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Sunday 4 May 2025 Third Sunday of Easter
Have you seen the light?
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Context: a gathered international English-speaking fellowship, based in an historic church in Geneva, which is intelligent, thoughtful, articulate and can sniff out baloney at 50 metres
Aim: to clarify the truth that faith is not absorbed, but chosen!
It used to be so simple!
I knew what it was
And what it wasn’t
To ‘be a Christian.’
That it simply wasn’t enough
to say:
‘I’m a good person’
or ‘I’ve nothing against the Church’
or ‘My wife goes’
or ‘I like watching Songs of Praise’
or ‘I was baptised as a baby’
or ‘I went to Sunday School’
or ‘I married in Church!’
or, even, ‘I believe in God.’
Admirable though these attitudes and practices might be:
commendable enough though
they are,
even very early on,
I knew that they were different from what ‘being a Christian’ was.
They might help you towards understanding what being a Christian was about
They might even nudge you towards faith –
But, I knew ‘being a Christian’ was about some kind of choice
some kind of commitment some kind of stance that we take.
It’s about my reaction to the reality of the love of God
reaching into my life with invitation and summons.
The jargon maybe gets in the way
‘Being born again’
‘Are you saved?’
‘Have you seen the light?’
‘Have you made the leap of
faith… ?’
Unhelpful clichés, that Christian apologists can hide behind, and people on the run from God can make mild mockery of.
But these images do highlight the truth that there is something we do personally to engage with the meaning of the faith and the Christ of the gospel.
Like Saul of Tarsus, scourge of the church… faced with the summons of the living Christ… what is he to do… his response… unique and different from any other person’s response… what will it be?
Like it or not, clearly, it’s to do with
A personal commitment
We opt to make
Or not.
Now, of course, you soon realise that this can be – a process.
We might begin by simply wanting to ‘find out more’ about faith and God, Church and beliefs.
We may decide to explore the nature of the Christian understanding.
And that journey of discovery may lead us, eventually, to a decision to make a commitment – even though we don’t know all the answers and probably never will.
But we have enough to work on
Enough to make a responsible response.
Which in turn may be expressed as an ongoing connection with the life of the people of God
Through Church involvement
And service.
We never make a big deal of it
But it is a big deal
In our heart.
We count ourselves ‘in’ rather
than ‘out’.
Worshipping
Learning
Serving
Growing in understanding – because, at the deepest level
this is who we are
And this is the faith, the world view, that we are coming to believe with ever deeper certainty.
For many people
fortunate enough to have been brought up in the life of the Church and who have supped for as long as they can recall at the table of faith
there is maybe no actual ‘moment of blinding commitment’ no Damascus Road…
No one hour, of any one day
that they can pinpoint as their moment of choice.
It might only be that once they sang a hymn that addressed the issue of commitment –
And they sang it – as for themselves!
For their life –
and they said a quiet amen to its meaning
‘From now on this is who I am:
This is where I am at! A believer blessed in always having believed;
Part of the family of God since the moment of my baptism as a child –
glad to be a Christian… never able to recall when I didn’t feel as if I wanted to be one.’
Dramatic and public
– or intensely intimate and internal – gradual or sudden
– actually, it doesn’t matter!
As long as it is real
And personal. ‘This is who I am.
This is who I want to be.
One of Christ’s followers.’
This is my choice
To be his rather than not to be his.
We don’t need to know everything there is to know
About faith and God and religion: just to feel in our soul
that it is true:
that he is true
And we choose to be his.
Enough… not everything –
just enough.
A ‘Yes!’ moment for our life.
‘I’ve thought
I’ve agonised
I’ve hesitated.
Now I choose to say “Yes!” to Christ… just as, long ago,
he chose to say yes to me.’
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