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Our Anglican group of three churches on the Essex & Hertfordshire border has two ordained clergy and five preaching assistants together with numerous lay members who lead our services. All seven of us who have responsibility to preach and teach gather once a month to pray and discuss our programme.
I
have been ordained for over 35 years and preached before then at various churches in our area. My Christian heritage goes back well over two centuries, a direct antecedent being Revd Samuel Brewer who deeply influenced John Newton. By the grace of God such a background means that I have been well versed in the Scriptures from my earliest years so the meta-narrative of the Word runs deep.
The recent preaching in our parishes has been the themes and‘ I AMs’ of Jesus as recorded in John’ s Gospel. The sermon preached for Sunday 4 September 2016 was based on John 11:17 – 27:‘ I am the resurrection and the life.’
My initial preparation for this sermon commenced as the rota was issued two months before the event. I attempt to unwrap a passage in detail the weekend before and on the Monday re-read the text and the commentaries. The passage was supplemented by my private study of 2 Peter which was taking place over the recent period. This tuned my mind not simply to the fact of eternal resurrection life to come, but what this life means for us in our day-to-day experience and living. Peter reminded his readers in his first epistle of the living hope( from 1:3) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and then in his second epistle he reminds these tested believers of‘ his divine power … granted to [ them ] all things that pertain to life and godliness through … him who called us to his own glory and excellence’( 2 Peter 1:3 RSV). We don’ t go to heaven when we become believers but are called to work out his divine nature in the corrupt world we now live in!
Having therefore prayerfully assimilated these sources and as the mind dwells on the product to come, I began to weave it into the further reading and previous experience of the text. I use John 11 very frequently in funeral sermons because of its relevance to our experience of life and death. Its content is therefore very familiar. By beginning to crystallise thought on a Monday, it means that by Friday when I either write or type it out, I have meditated and prayed over it during the week, moulding it into its final form of about 1500 words. Once all the evidence was more or less secure in my mind it took me about six hours to produce the final script.
The sources of study in this particular preparation were from Carson’ s commentary on John( IVF), Raymond Brown on John( Anchor) and some very helpful comments I discovered in a synopsis of John’ s Gospel by J N Darby. Frances Schaeffer’ s Pollution and the Death of Man pushed my thinking beyond the‘ imminence of heaven which can dominate some pietistic thinking’ to the‘ great and precious promises … through [ which we ] may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.( 2 Peter 1:4 NIV). Practically how then should we live 24 / 7 in our corrupted world? Lazarus died, he lived again but how? Then he had to die again! This has pushed me to look again at Schaeffer’ s How Shall We Then Live which I first read in the 1970s while experiencing a communist revolution in Ethiopia.
While meditating on the concluding section of the sermon my mind was taken back to a vivid experience which affected my faith journey. I was at a conference at Ashburnham in 1973 where Campbell MacAlpine was speaking on this chapter about removing the‘ grave clothes’ and what this should mean to us personally.
Thus in retrospect the preparation, planning and finally the preaching this sermon became a practical challenge to me and I trust that the Holy Spirit used my experience of his Word to speak also to the two congregations who heard it so that they may know that Jesus is‘ the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in [ him ] will live, even though they die.’( John 11:25). How awesome!
Rev Stephen Bazlinton
Stephen Bazlinton ran a dental clinic in Addis Ababa for two years, before becoming ordained at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He worked for 30 years in non-stipendiary ministry in the Church of England while continuing in dentistry. He retired from general practice in 2015, and is now a busy grandfather to six, preacher and gardener, maintaining an acre garden regularly open to the public.