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I rewrote my sermon this morning after seeing something a sex worker tweeted about being judged by Christians and asking them to stop. My sermons are usually interactive, so hard to capture it all, but this thread was the gist (sharing because someone requested it): 1/
I started by asking people how they began their Sunday morning. Someone said prayer. Someone said reading a devotional...I said, I started my day interacting with a sex worker on Twitter. Then I asked them to think about their immediate inner responses to that. 2/
Then I asked them what they thought Jesus's response might be. Then I asked them to think about what if I invited a sex worker up to the front of church and interviewed them as part of our This Time Tomorrow series, where we ask about people's jobs etc then pray for them. 3/
What would they feel about that? Then, what if I said, our theoretical sex worker was born into a family that was really poor, would that affect their response to them? What if I said they were from a rich family, would that affect their response to them? 4/
Or what if I said our sex worker was trafficked here and forced to work as a sex slave, their passport held, and threats made to their family. Would that affect their response to them? What if I said they tried really hard in school but teachers and the school system only 5/
really supported the cleverest kids, who were good academically, so they didn't do well in school and job options were limited. Would that affect your response to them? What if I said they were abused as a child, as a teenager, or raped as an adult? What do the circumstances 6/
have to be for us to show love and compassion? Because we don't know everyone's circumstances do we, or what has brought them to their current situation or choice? And we know that some sell their brains, but not everyone can. Some sell their bodies by modelling. Some sell sex.7/
Some of you may have listened to the queen's speech on Christmas Day. I didn't yet, but I heard it was well received. She often speaks well doesn't she. Now what if the queen walked into our church, would we roll out the red carpet and welcome her? What about our theoretical 8/
sex worker. If she walked into our church, would we roll out the red carpet of welcome? I read out the tweet that inspired me to rethink my sermon this morning: 9/
It breaks my heart that as Christians, we're known for judgement & not love, mercy and compassion. Most of you know I wasn't brought up going to church, so when I first read the Bible as an adult, I read it hungry to find out more about God. I excitedly read the New Testament 10/
Then I started going to church and meeting Christians and hearing how Christians spoke about other people, and I asked my Christian friend if there were different kinds of Bibles. It was a totally serious question! I thought maybe I had a different version 11/
When we interact with the world as Christians, we do so as the face & hands of God. We are a reflection of God for many. Yet look at what we're celebrating at Christmastime. God co-ordinated with an unmarried, pregnant teenager who carried and birthed Jesus! It's classic God! 12/
We might have to sanitise our hands in church, but we don't have to sanitise God. I want to show you something amazing. It's a little nut, an unassuming shell. Some of you may think your vicar has gone nuts this morning! But this was always true...13/
This little nut, an unassuming shell contains all sorts of wondrousness, a tiny nativity. And isn't this what we're celebrating at Christmas? Immanuel, God with us, it just that, an unassuming baby containing the fullness of God and God's love for the world and each one of us.14/
This is the nature of God and the Spirit of God, who is alive and has made their home within each of us. Unassuming as we are, we contain the image of God in whom we're made and the Spirit of God for whom we are a temple. 15/
You may have seen on the news, #hands #face #space You are the hands of God on earth, the face of God containing the image of God, and the space in which God's Spirit dwells. All of this is the absolute #grace of God, because we have done nothing to deserve it or earn it. 16/
It's a gift freely given by God. We haven't earned God's love by following rules, being good, or living our middle class moral lives. Your life, our church community, this moment, is filled with the absolute grace of God. So breathe in that gift, the oxygen, the gift of life 17/
Breathe it in because you are so infused with God that you don't know where you end and God begins. And breathe out grace, love and compassion...because God does. 18/18 <><
