A New Awareness
Rev Dr Fank Hanson

Lessons:  Act : 1 – 6;   John 21 : 1 -17

I need to begin with an explanation. Where did today’s Bible readings come from? From the Lectionary – the three-year Ecumenical Lectionary. Each Sunday that Lectionary provides four different readings – the Hebrew Bible, the Psalms, the Gospels and the Epistles. That Lectionary is used by thousands and thousands of congregations around the world – Catholics, Anglicans, Protestants of many kinds. Some will take one reading, some two, some more. I feel in awe that millions of other Christians are hearing the same stories that we have heard. But not the same sermon! A single source, but every sermon different. Apart from those that come off the internet!

So I’ve selected two of the four readings because of their similarity. Saul on the road to Damascus and the disciples fishing by the lake.

And for me, the similarity is, that in each case there’s a new awareness.

Think of Saul. The incident is often called his conversion. It’s not a term I relate to very easily. I may have once upon a time. But not now.

I remember a few years ago I preached here at St Andrew’s on this passage. Then, I characterised Saul’s experience as his mid-life crisis. I still think that’s true.

But today I want to add to that a new thought. I think it’s about Saul running away. Running away from the disturbing influence of this Jesus, and away from those pushy and self-righteous disciples back in Jerusalem. They were getting to him. He couldn’t cope. He was running away, and he had to do his part to get rid of them.

Reminds me of my favourite poem, ‘The Hound of Heaven’, by Francis Thompson.

“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days, I fled Him down the arches of the years, I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind: and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

“But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat – and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet – ‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”

Saul was running away from Jesus. He was running away from things he didn’t understand, and from the spiritual and emotional turmoil caused by Jesus and his followers. And he wanted to get to Damascus to try and put an end, at least to some of them.

But on the road something dramatic has happened, at least for Saul. We might call it a miracle. It was for him. It’s probably quite an apt term. I remember Lloyd Geering once saying that a miracle is not some divine intervention of natural laws, but something to be wondered at. You view a miracle from the point of view of an insider, not a spectator. A miracle is what is happening for me, or to me. And it was happening for Saul.

It wasn’t the end of his struggles. He still had to struggle with himself, I have no doubt. He still had to find acceptance within the Christian hapū. But from then on, he had a new awareness. And he knew that that new awareness had totally changed his life.

Then there’s the other story. The story of the group of dispirited, disconsolate, unknowing young adults, not really aware of what was happening to them. A group who had once been his disciples. Life had let them down. What to do next? Return to life as they once knew it! They returned to the lake. And so, some boarded a boat and engaged in fruitless fishing, and some stood by the lakeside waiting. Then there was another miracle, a group miracle. I don’t pretend to know exactly what happened. We’ve got the biblical account. Is it accurate? Is it plausible? Has it been changed here and there after being handed down over a couple of generations? I don’t know.

But something profound was happening. And within it this group was being changed. And they, along with a few other women and men, were going to be the founders of the Christian Church to which you and I and millions and millions of others belong.

This group, too had come to a new awareness. The new life wasn’t over after all. There was a renewed pathway into the future.

And it was especially graphic for one of them in particular, Peter. Dejected, derailed, probably depressed Peter. Thinking about his betrayals and denials, how he had forsaken Jesus with the rest of them.

A miracle was happening to Peter. Inside Peter. There was a mystery at work. And it was giving to him a sense of, “I AM alright. I AM understood. I AM forgiven. And I’m still called to give a lead.”  “Feed my sheep”. Here too, within Peter as well as within the group, there was a new awareness. Dramatic, but new. And which again, as with Paul, led to a whole new direction for his own life, and with it, in the centuries to follow, the history of the Christian church. We would not be here today if these things had not happened!

A New Awareness!

Th possibilities are around us all the time.

Those of you who are teachers, counsellors, doctors, parents, grandparents – you know the thrill when suddenly a student cottons on to the answer to a maths problem, or a child sees things in a new way, or a client suddenly gets a new insight into a habit that has been holding them back, or a patient comes back to say, “The pain’s gone. I can get on with my life!”.  It’s happening all the time.

Back in 1981 there was a professor, James Fowler, on the staff of the Harvard Divinity School in the US. He wrote a book called’ Stages of Faith. It became very important for those of us working in Christian ministry and Christian education.

The book, Stages of Faith, sets out very carefully the different stages we can go through on our personal faith journey. For instance, we can start by saying “I accept everything my parents tell me” , to “Everything the bible says is true”, to “Whatever the church (or the minister) says is right”, to becoming very critical of what the Bible or the church (or the minister) says, to having my own dogmatic ideas, to going on to see things from another person’s point of view as well my own, and so on. Sometimes we get to a certain point where we say, “That’s it for me”, and we stay there. We are satisfied. We won’t shift/ we can’t shift. We are immoveable. Individuals can do that. So can congregations.

Among my reading recently was a book called, Outspoken. It contains interviews with 12 people, men and women, from within the Anglican Church of NZ. The interviews are about “coming out” as gay or lesbian people – their struggles with themselves, their families, their churches and so on. And I remember one interview where a young woman was being told repeatedly by her parents, “We love you, but you are going to spend eternity in hell”. I thought we had given up on hell long ago – I had! But these parents appeared so stuck, so sure in their black and white opinions that I wondered whether they would ever move past it to a new level.

I remember an incident when I was minister at the Hutt Methodist Church in the early 1970s. I was greeting people as they were leaving church. And a woman, whom I had never seen before, and have never seen since, said to me something to the effect, “Is God just a male?”. Well, that set me back on my feet. I had to rethink my whole image of God and the language I used about God.

Stages of faith keep us moving on in our understanding of faith and of ourselves. That’s true of individuals. Also of ministers, and of congregations. And when it happens, there we are with a new awareness. Sometimes out of the blue, sometimes after a lot of searching. Sometimes when we’re not looking for it. Sometimes when we don’t even want it.

But as happened on the road, and by the lake, we too can come to a new awareness.

That’s because what was, is no longer sufficient. What was, no longer answers our questions. What was, no longer fulfils our thinking or satisfies our feelings.

And what was, needs to be replaced by something more holistic and insightful.

So, in ending can I suggest that this week we stay alert for a new awareness? It may demand effort. It may come as a surprise. But if it happens we may well feel we’ve had a glimpse of resurrection. Amen.

Audio of selected readings and reflections

Audio of the complete service