SERMON 16 - SUNDAY 9 DECEMBER 2012

Sermon at St Mary’s Church, West Dean -  Morning Worship – Sunday 9 December 2012

Malachi 3:1-4; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

A typical weekday morning in the Barratt household sounds something like this - “Why are you not ready?”; “Why didn’t you clean your PE kit last night?”; “Why didn’t you tell me that you needed to make and take a model of the Great Wall of China to school today as part of your history project?!”  Any parent of teenage children will know or remember those mornings.  However hard you try and explain things to them, teenagers live for the “here and now” and seldom think about the consequences of not being prepared for future events.  And how many of us, if we are honest, are just like that? Although this might be a generalisation, in my experience teenagers will get away with as little as possible if they can; leaving others to pick up the pieces.  Are we so unlike them? Rant over!

Our first reading this morning came from Malachi.  Can anyone tell me (apart from today’s reader) where in the bible you will find this book?  The answer is – it is the last book in the Old Testament, before Matthew, although there is somewhat in the order of a 400 year gap between the two.  Malachi gets dusted off every Advent but otherwise we hardly ever hear from him during the rest of the year.  That’s a pity. It is the reading which we heard today which is usually read, but the whole book of Malachi makes really interesting reading and has a great significance for the church today.

The name Malachi means “messenger” and was probably a “nom de plume” for the author of this book. It was written at a time when the exiled Jews had returned to Jerusalem, had rebuilt the Temple and city walls and had resumed their worship in the Temple.  However, they had become indolent and lazy.  They were expecting the Messiah, the chosen one, to come and release them from Persian overrule; but he had not appeared.  They had slumped into simply going through the motions of worship and sacrifice to Yahweh or Jehovah. The priests were keeping the best animals for themselves; the people, with the complicity of the priests, putting forward blemished animals for sacrifice. They were paying lip service in their worship and thought that, so long as they did the bare minimum in their devotions, they would keep alive the hope that God would send them their conquering saviour

Malachi must have been an extremely unpopular guy.  His message, as contained in the four short chapters that make up his book, takes the form of a dialogue between the God and the people – a question and answer session.  For example in Chapter 1 – “I have loved you, says the Lord”.  “How have you loved us? ask the people”.  “You have despised my name”.  “How have we despised your name?” and so on.  God tells the people, through this process, how he is disappointed with them, that they have turned away from a true and honest approach towards their religion and replaced it with a more secular outlook on life.  A really interesting book to read in the context of today’s world and not very long either – four short chapters.  Malachi ends with the hope that God will send another messenger who will prepare the way before Him and this is a direct echo of the quote from Isaiah which we heard in the Luke reading: “Prepare the way of the Lord”. Prepare, prepare, prepare – a theme which clearly leads from the prophecies of the Old Testament right up to the ministry of Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist.

There is something unusual about our Gospel reading today.  It is one of the few passages of scripture, other than the Passion, which occurs both in all the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke as well as John.  Its significance cannot, therefore, be underestimated and is such a pivotal point between the prophecies of the Old and the ministries of the New. 

Back in the days of Isaiah it was usual, when any king was proposing to make a state visit within his kingdom or outside it, for roads to be smoothed for his passage and the route made easily for his transport – hence Isaiah’s analogy of making the paths straight and rough places smooth.  It is a bit like our Queen today – it is said that she thinks that everywhere outside her royal palaces smells of fresh paint! Isaiah is clearly talking about the coming of a king but not a king as they would know him. 

Malachi talks in vivid and colourful language about the need for the people to change their ways – to change them to God’s ways. Not just a tinkering but something more radical and substantial.  John the Baptist repeatedly used the word “repentance” which is our English translation from the Greek word metanoya (metanoya) meaning “a change of mind; forsaking old patterns, habits and priorities; a new way of life”.  In the reading we heard from Philippians, Paul is imploring the church at Philippi to continue to lead the way of Christ, to determine what is best, to continue on the path of repentance so that the change is complete.

The people of Malachi’s day probably didn’t deliberately set out to be lazy or careless in the way they worshipped God. They probably simply lapsed into their indolent ways.  My teenage son, for example, probably thinks it is really helping if he manages to get his dirty cup or plate as far as the kitchen – not realising that it would be an even bigger help, (and gain the applause if not shock of his parents) if he also put them into the dishwasher – now that really would be an example of metanoya – repentance!

If any of you have had a car with a slipping clutch, you will know that as the clutch wears down you become accustomed to its sloppiness and then compensate with your increased pressure on the pedal.  It is only when it completely fails or is replaced that you actually realise just how bad it was.  The same can be said of how we approach our faith and worship.  There are times when I get complacent, get so involved in everyday things that my prayer life and devotions can start slipping like that clutch. That’s when we need to take a reality check – when we need to flip once more through the pages of Malachi and ask ourselves – “Are we simply paying lip service to our faith?”

At this time of year we see preparations all around us – indeed, the commercial world has been preparing for Christmas since August!  But do we as Christians really stop and think about the meaning of Advent? Today we lit the Candle of Preparation, we heard from John that the best way to prepare ourselves for his coming is to change so that we become more Christ centred, more theocentric.  But do we really prepare ourselves fully? 

One of my favourite stories at Christmas is the short story by Charles Dickens – “A Christmas Carol”.  I am sure that sometime and somewhere over the Christmas period, on our multi-channelled TVs, there will be a screening of it again.  It struck me a few days ago that here is a really great illustration of metanoya or repentance.  I am sure I don’t need to tell any of you the plot of the story but it is worth remembering that scene towards the end of the book when, after receiving visitations from four spirits, Ebeneezer Scrooge shows how that terrifying experience has changed him so completely. Instead of being the mean miserly businessman we met at the beginning of the story, he now brings joy and hope to the poor Cratchet Family.

Scrooge needed to be visited by four spirits, we only need one – the Holy Spirit, which was left for us after Jesus’s ministry here on Earth was completed.  That same Spirit which John the Baptist saw descending during Christ’s baptism, that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation and which inspired Malachi to write his book.

As you take away your Candles of Preparation and light them at home, pray that the Holy Spirit will show you the best way for you to prepare for his coming this Christmas and help lead the Christian life throughout 2013.

Amen

SERMON 15 - SUNDAY 14 OCTOBER 2012

Sermon at St Mary’s Church, West Dean -  Morning Worship – Sunday 14 October 2012

Luke 19:1-10

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you oh Lord. Amen [Psalm 19:14]

I had quite a wide choice of biblical texts available to me as the basis for this morning’s sermon – indeed, the reading given by the lectionary for today was the very one I preached on last week at Whiteparish – except that it was Luke’s and not Mark’s interpretation of the meeting with the young rich man which we heard last Sunday.  In fact, I invited the congregation to fast forward from that reading from Luke to the next chapter where we meet Zacchaeus.  It’s very rare that I am ever ahead of myself, but for once that is exactly where I appear to be.  So having read and researched a little about Zacchaeus I thought that I would share that with you this morning as well as reflecting on my thoughts from last week.

But turning back a chapter, you will remember that in last week’s reading we heard that the rich young man had been told by Jesus that if he wanted to have eternal life in the Kingdom of God he must sell EVERYTHING! and distribute his money to the poor and only then come and follow Jesus!

He had asked a simple question – what must I do to have eternal life? - but the answer which the young man got was quite unexpected. EVERYTHING!  Yes EVERYTHING, ALL YOUR POSSESSIONS!

At face value that means that all of us who live in what we would all agree is quite an affluent part of Wiltshire, and on a larger scale an incredibly wealthy part of the world, appear to have no hope whatsoever of entering the Kingdom of Heaven or having eternal life.  In the words of Private Fraser of Dad’s Army – we’re all doomed!  Doomed unless we sell everything and become monks or nuns I guess.  The young man says to Jesus – “I have kept all the commandments given to Moses since my youth – I’ve been a good boy.  I have never done anything which would displease God”.  Surely he is an A* candidate for eternal life.  At the end of the passage, the young ruler cannot bring himself to give everything away and follow Jesus and so consequently he disappears off the pages of the bible never to be heard of again.  Jesus has one last thing to say though, which can only add to our discomfort “How hard is it for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!  Indeed it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”.  Yikes, most of us are indeed doomed it seems!

But, in the following chapter we meet our “old friend” Zacchaeus.  Perhaps that isn’t such a good introduction because he certainly wasn’t a friend to many.  Indeed he was the chief tax collector – therefore a collaborator with the Romans and by his description a person who cheated and swindled his countrymen out of immense amounts of money which he kept for himself.  He was a thoroughly despised individual.  We also know, from his description, that he was quite short in stature.

Zacchaeus has become quite a well known character in Sunday schools and I can well remember drawing a crayoned picture of him stuck up what I thought a fig tree should look like.  Actually I also remember my picture had an aeroplane in it as well which I was politely, though firmly, told wasn’t around in Zacchaeus’s day and wasn’t something which would have been seen.  How boring the Holy Land seemed to seven year old! 

Just as my picture was unusual, so were two aspects of the story as told by Luke.  We are told that he “ran ahead to climb the sycamore tree” because he wanted to see “who Jesus was”.  What strikes me here is that Zacchaeus did two things which would not normally have occurred in those days and which would have exposed him to ridicule from the outset – first of all running – running would have seemed a very undignified act for a grown man (we also read about this happening in the story of the prodigal son too) – and to climb a tree would have been out of the question, just like my aeroplane.   

Those who witnessed these events must have looked on with amusement and glee – a horrible little man so hated by all and sundry - running along because the crowd won’t let him through and then climbing a tree like a monkey! 

We are not told exactly what it was that compelled Zacchaeus to act in this uncharacteristic and undignified way. In all probability he simply didn’t want to miss out.  We can only surmise that knowing Jesus was coming to his home town of Jericho he wanted to see what all the fuss was about and climbed the sycamore tree for a better view.  I don’t suppose for one moment he expected the outcome that happened – Jesus, as he passes the tree looking up and telling him that he must get down, go home and prepare his house for Jesus to dine and stay with him.  What a shock that must have been.

By inviting himself into Zacchaeus’s home, Jesus is, in fact, doing exactly what he has told his disciples to do in his first commission in Luke 10:5-6 – When you enter a house first say “Peace to this house.  If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, if not it will return you”.

Jesus is demonstrating precisely what he expected and still expects from his disciples today – household evangelism. Going out and spreading the good news to people where they are. Note, he doesn’t say to Zacchaeus, “I would like to stay” but “I must stay” indicating a divine imperative. Zacchaeus was so humbled as a sinner that during that visit he agreed to give away half of his possessions to the poor and pay back four times as much to everyone he had swindled.  Judging by his immense wealth he would probably still have some left over for a relatively comfortable life but still, what an amazing turn around this was.

Likewise, what an amazing turn of events for those looking on.  For one moment they would have enjoyed the wonderful humiliation of seeing Zacchaeus acting like a primate at Monkey World and then in the next breath, experiencing intense envy and jealously, not to mention incomprehension, that Jesus is going to eat and sleep at this sinner’s house. Again this is an echo back to the grumblings of the Pharisees earlier in the gospel when they complain that Jesus surrounds himself with “ne’er do wells”, prostitutes and other “low life”.  Jesus offers Zacchaeus, who merely wanted to see Jesus, an opportunity to be recognized prominently before the whole of the community. Jesus exalted a man who was prepared to stoop so low in social graces as to climb a tree to see him.

This contrasts significantly with the story of the young ruler from last week. 

The young ruler had, unlike Zacchaeus, observed all the commandments – he hadn’t stolen anything and certainly not cheated or swindled anyone like our short tax collector.  It is interesting that with the notable exception of Zacchaeus, the poor and needy always seem to get the blessings of God whilst the rich, wealthy and influential struggle.  The young man is told to give away ALL of his possessions.  I think that in that case Jesus is emphasising that the trappings and lifestyle which often accompany wealth sometimes make it difficult to understand the sacrificial nature of giving.  Zacchaeus on the other hand must have sacrificed a lot to give away half of his wealth.  He was despised, unloved and to humbly go to all those whom he had swindled and say sorry must have been truly difficult – in a similar way that restorative justice can often be harder on the criminal than community service or a jail sentence.  Just imagine the humiliation he faced.

The young man was equally being asked to make a sacrifice.  Perhaps the only sacrifice he could make. At face value, it does seem very harsh and unfair but when compared with Zacchaeus’s sacrifice maybe we can see it for what it is.

How much do we want to see Jesus? How much do we love God? That’s the question.  He loves us unconditionally yet we often fall short in our love for him and our service to him. Being Christians isn’t easy.  We are required not just to talk the talk, but walk the walk. When we don’t we are often labelled hypocrites. That was what Jesus was doing when he chose to call down Zacchaeus from that tree – a man who had so wanted to see Jesus that he was prepared to humiliate himself in order to do and to extend that humiliation to humility by paying back what he had swindled from his fellow Jews. Jesus was walking the walk.

As we leave this church today let us each of us, during this period of stewardship and beyond, ask ourselves, and God through prayer, about what sacrifices we can make to show our love.  How can we humble ourselves and be ready to accept his call to service. It might not be giving more money, it might be a greater devotion to his word, it might be the use of our skills and talents which we have so far not used to their fullest extent but have hoarded for ourselves and our own self glorification. Like Zacchaeus we are not called upon to give everything away but we are called upon to sacrifice our greed, envy, mean spiritedness, or selfishness and give our life for him who gave his life for us. Like Zacchaeus, we will be given prominence and reward in Heaven if we only answer his call to serve him and serve others here and now during our Earthy existence.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, it is so hard for us to find the source of our true wealth in you.  Fragile beings that we are, we often feel so insecure when we take steps outside our own comfort zone. We know that it is not all about money, Lord; but about our willingness to offer you freely anything that occupies the central place in our lives and therefore excludes you.  Give us honesty and courage in our consideration of this matter, Lord Jesus, that we may, like Zacchaeus, have cause to dance in our trees.

Amen

SERMON 14 - SUNDAY 7 OCTOBER 2012

Sermon at All Saints Church, Whiteparish - Morning Worship- Sunday 7 October 2012

Luke 18:18-25

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you oh Lord. Amen [Psalm 19:14]

Although I have led and preached a couple of times at Evening Prayer here during the year – this is the first time I have taken this particular service and for me it’s been an absolute delight – so far! – especially to hear the wonderful music – lovely hymns and singing – As a once time chorister in Lincolnshire, it’s always good to hear worship being led by a good choir.

I am also delighted to be preaching here this morning for another reason – you are embarking on a stewardship campaign in Whiteparish which means that my sermon can be based on the stewardship reading from Luke which you’ve just heard, and not a particularly difficult passage from Mark on divorce – which whilst it might have been entertaining for you to watch me squirm – would have been a real test for me.  Perhaps on another occasion.

Not that the Luke reading is particularly easy either. I have read this passage dozens and dozens of times and have to say, in the past, have had great empathy for the rich ruler who is told that if he wants to inherit eternal life he must sell EVERYTHING! and distribute his money to the poor and only then come and follow Jesus!

What?!!! It was a simple question but the answer which the young man got was quite unexpected. EVERYTHING!  You mean EVERYTHING, ALL MY POSSESSIONS!

At face value that means that all of us who live in what we would all agree is quite an affluent part of Wiltshire, and on a larger scale an incredibly wealthy part of the world, appear to have no hope whatsoever of entering the kingdom of Heaven or having eternal life.  In the words of Private Fraser of Dad’s Army – we’re all doomed!  Doomed unless we sell everything and become monks or nuns I guess.  How on earth can I preach that with my own smart Mercedes in the church car park?  I am probably doubly doomed!  Perhaps I should have preached on divorce after all!

The young man says to Jesus – “I have kept all the commandments given to Moses since my youth – I’ve been a good boy.  I have never done anything which would displease God”.  Surely he is an A* candidate for eternal life.  At the end of the passage, the young ruler cannot bring himself to give everything away and follow Jesus and so consequently he disappears off the pages of the bible never to be heard of again.  Jesus has one last thing to say though, which can only add to our discomfort “How hard is it for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!  Indeed it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God”.  Yikes, most of us are indeed doomed it seems!

There have been many interpretations of what was meant by “camels going through eyes of needles” and it has been suggested that it could refer to one of the narrow gates at Jerusalem where a camel heavily laden with possessions would find its way blocked because of the squeeze or pinch point unless the goods were removed; although there is no evidence for the existence of such a gate: another interpretation is that the Greek word kamilos for a rope was misspelt and that the true analogy is that you cannot thread a rope through the eye of a needle.  Whatever the origin, the meaning is clear – a near or actual impossibility.

That really doesn’t help us though does it? 

I said earlier that the young man disappears off the pages of the bible but, if you will indulge me, I’d like to put him back in again later on in Luke’s gospel – into the next chapter in fact, Chapter 19.

The first part of Chapter 19 relates the story of Zacchaeus who you will remember was the chief tax collector – therefore a collaborator with the Romans and by his description a person who cheated and swindled his countrymen out of immense amounts of money which he kept for himself.  He was a thoroughly despised individual.  We also know, from his description, that he was quite short in stature. Knowing that Jesus was coming to his home town of Jericho and wanting to see what all the fuss was about, he climbed a sycamore tree for a better view.  As Jesus passed that place he looked up and told Zacchaeus that he must get down, go home and prepare his house for Jesus to dine and stay with him.  Immediately, Zacchaeus was humbled as a sinner and agreed to give away half of his possessions to the poor and pay back four times as much to everyone he had swindled.  Judging by his immense wealth he would probably still have some left over for a comfortable life.

Now let’s imagine that after these two incidents, the one with the young ruler and the one with Zacchaeus, the young man and Zacchaeus happen to bump into one another at the Camel & Needle wine bar in old town Jericho.  Each relates their meeting with Jesus.  Can you imagine the conversation;

Zacchaeus: Yes I met him when I was up a tree – no don’t ask me why I was up there, let’s just say that I always have to try and find the front seats at the arena! Anyway, he looked up to the tree and invited himself to my house for dinner.  I wanted to dance in the tree there and then!  Me, a terrible sinner! At dinner I realised what a horrible person I’d been when he started to talk to me.  I decided then and there that I couldn’t and shouldn’t go on sinning like that so I offered to give away half of my possessions immediately to the poor and needy and pay back four times what I had swindled out of the people.

Young Ruler:  Hang on a minute, did you say HALF of your possessions?

Zacchaeus: Yes that’s right although with the four times payments back to those I’d swindled it was a bit more than half.

Young Ruler: Well, I met Jesus and asked him how I could have eternal life and he told me to give EVERYTHING AWAY – not just half.  How can that be fair?  You were an absolute swindler too from what I’ve heard

Zacchaeus: A bit more than that, a swindler to the power of seventy seven I’d say, a master swindler.

Young Ruler: – But I’ve been so good in my life, never broken any of the commandments, I go to the synagogue every Sabbath, tithe and also run the camel train to the market for supplies for those who don’t have a camel.

Zacchaeus: – I’ve always wanted to be good like you and now I feel that I can be that different person – I feel that I can do all those things which I found so difficult because Jesus has shown me a new way.  So why couldn’t YOU do what he asked you to do?

Young Ruler: - I guess the difference is that Jesus was asking me to stop being me; to be someone or something different and I just couldn’t do it.  I don’t think it was the money in itself but I didn’t really understand what was going on – what Jesus was actually saying to me – to be different, be more like Him and giving all my money away was a way of showing that change.  You, on the other hand, sought him out and wanted to change and you showed it by changing your life big time.  I guess I haven’t understood that until now – after meeting you.

Do you think he might still take me on if I went now to him and told him what I now understand?

Zacchaeus – Yes I’m sure he would.  It sounded as though he really liked you and wanted you to follow him.  There’s always time to change.

 

It is interesting that with the notable exception of Zacchaeus, the poor and needy always seem to get the blessings of God whilst the rich, wealthy and influential struggle.  I think that in the passage which was read this morning, Jesus is emphasising that the trappings and lifestyle which often accompany wealth sometimes make it difficult to understand the sacrificial nature of giving.  Zacchaeus must have sacrificed a lot to give away half of his wealth.  He was despised, unloved and to humbly go to all those whom he had swindled and say sorry must have been truly difficult – in a similar way that restorative justice can often be harder on the criminal than community service or a jail sentence.  Just imagine the humiliation he faced.

The young man was equally being asked to make a sacrifice.  Perhaps the only sacrifice he could make. At face value, it does seem very harsh and unfair but when compared with Zacchaeus’s sacrifice maybe we can see it for what it is.

How much do we love God? That’s the question.  He loves us unconditionally yet we often fall short in our love for him and our service to him. Being Christians isn’t easy.  We are required not just to talk the talk, but walk the walk. When we don’t w e are often labelled hypocrites. That was what Jesus was asking the young man to do. Walk the walk – put his fine words of piety into action.

As we leave this church today let us each of us, during this period of stewardship and beyond, ask ourselves and God through prayer about what sacrifices we can make to show our love.  It might be giving more money, it might be a greater devotion to his word, it might be the use of our skills and talents which we have so far not used to their fullest extent. We are not called upon to give everything away but we are called upon to sacrifice our greed, envy, mean spiritedness, or selfishness and give our life for him who gave his life for us.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, it is so hard for us to find the source of our true wealth in you.  Fragile beings that we are, and so insecure when we take faltering steps outside our identity that is meaningful only in the eyes of the world.  We know that it is not all about money, Lord; but about our willingness to offer you freely anything that occupies the central place in our lives and therefore excludes you.  Give us honesty and courage in our consideration of this matter, Lord Jesus, that we may, like Zacchaeus, have cause to dance in our trees.

Amen

SERMON 13 - SUNDAY 23 SEPTEMBER 2012

SERMON 13 - St. Mary's Parish Church, West Dean - Sunday 23 September 2012

James 3:13-4:3; Luke 12:22-34

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen

It doesn’t matter how many times I hear that reading from Luke, I love it!  For me, when things are getting tough and I really don’t know how I’ll get through the day, Jesus’ words to his disciples seem to sum up so well what Faith is all about.  That wonderful knowledge that God knows what we need, when we need it and that he will care for us.

The illustrations which Jesus uses in this passage are so wonderfully descriptive – the feeding of the ravens, the beauty of the lilies – images which we can still understand and see around us today.  Images which so much capture the futility of worry.

But as a human being I am a worrier.  I worry about the health and welfare of my family, I worry about whether I will catch that train on time; I worry about writing sermons, I worry about the state of our Church today  – in fact, I don’t think that I am unique;  if we are all honest with ourselves then we probably all worry about something or other at some time or other.  Some of us are just that bit better at hiding it!  My parents’ view was that if you didn’t worry then you were probably being irresponsible! 

So, such a wonderful passage - yet one so difficult, in reality, to follow.  As we celebrate harvest this year, we know that the farmers have been worried about the weather we have experienced which has led to poor crops.  In fact, it’s been a poor harvest all round.  You don’t need to be a farmer or a devotee of the Archers to know this – my own apple trees are testimony.  Hardly any fruit compared with last year.  Yet we shall survive and we should remember that all things have come from God and we should count our blessings for what we do have.

I could leave it there – but in reality, God does ask us to be prudent and use the gift of wisdom in the way we utilise the other gifts he has given to us. 

Luke’s gospel reading immediately follows the parable of the greedy rich man who decided to build bigger and better barns to store his bumper harvest .  (I believe for those of you here last week, Andrew used the analogy of bank accounts rather than barns as a farmer around here has indeed built himself a bigger barn!)  He does so, not out of  prudency, but out of a desire to spend the next few years living off the profits of that harvest so he can indulge himself in the pleasures of life and put his feet up.  God tells him, you will recall, how foolish he has been to think that way, that his life will be taken from him that night and he will never enjoy the fruits of his greed.  What use then, to him, will be his huge barns bursting with grain?

So is Jesus saying, don’t be prudent?  Is he saying, be fickle with your harvested goods?  This certainly doesn’t seem to make much sense when you recall the dream Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh back in Genesis 41 – the seven fat cows and the seven thin cows – and how Pharaoh was advised to store up the bumper harvests of the first seven years to see his nation through the famine of the latter seven years.  And we saw how that prudency led to Joseph’s re-unification with his family.  So God is not saying we shouldn’t be prudent, he is reminding us that in seeking to use his harvest we must do so in a responsible way and in a way which serves his purposes.

The apostle Paul reminds us that we are the hands and feet of God on Earth.  Through God’s Spirit we are here to serve him – to proclaim the gospel, the Good News, here on Earth, today.  God wants us to live very much in the present – not dwell in the past nor worry about the future – you cannot change the past (although you can learn from it) – and God will worry about the future for us.  However, to fulfil his mission here we need to gather the resources together to do this and to use those resources to the fullest.

At the moment, most of the churches within this Team are embarking upon a Stewardship Campaign. It is not simply a campaign about getting more money into the church, it is also being undertaken to gather together other resources too – skills and talents.  I, together with other preachers in the Team over the next few weeks, am talking about these campaigns – but we are doing so from the point of view of theological gifting not simply asking you to “up your subscription”.  In order for the church to undertake its ministry in all its various forms successfully, it needs to ensure that it has the resources to do so.  The church is no different from any other large organisation in that there are monetary costs attached to maintaining its ministry. You will all have had paperwork explaining this is detail. There are also human resourcing implications – in other words we need more people to give their time and skills to helping in the proclamation of the gospel.

In this Deanery, this Team has been very fortunate in being able to donate significant sums of money in the past for outside mission, in addition to maintaining a high level of ministry within the Clarendon area.  I recently had the enjoyable task of reviewing the mission we are undertaking here in our Deanery and I was delighted by what I discovered, but equally saddened by the reduction of the numbers of people being involved.  Jesus tells us, in his Great Commission to the Disciples, that they should go out and proclaim the gospel.  Most of us here are privileged in that we have heard the gospel and learned of God’s goodness and grace in our lives. Now we must do Christ’s bidding and tell others.  We are all being called to some form of ministry and we must ourselves be harvested.

The last three verses of the Luke reading implore us to  “Sell your possessions and give alms.  Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes and no moths can destroy”. Here Jesus is impressing upon us not to hoard our possessions but to use them for the good of the poor and needy.  He is not telling us to literally sell everything, our houses, cars, DVD players, iPhones etc. but he is telling us to keep only what is necessary and important in fulfilling our duty as disciples – his followers - towards the poor and needy – here also including those who have not yet heard or understood the gospel.

Luke is studded with similar parables and teachings – all of which are fundamental to our Christian Faith.  We all need to sit down, from time to time, and reflect on how we treat our possessions – do we treat them as idols in themselves?  Do we hoard possessions when we could use them or their proceeds for the greater good of God’s mission?  The Stewardship campaign is about sitting down and reflecting on these issues.  As Nils preached in Winterslow last week – the way we handle and treat our possessions and money is a good indicator of where we are in our own spirituality.  This was something which really struck me personally at the time and which I repeat now. I am still reflecting on those words.

The passage read to us from James is very strident – as is most of that Book!  I like James’s no nonsense approach to his ministry.  My wife tells me that I can be quite a “black and white” sort of guy – from her perspective anyway – and so James appeals to me.  He certainly doesn’t pull any punches.

The part I would just, briefly, like to comment on is Verse 13 where he talks about wisdom – “Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom...Wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits... without a trace of hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace”.

Wisdom comes from above; it differs from knowledge, in that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit and cannot be learned.

In the way we apply our resources, be they money, skills, or time, we must use wisdom.  We must ask for that holy wisdom through prayer. 

During this period of the stewardship campaign, and I suggest frequently afterwards, we should pray and reflect on how we are doing in the way we are applying our resources.  Are we, indeed, giving enough back to God or are we hoarding those resources for no other reason than our own self-satisfaction or self-glorification.

God does not want us to worry about ourselves but he does want us to worry, or more correctly, care about others.  He wants us to carry out his Great Commission.  Above all, he wants us to use the gifts he has bestowed upon us for his Glory and he will repay us more times than we can ever imagine with his love and care. 

In the words of the well known harvest hymn, “All good things around us are sent from Heaven Above, Now thank the Lord, O thank the Lord, for all his love”.  

Amen

SERMON 12 - SUNDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2012

SERMON 12 - St. Mary's Hall, Whaddon - Sunday 9 September 2012

Psalm 119:41-56; Exodus 14:5-31; Matthew 6:1-18

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable to you oh Lord. Amen [Psalm 19:14]

As some of you may know, I have recently returned from a few days break in Poland – in Krakow to be precise - and during my stay I had the opportunity to visit the sites of some of the worst atrocities ever committed by Humankind against itself.  Whilst there I visited the former Jewish Ghetto and Gestapo Headquarters and cells in Krakow, the factory of Oskar Schindler and the nightmarish and desolate locations of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camps.  As I reflected upon the massive human tragedy, standing by the remains of one of the crematoria at Birkenau, the words of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust came to me ... “God was never in this place, or if he was, he was certainly on holiday during 1939-1945 for he never heard any of our prayers”.

I have been struck and haunted by those words ever since I heard them.

Yet, as we heard in our Old Testament reading from Exodus, they are an echo of the thoughts of those earlier Jews who were led out of Egypt by Moses and Aaron when their cry then was “Did you lead us out to die in the wilderness because there were no graves in Egypt?”  It was a cry of despair and disbelief that anything good could arise from the apparent suffering which was all around them.  There are countless parallels between the suffering of the Israelites in the Old Testament and the suffering of the Jewish people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  As I looked around Birkenau, it did indeed seem incomprehensible that the omnipotent, omnipresent God could let such a thing happen; but I think that when we read the Old Testament again in the context of these more recent events, we can make some sense of it all.

It is interesting to reflect upon the passage in Exodus which tells us that God “will harden the heart of Pharaoh”. Having gone through much to persuade Pharaoh to let the Jewish people leave Egypt - ten awful plagues for a start – God now tells Moses that he will set Pharaoh against them, to follow them and to try and stop them.  But a greater demonstration of God’s power lies ahead – as we know, the parting of the Red Sea which is one of those illustrations of God’s power in the bible which is so well known by everyone – indeed, sitting next to a fellow football fan at St. Mary’s only last Sunday – he described an attack by Manchester United against Southampton’s defence as a “parting of the Red Sea”.  I promised him that I would use that in a sermon sometime!

God explains his reasoning – that by doing this, God can demonstrate his glory over Pharaoh and his army. The apparent pursuit will turn to tragedy for the Egyptian monarch and his army when Moses, once the Israelites have safely passed through the Red Sea, is instructed to stretch out his hand for the waters to return and destroy the pursuers.  The passage ends with the words “So the people feared the LORD and believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses”.

On my visit to Auschwitz I visited the cell of Saint Maximilian Kolbe whose feast day we recently celebrated on 14 August.  Inside the cell there is an everlasting candle flame which was lit by the late Pope John Paul II on a visit to the notorious Nazi camp on 7^th June 1979.  Maximilian Kolbe’s story is one which does indeed show that God’s presence existed in this part of Poland during the war years.

Father Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan friar who, like many other priests, was arrested and interned by the German occupying forces in February 1941. His crime was printing and publishing material which recorded the truth, as he saw it, of the effects of the German occupation upon the Polish population.  Priests came second, only to Jews, on Hitler’s hate list and one SS officer is recorded as having said – “if there are Jews in a transport then they cannot expect to live more than two weeks on their arrival here – if priests, maybe three weeks”. 

Maximilian arrived in Auschwitz in May 1941 and survived until 14^th August 1941. It is the manner of his last few days on earth and his death which show that his love of God and teachings of Jesus never left him. 

Whenever there was any escape attempt at the camp, ten prisoners from the same barracks would be selected to die for each escapee.  On the last day of July 1941 ten such prisoners were selected to be taken to the notorious Block 11 where they would be placed in solitary cells and starved to death.  One of those selected, a Polish Army prisoner of war, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was heard by Kolbe and others to cry out “My poor wife and children”. Kolbe stepped forward and in an act of unselfish love offered to take the man’s place.

Of the ten men who went into Block 11 that day, all but Kolbe died of starvation but during their time they were heard singing hymns and praying together albeit through the walls of their own individual cells. Kolbe, having survived all his colleagues, eventually was killed in his cell by lethal injection.  One writer has described this act as one “which brought new life by death and was not, what the Nazis had intended, death of “undesirables”, death to people who had ceased to be human beings. Their long period of suffering and resilience led to reverence and respect. The world of violence was lost by this one act”.   

As I stood gazing into Kolbe’s cell, I recalled this heroism, this monumental act of a simple kind loving priest and felt a warmth of hope and of God’s love in that awful place.

Psalm 119 talks about the need to trust in God’s word and commandments. Kolbe must have thought about some of those words during his time in solitude and suffering “Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked, those who forsake your law. Your statutes have been my songs, I remember your name in the night O LORD”.  His prayers, his conversations with Christ, meant that he was never ever really alone.

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus implores us to pray quietly and humbly.  After all, prayer is a conversation with God through Jesus.  Back in the first century, the giving of alms was a means of demonstrating righteousness in the eyes of God (“Those who perform deeds of charity and righteousness will have fullness of life – Tobit 12:9) Yet many saw it as a means of demonstrating their piety to others around them.  For this reason Jesus uses the giving of alms as his first example of humility in piety.

How good are you at prayer?  I often think that I am not very good at it.  How should we pray?  I am often left quite unmoved by some of the long winded prayers I hear in public worship – prayers which tend to end up as a personal shopping list by the intercessor or use words which are unfamiliar to us today.  Of course, there is no wrong or right way to pray.  Jesus already knows what is in our hearts he simply wants us to acknowledge his presence and talk to him as we would talk to a friend.

I am struck in this passage from Matthew by how simple and normal Jesus makes prayer seem. Though he yearns to hear us he knows what we need before we ask.  He appreciates, like any lover, our giving with no ulterior motive. However, bitterness will always poison a relationship.  We therefore need to find God’s grace to forgive before we can engage in any meaningful conversation with him.

Jesus has given us, in this passage, a basic pattern for prayer.  The Lord’s Prayer should be a template for all our intercessions and conversations with Him.  We need to keep asking for forgiveness for our sins and those of others and his help to overcome times of temptation, trouble and even, as Kolbe found, evil.    

I often hear that people give the excuse that in their busy life there is little time for prayer.  Let me let you into a secret, my best prayer time is when I am mowing the lawn!  I can have a conversation with God with the mower whirring away below me. All my thoughts, frustrations, dreams and confessions seem to bubble up and I can discuss them with Him. 

Answers to prayer may not always be those you are seeking.  God’s idea of time and place is often very different from our own.  You may not hear his word immediately, or even this side of the grave.  I am sure that Moses prayed many times to God to reach the Promised Land much earlier than his people eventually did; but God’s plan did come to fruition but on a different time scale.  You may pray for somebody yet never know when or how that prayer was answered.  Our Faith is based on believing the power of God through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Maximilian Kolbe never knew the power which his sacrifice and prayers unleashed.  The Polish sergeant he saved lived to a ripe old age, although, ironically, he survived both his wife and children: the spirit and memory of Kolbe’s sacrifice shines as a beacon today amongst the dark satanic blocks of Auschwitz Main Camp and adds to the shame of his Nazi persecutors.   His one act of selfless sacrifice and suffering to save one man because of his belief in His Saviour, Jesus Christ, is an example to us all and a sign that God was not, nor ever is, absent or “on holiday”. 

Father, We ask that your will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”.

Amen

-------------------------------

Before we finally affirm our faith and say the Creed, I would like you to listen to about three minutes or so from the 2^nd movement of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony – entitled the “The Symphony of Sorrows” which was the very first piece of music played at Auschwitz after it’s liberation – on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the liberation in 1995. The words sung are those written on the walls of a Gestapo cell in Zakopane in southern Poland by an eighteen year old girl imploring her mother not to despair over her incarceration and certain death:

No, Mother, do not weep,
Most chaste Queen of Heaven
Help me always.
Hail Mary.

 

Let us reflect and pray on the life and sacrifice of Maximilian Kolbe as we listen to these few notes:

 

SERMON 11 - SUNDAY 26 AUGUST 2012

SERMON 11 - Holy Trinity Church, East Grimstead - Sunday 26 August 2012

Ephesians 6:20-30

I was delighted when Nils asked me to address you this morning - especially as the New Testament reading we had, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, is a reading which, I remember back in my school days, was frequently followed with the hymn – “When a knight won his spurs in the stories of old”.  Do you remember that hymn?  Can anyone sing the rest of the first verse?  “He was gentle and brave he was gallant and bold.  With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand, for God and for valour he rode through the land” 

This also brought back memories of dressing up as knights and going around trying to injure our fellow knights – always the bad black ones – in the playground. 

Well this idea of dressing up in armour got me thinking – when do we ever get a chance to do that now – unless we are going to a fancy dress party and, quite frankly, clunking my way to the bar for a gin and tonic in heavy plate metal doesn’t appeal to me at all.  So is Paul’s reading out of date?  Is his analogy one which we can relate to today?  And how does this fit in with God’s love for us and wanting to protect us?  Swords and helmets seem quite aggressive.

I was pondering this over a beer in the Hampshire County Cricket Club member’s bar last week when it suddenly struck me – cricketers are modern day knights aren’t they?  At least some of us cricketing fans think so.  

 My apologies in advance for those who don’t understand the game of cricket but it’s quite simple really – a quick lesson - the team that’s in is out and the team that’s out is in.  It’s basically a game of two men against eleven others who have short legs, square legs, are silly mid-on or mid-off, with a wicket running between two sets of wickets, and after five whole days of playing the game often ends with no result.  Being an English game, it relies upon very good weather which it often doesn’t have and a team often relies upon the worst batsmen to win the match for it.  More simply, the team that’s out tries to get the team that’s in, out by bowling a hard piece of cork at three pieces of wood behind a batsman who tries to hit the ball before the ball hits the three pieces of wood!

Now what does every batsman need when he goes out to face the likes of Dale Steyn? A helmet, chest guard, arm guard, thigh guard, pads, gloves, a box and finally a bat.  In fact, armour!

So let’s have a good look at what we actually have here: somebody ready to face the evil one – Dale Steyn in my analogy.  Somebody who is prepared.

If we read a modern interpretation of this bible passage, say from the Message or Good News we learn, in simple terms, that Paul is telling us that we can expect that the full force of Satan will be thrown at us frequently and we must work together as a team to stop him winning.  In the same way, in cricket, our batsman here has also to rely upon his team mates, especially the batsman who is in with him, to hold his ground and score runs and fend off the fast ball – the Yorker or the full toss, to keep the runs coming.

Likewise, God wants us to stand firm against all that is thrown against his team.  In this way he is giving us the armour (the protection) and the weapons (the bat) to do just that – not simply to do others down – not for us to score more runs than anyone else for simply our own sake, but to work together as a team to combat the forces of evil.

If you follow cricket you will know that often the weaker player will deliberately avoid scoring a run in order to keep his stronger team mate on strike for the next over – (that’s the next six balls) – fully knowing that his team mate is the better player.  Having put on our own armour, we must likewise use it to protect not just ourselves but others.

It’s not always that easy though.  However much we protect ourselves sometimes we fail, get hurt or dismissed and it doesn't quite work out as we thought.  You only needed to ask Kevin Pietersen this weekend what that feels like!  But being ready is always half the battle won.

“Be prepared” is the motto of the Scouting movement.  I think it should be adopted by the Church too!  That’s what Paul is telling us - Let’s go out as the scouts of Christ.  Let’s score those runs and dismiss Satan for a duck!  Preferably a golden one!

Amen

 

SERMON 10 - SUNDAY 1 JULY 2012

SERMON 10 - SUNDAY 1ST JULY 2012 - All Saints' Parish Church, Whiteparish

Jeremiah 11:1-14 & Romans 13:1-10

In just over five weeks’ time, my 15 year old son and I will be boarding an Easyjet airliner from Bristol International Airport – yes we would appreciate your prayers!  – for a destination in Poland – Krakow to be precise.  No, we didn’t get the dates of the Euro 2012 international football competition wrong nor are we going there to enjoy the gourmet delights of Polish cooking.  We are going to visit the historic sites of this Polish city – the cathedral with its trumpeter in the tower, the Cloth Hall, the wonderful market square, the beautiful  buildings and other wide squares and avenues – all of which have graced our TV screens recently – at least the TVs of those who follow football.  The city of Krakow has a deep and rich history - but it also has a very dark one too for, indeed, during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s, it was the capital of Hitler’s General Government of Poland under Hans Frank with its own large Jewish Ghetto.

About 30 miles west of Krakow, the rivers Vistula (which runs through Krakow) and the Sola meet in a town with exactly the same size of population as Salisbury – 48,000.  So like Salisbury it is a place where rivers meet; it also has a large church with a tallish spire.  There the resemblance stops – for this town has a large industrial zone on its outskirts. It also has something else! The town’s name is Oswiecim – better known in the west by its German name - Auschwitz  - and this is the principal reason for our trip.  My son has been doing some project work about the Holocaust and instead of going on an organised school trip, elected to go with me because I’ve been there before.  Let me tell you briefly about that previous visit. For three consecutive nights after that first visit, I had the most horrible nightmares as I saw myself in the queue for selection – death or life. An intense feeling of utter evil seemed to pervade the whole place.  The horror recorded in that monument to inhumanity is indescribable and shook my then quite weak faith.  How could a God allow such suffering?  What was the purpose of it all?  Could there really be a God?

 That first visit was in 1989 when I was much younger than I am now – although not as young as my son – and I was in my “wilderness years” as far as my faith was concerned.  It wasn’t the most important thing in my life and could easily get de-railed – fortunately it didn’t, but it did wobble from side to side.

I sat down to read tonight’s two readings a few weeks ago and have to confess that I struggled with them both.  I thought, “whatever can I say in this sermon as these readings are so difficult. In the extract we heard from Jeremiah, the prophet is telling his listeners that having broken the words of the covenant with Moses, by not obeying what they were told to, the Jewish Nation will have disaster brought upon it and any prayers offered up will not even be heard, let alone answered!  Pretty heavy stuff!  This appears, on the face of it to be God deliberately turning his back on his own chosen.  How does that relate to the God of love we encounter in the New Testament?  

The answer to that question is to be found in the question itself.  It needed a new covenant – or testament – to bring not only the Jewish people back on track but also provide salvation to the profane or Gentiles.

Turning back to Jeremiah for a moment, you see, the Jews firmly believed that the Babylonian captivity, the Exile, had been brought about by their disobedience of the commandments or the law of the Torah.  They thought that only a strict adherence to the law was the way to salvation as a nation as a whole.  When they understood that a Messiah was coming they assumed that he would establish a kingdom like that of David’s and Solomon’s not a Kingdom of Heaven based on Grace.  This is why Jesus became so frustrated with the Pharisees who believed in religiosity – strict adherence to or religiously following ritual and rubric – thinking that was all that was needed. Some of us today can fall into that trap too.  Where church attendance and styles of worship become the end rather than the means and we lose sight of the bounty of God’s love and grace through the way we live our lives and love and serve our neighbours. God needed to come down himself in the form of Man to put the record straight.

Let’s fast forward, whizzing through the Gospels and Acts until we get to this great piece of writing from Paul to the Church in Rome.  More than any other letter of Paul’s, Romans sets out the post Pentecostal theology as taught by him.

In the passage read tonight, (which incidentally we studied in our house group only this week, on Thursday), Paul is imploring his readers to subject themselves to governmental authorities (in this case the Roman Imperial Government – Emperor and Senate) for he says, quite categorically, all authority comes from God.  The theme is once more “obedience” with a belief that if you do good and act in accordance with the state’s laws, then the state cannot harm you.  These words are sometimes referred to as Paul’s “Theology of the State” and I think can be contradictory at times.  It is my belief, and that of some far more eminent theologians, that these words must be read specifically in the context of the time.  The Church in Rome was in a very vulnerable position – being located in the capital of a large and powerful pagan empire – and Paul was anxious to impress upon the church there that it should not act in a manner that might bring about its own destruction by disobedience.

Paul, and we Christians, can, however, take a direct lesson from Jesus’s own teachings. You will recall, in an attempt to trick him into displaying a treasonable attitude, he was asked by the elders in Matthew 22:17-21 whether taxes should be paid to Rome.  He answered by asking to see the coin used to make payment and whose head appeared on the coin – the Emperor Tiberius.

Does this mean that we must be obedient to all authority at all times?  Those who ran Auschwitz – the major players – at the Nuremberg trials often tried to hide their guilt behind the “mantra” – “I was only obeying orders”.  Does that exonerate them then?  Surely the authority to kill 1.1 million people in the gas chambers of Auschwitz wasn’t authority from God?

Back in 1989 I thought to myself, if I had been a guard in Auschwitz I would have refused to have obeyed orders or if I had been a potential victim I would have risen up with others against the guards.  But would I?  It’s a frightening thought that I am not sure I know the answer to that question.  What is Paul really saying to us today?

A clue might be revealed in the life story of a modern day living Christian.  A few weeks ago, a few of us from the Clarendon Team, including Jane and myself, were invited to Godolphin School to listen to a Chinese Christian by the name of Liu Zhenying (Liu Cheng-ying) better known as Brother Yun or “The Heavenly Man”.  His autobiography is contained in this book called “The Heavenly Man” which I subsequently bought from Amazon and have read from cover to cover in a couple of weeks.  It is quite an easy read and it contains some remarkable stories about his conversion to Christianity, his spiritual growth, persecution, torture and imprisonment and also some amazing miracles including his remarkable escape from Zhengzhou (Chengchow) Maximum Security Prison.  It is a great testimony to the remarkable power of God and the Holy Spirit.

However, this evening, I want to just read you one small passage towards the end of the book which I think shows a true Pauline attitude to faith from a situation in the 21^st Century.  Brother Yun writes as follows (pages 286 – 287):-

“Once I spoke in the West and a Christian told me, “I’ve been praying for years that the Communist government in China will collapse, so Christians can live in freedom”.  This is not what we pray!  We never pray against our government or call down curses on them.  Instead we have learned that God is in control of both our own lives and the government we live under.

God has used China’s government for his own purposes, moulding and shaping his children as he sees fit.  Instead of focusing our prayers against any political system, we pray that regardless of what happens to us, we will be pleasing to God”.  We shouldn’t pray for a lighter load to carry but a stronger back to endure.  Then the world will see that God is with us, empowering us to live in a way that reflects his love and power.  This is true freedom”.

Since 1989, I have moved out of the wilderness (although I do sometimes pop back for the odd fleeting visit) and I think I am a little further along my own spiritual road.  I have never experienced or witnessed anything like some of the scenes described in Yun’s book but like to think that my faith has been strengthened by some of the things which have happened to me over the intervening years.   I have certainly seen other’s faith strengthened by suffering.

I am encouraged by stories like Yun’s but wonder whether I will view things any differently, after 23 years, when I arrive in that small town in southern Poland in August.  The horror will be no less I am sure, but will I have a better understanding of God’s plan and the reason for the Holocaust. Will I understand Paul’s words any better?  Despite all the suffering and evil of that place, will I also find, in some small corner, God’s grace there too.  I dearly hope so.

I’ll tell you when I return.

Amen