All Saints Church, Worcester

Morning Communion - Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-18

Passion!

I want to speak to you this morning about Passion – I know Passion Sunday comes in the lead up to the Easter, rather than the Christmas, celebrations, but there is passion here too. And today as we look at the ministry of John the Baptist we certainly see a man of passion. It’s not generally part of our preaching these days to begin sermons with such phrases as, "You brood of vipers!" In contrast, what did David say to us this morning? Good Morning and Welcome!

What we see in this rather extreme – though highly effective - preaching ministry is John’s passion coming through. His passion to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus by seeing God’s people taking seriously once again God’s call upon their lives. He challenged them to the sort of genuine repentance which would be revealed in changed lives. And he pointed them constantly towards the one who really mattered which was, of course, Jesus.

This got me thinking about passion in our Christian lives so here are a number of pointers concerning passion for us to reflect on…

Firstly, Passion is good. The Bible says, Without vision the people perish, and passion too is a vital ingredient in the Christian life. A passion above all for God, but beyond that a passion for some aspect of the Christian life and ministry into which you can pour your energies and talents. SO…

Find your Passion. Passions are not unrelated to gifts and indeed we might find that our passions are influenced by what our gifts are. Just as each of us has been promised a gift, so we also all have the task of discovering our area of passion. So you might want to ask yourself: What is it that feeds your energy; that invigorates your Christian life; that fuels your prayers; fills your dreams; brings you joy etc? What’s yours? I love to see people and churches becoming who God wants us to be – reflecting both in our lives with one another and our witness the sort of relationships which Jesus calls us to. That’s what I’m here for!

Share your Passion. First with God to check it out. Then with a few trusted friends. Then it’s good to let others know what your passion is. It will help them to understand where you are coming from. It will also help you to connect with others who share the same passion. So look for opportunities to share your passion with others – I’ll come back to that word share in a while and we will have an opportunity later in this service to hear a couple of people sharing briefly an area of passion for them.

And then of course we need to…

Live your Passion. A friend of mine loves to spend time encouraging and discipling leaders and potential leaders who are younger than him in the faith. Frustrated that he had to fit that into his spare time, he recently gave up his normal paid work to dedicate his whole life to this mentoring work. It’s his passion. Not all of us will have the opportunity to do that – but how are we living out our passion? Are we making time to allow God to use us in the areas where he has given us a real heart burden or a real spiritual skill? In Romans 12 Paul says: If your gift is to prophesy then prophesy, if it is to serve, then serve, if it is teaching, then teach, if it is encouraging, then encourage, etc, etc. It sounds obvious doesn’t it? But it’s sometimes the obvious stuff that we get wrong!

Find your passion, share your passion and live your passion, but as you do so remember this one key thing!

Passions vary for different people. You will find others who share your passion but not everyone will because they will have their own passion. John the Baptist and Jesus shared a passion for obedience to God, but the messages they were passionate about and their styles of ministry were very different. [John the Baptist went out into the desert and preached repentance to any who would come to him. Jesus for the most part went to where the people were and preached, and although he too declared, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand," he also went on to declare and demonstrate the good news of the kingdom of God.] Now, it’s hard for us to take this on board, because the thing about passion is that we feel strongly about it. And when we feel strongly about something, we can’t understand why everyone else doesn’t feel as strongly about our area of passion as we do. The reason is of course because they have their own areas of passion – but we are not always open-minded enough to see it that way.

So here are a couple of guidelines to take on board so that in our God-given passion we don’t end up hurting one another.

Don’t impose your Passion on others. I used the word share earlier on and it was deliberately chosen word. When you share you give others the opportunity to be inspired and to join with you in your passion. When you impose you simply dump your interests and priorities on someone else and expect them to fall into line with you. You have no time to listen to their alternative passions and to be influenced by them. You might even be tempted to put them down. This is the source of many an unnecessary conflict in the Christian church. Good Christian people fall out with one another over the relative importance of things that are both important.

I can think of a family who, for good and Godly reasons, were totally passionate about world mission. If a world mission event were organised, they could not understand why every single person in their church did not drop everything in order to hear the latest stories from the mission fields of the world. Another family, for good and Godly reasons, were totally passionate about local mission. If it wasn’t going to impact the immediate community surrounding the church then it really didn’t excite them at all.

Of course they were both right – so long as those committed to local mission are not avoiding their belonging in the wider church, and those committed to world mission are not avoiding the need to share the gospel with their neighbour! This is part of recognising that whereas there are some aspects of the Christian faith which are non-negotiable – the divinity of Christ for example – there are others which will, and indeed should, vary between Christians. Our area of passion is one of those.

So let’s learn not to impose our passions on others. And instead to be ready to…

Accept and affirm one another’s Passions. I remember a guy who spoke to us at College whilst I was training – he was passionate about the spiritual gift of administration. I can still picture him beaming away at the front of the lecture hall as he spoke about bits of paper! He dedicated much of his time to encouraging churches to be well organised – not just for the sake of it but so that churches might be more effective in their growth and mission! That was his passion. Now, I am never going to have that same passion, but I can be really glad that others do! In the same spirit, the Christ-like way with our passions is to rejoice in the passions of others, affirming them and accepting them, without turning the church into a battleground!

Finally, we cannot speak of passion at all - let alone at this time of the year - without remembering God’s Passion for us before which all our passions for him or for his world fade into insignificance. This is the season in which we remember the supreme passion - that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. Years before this event in the prophetic promises of Zephaniah, God’s passion had already been revealed: it is a prophecy of God’s promised salvation: The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. Words which are wonderful enough, but they are added to by the tremendously passionate and personal picture which follows: He will take great delight in you, he will quiet over you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. This is the passion which really counts – God’s totally committed and perfectly personal love for each of us – and it is out of this passion that will grow our passion for him and then the passions which he gives us to find, to share, to live, but never to impose on the lives of others!