SUNDAY SERVICE

Bob Mayo I have recently taken a place on the web as an agony uncle answering questions from young people. The website is thebridge-uk.com. It is a superb multi-blog site designed by young people to connect with young people. It will also prove valuable for the church as material is gathered about the attitudes of the emerging generation.

I am featured as the doctor in the section entitled Ask the Doctor. Young people have the opportunity to post questions about a subject of concern. I have been asked by one young person whether kissing means going out and by another whether kissing is the most one can expect to do before marriage.

One young person had parents who were committed churchgoers and wanted him to go more often. Another young person had parents who felt that he was too committed to his church and should go less so that he should spend more time with his family.

Adults whose advice I have sought have generally been cautious about giving an opinion. They have offered variations on the same theme: it depends on the circumstances. The adult answers have tended to be pragmatic rather than insightful in what they have said.

Adults unwilling to give their opinion and parents who think that their children go to church too much are different sides of the same coin - in our society being too definite is out of vogue. Being non-liberal is the new social taboo in the way that a single mother would have been in the 1950s.

The irony is that it will be the young people who will teach the Church to be clearer in its faith message. A young person looking for advice on the status of kissing wants to be given an opinion, not to be left dangling in the wind with the adult unwilling to commit themselves one way or another.

The people who complained about David Cameron calling the UK a Christian country were the ageing secularists, not the young people, Christian, Jewish, Islamic or otherwise. The less working knowledge that young people have of the faith the more interested they become to hear what is has to say. Christianity is a treasure trove of practical wisdom and insight for someone trying to find their way in the world and I celebrate it as such.

I admire the concrete thinking asked for by the young people. I have only 200 words with which to reply and so need to be concise in what I say – why should advertising get all the best strap lines? God does hesitations but not deviations... God has low standards... Christians get what they don’t deserve... Christians make better lovers... we would worry less about what people thought if we realised how little they did!

Tell any young people you know about bridgeuk.com and invite them to ask the Doctor a question on any subject they chose.

Follow Bob on Twitter @RevBobMayo 6th Sunday of Easter - Sunday 25 May 2014. Acts 17:22-31 1 Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21 Our readings this week are about giving an account of the hope that is in us because of the risen Christ’s authority and his loving gift.

In the Gospel reading, following on from last week, Jesus reassures his disciples that his imminent departure is not the end of their friendship. He continues to love them, and they must continue to obey his commandments, even in his physical absence. To help them with this, he will ask the Father to send them another Advocate, a counsellor and friend like him. This Spirit of truth will abide with them, and be [i] in them, he says. The world will not enjoy this privilege and will not know, love, or obey him, who remains their Lord and Master even beyond the grave. They did not understand it then, but after his resurrection and the giving of the Spirit, these things became clearer to them.

The apostles looked to Christ’s resurrection power and authority in their ministries both to believers and unbelievers. Paul, addressing the sophisticated chatterati of cultured, unbelieving Athens, explains about Jesus and the Resurrection (which they thought might be two new gods). They confessed in their altar “to the unknown God” that they were ignorant of God; so he sets about proclaiming to them the truth revealed in Jesus. Beginning with first principles for those with little understanding of the Old Testament narrative and background, he leads the different philosophical parties in the Areopagus council to his impromptu speech’s stunning climax: Jesus is going to judge us all, so repent and believe before it’s too late. God has given proof of this final, personal judgment to come by raising Jesus from the dead.

On the way to this conclusion, Paul affirms God’s creation of the universe, his creation of all the nations of the world through one man (Adam), and yet his independence from creation (his “aseity” — he doesn’t need anything from us). This God does not live in temples made by human hands— a provocative thing to say while standing on Mars’ Hill with the glorious and expensive Parthenon right behind him! This transcendent and almighty God is, however, not a distant deity like Athena closeted away in her temple at the top of the Acropolis, but close to us. Paul’s use of the pagan poet Aratus (“For we are indeed his offspring”) shows he is adept at using cultural allusions the Athenians would have appreciated as testimony to the fact that humanity “gropes” after God and feels its indebtedness to him, yet perceives only very dimly without divine revelation.

Peter, addressing believers, tells them to similarly “always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you.” That hope, despite suffering, is that through the substitutionary death and powerful resurrection of Christ, they are brought to God with a clean conscience.

The tricky verses on the spirits in prison and Noah and baptism are related to the main purpose of the letter. They proclaim that the risen Christ is victorious and supreme over evil and that believers can be assured of their salvation — precisely what suffering Christians need to hear. Interpretations vary wildly, and certain readings must surely be ruled out (such as those which promote the idea of purgatory and the religious industry it inspires, and those which give false assurance in a ritualistic baptismal regeneration). Peter’s main point, however, is to strengthen the hope of those who are called on to give hope to a persecuting, and ignorant, world. That hope lies solely in the risen Lord Jesus, at the right hand of God, to whom every power and authority is ultimately accountable. Those who trust in him, will never be put to shame. Lee Gatiss is Editor of the NIV Proclamation Bible and Director of Church Society (www.churchsociety.org)