Christian Aid Sunday - Making It Real

“You did not choose me – I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.”

Those are some of the words with which Jesus made ready to leave his disciples on the evening before his crucifixion. For three years, they’d been at his side, watching him work, eating with him, debating with him. But it was only with hindsight that they truly realised who he was. He was God with them; God in the flesh.

Perhaps more than any of the other gospels, John’s is the gospel of incarnation. Matthew and Luke give us the story of Jesus’ birth; Mark begins his gospel already running, with Jesus a grown man. But John takes us way back in time to the beginning, in a self-conscious echo of the opening words of Genesis He says:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God”.

and just a few verses later he lets us into the immense secret that the new Christian community had been let into – that in Christ, the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

For the first time, the God of heaven had been earthed in a person; you could put your hand out and touch him if you wanted to. The unfathomable God had become tangible. And we needed that.

Like it or not, we can’t get away from the fact that human beings are creatures of sense. Unless we can see it, hear it, taste it, smell it or touch it, we’re generally not convinced.

God knows that. He remembers that we are dust as the Psalmist says. He knows it helps us believe if we’ve something tangible to hold on to. And so, John tells us, the word became flesh.

Without substance, all our talk about big truths or big ideas sounds like so much hot air.

I don’t mean to play party politics, but to give an example, what exactly is the Big Society? That was David Cameron’s rallying call two years ago at the last general election – great rhetoric, but what did it actually mean for you and me? Nothing tangible, as far as I can see. Which is probably why you’re hearing a lot less about it these days.

A big idea has to be anchored in something practical and tangible, if it’s going to make a real difference.

And that’s something Christian Aid have been so good at down the years.

Yes – they have the rhetoric. But they also have the practical solutions that make the rhetoric believable.

They want poverty to be over. There’s no denying that’s a big idea! But then they put hoes and seeds into the hands of women farmers in Sierra Leone so they can raise crops on vacant land.  They give them tools, not just aid, because these folk don’t want handouts for the rest of their lives – they want to be able to make their own way.

In time, the seeds start to grow, and the people start to grow too. With the right support and guidance from Christian Aid, folk are empowered to deal with the authorities and lobby for improvements in their conditions. And their arguments are stronger because they’re a community who are pulling together and going places. They get a new school. Their kids have a better chance of escaping poverty.

And all because someone, in Christ’s name, got alongside them with a few basic farm tools, and a little bit of strategising. That’s all it took for the big idea of an end to poverty to become a tangible reality, in that little corner of the world at least.

My friends, as Christians, we are invested in a big idea. The idea that there is a God who formed this world and who loves its peoples with an enduring love. A God who wants each and every individual to know that they matter to him, and invites them to know him in return.

We are charged with getting that message out, charged by Jesus himself. “You did not choose me – I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit, the kind of fruit that endures.”

How will we do that? How do we bear that fruit? By matching our profession with action. By making God’s love tangible.

Profession without action, according the apostle James, is just hot air.

“What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

Our little church sits here, a landmark for miles around. What goes on here, people wonder. What do those folk stand for? What are they about?

How will they know, unless our faith bears fruit in actions?

This week, one of the ways we can act is by helping out with the Christian Aid collection in the parish. A couple of hours of your time given over to helping communities like Bap in Sierra Leone. You don’t need to have all the answers, you don’t need to know the GDP and principal exports of Sierra Leone. You just need to know that these folk want to help themselves and need a leg up to get started, and that this matters to the God you say you believe in!

“Go and bear fruit” Jesus says. “the kind of fruit that endures”. This week, Christian Aid’s the obvious focusm but who knows what Jesus’ words might mean the week after? What that 'fruit' might look like. Visiting someone, writing to someone, cooking for someone, forgiving someone. You alone know.

But what’s clear this morning, not only from our text, but from the whole sweep of Scripture, is that it’s far easier for people to believe in God when God’s love is made real for them through the actions of flesh and blood people like you and me.