle that they may feed themselves and their family.

 

However we would never guess all of this from a video of our African brothers and sisters attending Sunday worship at their local church. Because their services will go on for several hours and the congregation will attend often

more than once on a Sunday. The singing will be joyful, clothes colourful,

the prayers exuberant and there will be giving with dancing –

proof that the worshippers truly believe that the Lord loves a cheerful giver.

 

Here we would say to ourselves are people ecstatic at being invited

to the banquet of the Lord – the feast of he who died for them.

 

But as we know things aren’t as rosy as they seem.

 

For Cuthbert, a pastor of a church in Malawi also makes clear that his country

is the poorest in Africa with its population suffering exploitation, injustice and the scourge of HIV/AIDS. No wonder he says that 5 million

of his fellow citizens are not just below the poverty line but are in desperate need of help simply to live; a people who are crying out for the compassionate love of other Christian party-goers.  

 

Human beings just like Andrew who is also a farmer. Now in a good year,

he works very hard and prays for a good harvest. But last year things didn’t work in his favour. His first lot of crops died through drought. And then the next harvest was wiped out by floods. Not only that, but during that deluge,

the river dumped 12,000 tonnes of sand on his land. The result is his fields’ soil is buried under about a yard of sand. This has to be dug away before he can plant again. So now each planting that once took 30 seconds now takes half and hour. He  therefore is learning the extremely painful lesson of climate change.

 

Well if we in gratitude for our harvest wanted to help all who are at the party

of the church – what would we do differently?

 

Or, if our local community and congregations  were made up of people like Andrew how would we live differently not just on a Sunday but on our weekdays as well?

 

Well let’s let our film run on a bit longer.

 

For next it returns to Cuthbert who reminding us of the words of that great father of the Church, St Augustine. Because he said –

pray as if everything depended on God

and work as everything depended on you.

 

Here then is the key to seeing the joyous party of worshippers in the third world and say I want some of that. Here is the solution to the needy of poorest countries seeing our party of plenty and asking hopefully – can I have some of yours. Here indeed is how we need to start praying and working

in the days ahead.

 

Because these very words of Augustine has inspired Tearfund to attempt

to bring 50 million out of both material and spiritual hunger by the year 2015.

 

And there tool for achievement is that self same party that we are giving thanks for as part of our harvest. For they see an almost unstoppable power

emerging if all local churches banded together in a network. Becuase if we did-

 it would give a cluster of 100,000 local churches ;  A huge assembly that would speak of and lives out the gospel in every aspect of their lives; the gospel of the word that Christ died to save us coupled to the gospel of action that he loved each of us unconditionally.  

 

 

But you could say this sounds all very fie but surely the large non-governmental organisations and national governments of the west

are best placed to help. And of course they have a big part to play.

 

But as Cuthbert Gondwe goes on to explain – you really have to go down

to the ground to find the very poorest who have no voice. Local churches work

with everyone. They know the poorest people in the village because they live there.This ability of local Christians to get down to the need of all their community cannot be better illustrated than during the 2005 food shortages

in the sahel region of west Africa. For the Union of evangelical churches in Niger gave emergency help to 12 mainly Muslim villages. The villagers were astounded that Christians would help them. One said – they used to say

that Christians were compassionate but we were dubious; now we believe it.

In all our history, no one has ever given us food aid. This time we have been taken notice of. The Christians are welcomed among us.

 

Well, if our poor brethren of Africa can help the very needy how can we

who celebrate a most generous harvest do less?

 

How indeed can we not buy into this network of local churches

and how can we not want to be part of our Lord’s latest miracle?

 

And we join this party by firstly admitting that we are one with the rest of humanity. We are all on the same journey. We have a mutual responsibility for each other. And then we need to pray for that common journey

to lead towards the miracle of a better harvest for all. However the local church concept requires us not to proffer general prayers but to get to know a community in poverty; a family in destitution and an individual in need. With modern communications and charity publication is it easy find such subjects for these specific prayers . Then we must pray as if everything depends on God.

 

For indeed it does!

 

Secondly we must recommit ourselves to serving Christ as the host of our communal party; the giver of our plenty and the hope of all for whom he gave his life. Service we are able to do by letting our neighbours know of the plight

of those we are praying for; also by raising our community’s awareness of its vast surplus and their call to not to be greedy.  Here again all the wonders of our technological age comes to our aid.

 

For today, we can assistance a local church half a around world as if it was just up the road. In other words we must work for the churches in Africa, Asia and central America as if they depended on us – because in many ways they do.

 

Finally, we must all submit to the Holy Spirit and in that submission be empowered to give. To give of our material wealth to feed the hungry;

to give of our lifestyle to prevent further ecological damage and give of our freedoms so that other might loose their chains.

 

Submit indeed to the excitement and dangers of that life-altering prayer of John Ortberg:

 

God, make up there come down here.

 

But can so many different church denominations with so many different people from so many different cultures really work together.  To believe that,

we must hear again of those most grateful to be invited to the harvest supper of Christ. Churches like those in Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

There back in September 2006, local clergy pulled together 55 people

from local churches to attend a workshop supported by Western Christian Charities. Together they explored the heart of the gospel, traced the links

between theology and development and explored the church’s mandate

for addressing the physical and practical needs of those it has contact with.

 

The people that attended were then trained to encourage local Christians

to pilot local initiatives in their villages, drawing in their neighbours

to share in the work. In just a few months the progress that was made

by these groups was remarkable. One village has seen people unite to protect

a valuable water spring, while those living near Nyakunde worked to refurbish

their primary school. In another village, people have been given seeds

and are working to cultivate what looks like being a bumper crop of vegetables this year.

 

These are of course very small steps towards the good news – little acts of the gospel –simple invitations to this planet allowing all enough to eat. For as Dr Katho of the Bunia project remarks - local churches helping each other

across the globe is an act of commitment that makes up the everyday miracles

we desperately need as we pursue our vision of a world where vulnerable communities are better prepared to cope with the consequences of natural disasters.  

 

Communities of people like Andrew, his wife Grace and his baby daughter;

people who Christ has invited into his house same as us and people who have just as much right to its same certain harvest.  Let us then take a step too

with our fellow Christian; a step in gratitude for gifts received  a step to make a miracle happen and a step to rejoin the party.

 

Amen

 

This sermon was prepared with the help of material from Tearfund who are gratefully acknowledged