SERMON 44 - SUNDAY 27 JULY 2014

Sermon at St. Birinus’s Parish Church, Morgans Vale, Redlynch, Wiltshire – Sunday 27^th July 2014

Romans 8:26-39;  Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

It is good to be with you this morning here at Morgan’s Vale; my first time here leading and preaching.  I must confess to not knowing much about either this church or Saint Birinus before so I thought that I had better do a little research before coming here this morning.  Earlier this week I drove over here to find out where the church was and was greatly rewarded in also finding that you have a lovely pub which does nice meals – and Ringwood best bitter too - so that was my first revelation.  Secondly, I looked up St. Birinus on the Internet to find that he was a Frank (that is not a reference to your Rector mind!), who, having been commissioned in 634 by Pope Honorius I to come to Britain,  became the first Bishop of Dorchester (on Thames) and responsible for converting many Anglo-Saxons in Wessex to the Christian faith. He also became involved in converting the “heathen” of Northumbria and Mercia.  I was delighted to find out that he landed in this country at Hamwic, which is now better known as the St. Mary’s area of Southampton where the football ground is located - so I must acknowledge him to be truly a Saint!

Both of today’s readings emphasise the importance of living our Faith and the need to lead prayerful lives dedicated to following the teachings of Jesus about how we should conduct ourselves in the difficult and dangerous world around us.  Jesus’s various parables – the Mustard Tree, the Leaven Bread, the multiple and peculiar fish, the pearls, the hidden treasure and so on are all told to emphasise the fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is actually here if we try to tune into it.  Yet how often do we do that?  Jesus says that this is how it will be at the end of the age.  Yet we are indeed at the end of that age – which was started when God sent his only son, Jesus, down to earth.  That was the first step in establishing the kingdom of heaven here on earth – not converting people so they go to heaven but preaching the gospel, the good news, so that we can see heaven here on earth now.  We as Jesus’s disciples are expected to continue that work. At each service we pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Not, I believe,  at some future time but here and now, today in this place. 

But what a task we have.  Not a day goes by in which we do not read or see in the media of “persecution, famine, nakedness and sword” as Paul writes it in his letter to the Romans – nothing, regrettably, has changed since his time.  Paul wasn’t in jail when he wrote this letter, although he had been there not too long before, and we know would be again. It must have looked to the outsider as though the rulers, the powers and everything else in creation were having their own way and that the purpose of God, entrusted to this little man Paul, had been stopped in its tracks. How often do we, as Christians, followers of Christ feel like that?  We are frustrated that as the world continues to spin on its axis in its orbit around the Sun - as it has done for millennia - wars , famine, greed, selfishness, disrespect, rudeness, ruthlessness, tyranny and so on continue to flourish on its surface.  In fact, with modern day advertising and so on we can continue to grasp for those other gods which we are told will make our life complete.  If only we had the next type of phone, that particular car, that particular house and dare I say it, that particular partner, everything would be so much better than it is at present.  Contentment, as Paul remarks in Philippians, does not require a vast amount of material wealth – contentment is based on a good relationship with God even if we have little else.

Today, unlike in Paul’s time, the advances made in communication technology means that we can so easily be seduced by those things which can separate us from God - so Paul’s words of advice ring true above all this today as much as they did when he wrote them in the first century.   We may not ourselves, here in this beautiful part of England suffer the slings and arrows of the types of persecution Paul speaks about but we must still guard against the subtler things which can seduce us away from God’s love.

Paul’s message, however must give us all the greatest of hope.  It is an optimistic message which he gives to the Church in Rome where they could see, at first hand, the terrible persecution of the Christians being carried out nearly every day.

He acknowledges that sometimes we can find it hard to pray when the pressures of life and, in the case of Paul’s examples, persecution and tyranny are all around us.  This is often brought about by our own human weaknesses.  I have to confess that there have been many occasions in the past where I have been involved in a prayer group and we have included ten minutes of silent prayer.  After the initial splurge of supplications – asking prayers - it slows down and I simply run out of things to pray for. I might even start praying for stupid things like a good ending to Coronation Street this week!  Sometimes I find that I have not taken any time out to pray at all.   Paul in this passage is giving comfort to people like me when we can’t think of things.  He says that if we have truly accepted Jesus into our lives he will intercede on our behalf – our belief will fill us with the Holy Spirit which will do our work for us – as he says “God, who searches the heart knows what is in the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints (that’s us, each and every one of us) according to God’s will. 

In other words, Paul’s theology of Justification by Faith (the washing away of sins by the simple but significant act of belief that Jesus Christ was sent down to earth and died for our sins) overrides everything and it was on the basis of this theology that the Reformation Movement was formed by Martin Luther in the 1500s.  Salvation by simply accepting and loving Jesus Christ as your Saviour and not repeated acts designed to bring about salvation. God knows what is truly in our hearts – as the psalmist puts it in Psalm 139 – “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely … such knowledge is wonderful to me”.

Paul goes on to ask – “If we God’s “Elect”, the “Saints” in the non-beatification sense of the word – the absolute believers in the risen Christ – can be justified by our faith then God, who gave his only Son will not withhold anything from us and we will be atoned for our sins. Not only that, if God does not condemn us then who else has the right to do so?  Again echoed by the writer of Hebrews – “the Lord is My Helper I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” (Heb. 13:6)

Paul describes us as conquerors – and that no power on earth can destroy us – yet repeatedly we can feel destroyed.   - Maybe that job didn’t materialise, that relationship broke down, that person we prayed for didn’t recover their health.  That doesn’t mean that we are poor Christians, that doesn’t mean that we as Christians should expect that nothing should ever go wrong for us – but it does mean that when those things do occur, if we stand steady in our Faith, God will nor desert us and will be with us through those difficult times.  He is always with us and he knows our needs and sufferings.

Paul ends this passage with a reminder that nothing can separate us from the love of God – not death, not life, not rulers, not angels, not powers, not anything in creation provided our love of God is founded in the belief of Jesus as Saviour.

I started this short sermon by a brief description of St. Birinus – a saint I knew very little about.  We have many saints recognised by the Catholic Church and memorialised by the Church of England – we hear of relics and burial places of those beatified saints and we talk about the “communion of saints” in the Creed we shall shortly be saying – meaning those who have gone before us.  But before I end this homily, do look at the person next to you – to the left and to the right – take a good hard look – smile too if you want to! - in truly accepting the Lord Jesus as Saviour and acting as a disciple in carrying out his teachings in the way you act, think and pray - you are looking at the face of a living saint.

 

 

Amen

 

 

MFB/44

SERMON 43 - SUNDAY 13 JULY 2014

Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead – Sunday 13^th July 2014

Genesis 25:19-end; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

The parable of the sower and its explanation are so very well known to all of us – I even recall hearing it all those years ago when I was a schoolboy in Morning Assembly.   Yet, although well known, it marks Jesus at his best in preaching the good news in simple terms - understandable by all – all it seems except the disciples who always seem to need to be taken aside for a further explanation.  It doesn’t matter how many times I might hear this parable, I can always relate some of my own Christian life to some of the seeds which don’t fall on the good fertile ground.  If they did, then I am not so sure I could fully appreciate the feelings and emotions of those for whom the seeds seem to most often to fall in the wrong place.

As we learn from all three of our readings today, each of us can easily fall foul of earthly temptations and desires if we allow ourselves to defocus our sight on God.  Whenever I go to the opticians, I am confronted with a myriad of lenses and tests which often show how easy it is for our vision to become blurred if we wear the wrong lenses.  The optician will deliberately place different lenses in front of our eyes to find out which ones we need to see clearly.  Likewise, it is so easy to wear the wrong lenses in our life and we should never forget that as Christians we need to focus through the cross-shaped lens of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.

In our first reading we read of how Esau, the first born of Isaac sold his birth-right for a pot of stew – he, in effect, disposed of his inheritance – for himself and his heirs  - in order to simply fill his belly with food.  In his letter to the Philippians, Paul warns, quite simply – (3:17) –            “Brothers and Sisters, join in imitating me and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.  For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears.  Their end is destruction; their god is the belly and their glory is their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.”

And so, we are told by Christis the same fate for those who are like the seed that is choked by the weeds – by the trappings and distractions of our earthly desires.  Like weeds, our basic earthly desires can spring up very quickly indeed.  In this hot humid weather I am constantly amazed at how the weeds in my garden can appear almost overnight in substantial size and numbers whereas those plants which I am trying to nuture and care for seem to become choked and grow so slowly by comparison.  So it is with the word of the Lord.  We are meant to grow and nurture our faith but must, at all times, guard against those weeds of distraction which are always there waiting to spring up around us and choke us.  Esau lost the plot too, instead of stopping to think about the consequences of his action for himself and future generations he chose, instead, instant gratification – a full stomach.  How often are we tempted to do likewise – how often do the quick fixes, the quick and easy pleasures of life lead us to regret our actions further down the line.

Jesus spoke in parables because he was more easily able to illustrate his messages in ways in which the people to whom he was speaking would best understand and remember.  It is not a co-incidence, for example, that he would often start a story by talking about shepherds – it would be a bit like starting a parable here in England with the words “There was this Englishman, Scotsman and Irishman….” (“There was this shepherd …”) We expect a jokey punchline although in Jesus’s case the punchline was very often different from that which would have been expected.

Here he is using the idea of a farmer sowing seeds – an everyday occurrence in the Jordan Valley and he uses it to great advantage. 

Everyone would have known of the random way in which the scattered seeds from a peasant farmer might fall – on the path, on rocky ground, amongst the weeds as well as in the fertile ground - and the way in which those seeds would react to the environment they found themselves in – on the open path ready and vulnerable to be picked up by the birds, on the rocky ground – unable to put down proper roots - or fall among the weeds to become entangled and choked with only some eventually finding the fertile ground where they can grow and flourish and be harvested.

You will notice that there are eight verses missing from the Lectionary reading and these are quite important and probably a good lesson for anyone preaching or wanting to disseminate the word of Christ. 

Today’s service is a Service of the Word and I, as a lay minister, am a Minister of the Word. No sacraments at today’s service.  Jesus, as a teacher and a preacher on the road, was always conducting services of the word – gathering people around him to explain his message of the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Those missing eight verses, I think, are so important.  I thought about inserting them in the gospel reading earlier but on reflection I think they are better recited on their own here:-

The disciples came to him and asked “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.  This is why I speak in parables:

Though seeing, they do not see;

Though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

You will be ever hearing but never understanding

You will be ever seeing but never perceiving

For this people’s heart has become calloused

They hardly hear with their ears

And they have closed their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes

Hear with their ears

Understand with their hearts

And turn, and I would heal them.

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.  For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it and hear what you hear but did not hear it”.

In other words, Jesus is telling the disciples that because they have been following him and have heard him speak and observed his miracles they have been privileged to see the fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah and therefore should have no need for an explanation of the meaning of Jesus’s preaching through parables.  They are deemed to be already learned theologians.  But there are many ordinary folk who have not been so taught and therefore in order to get across the message he must use common language and stories to which his listeners can relate and which can illustrate the message he needs to get across.

Some of the greatest theologians have advocated this approach.  Bonhoeffer, for example, that great German theologian who lost his life standing up to Hitler and the Nazi regime, argued that all priests should spend time working in secular roles to understand the lives and work of ordinary folk and in that way relate more fully with their congregations.  Likewise, I feel extremely privileged to be able to stand here before you this morning leading the worship and preaching to you as the minister; but I also feel equally privileged to be able to slip back into the congregation and everyday world as a lay person or in my chaplaincy role with the under-privileged.  I can preach the word of god equally powerfully whether in the pulpit or amongst the congregations or homeless.  

Jesus did not have the New Testament to preach from – his ministry was based on the Old Jewish Law, the prophesies and of course his own sermons and miracles.  Sacramental ministry did really occur until the night of his betrayal at the Last Supper.  The gospels record only 3 years of his ministry but for 30 years previously he must have been learning life skills and understanding secular ways – probably running his father’s business.

Despite Jesus’s statement that the disciples should fully understand the message he is trying to get across in his parable of the sower he, nevertheless, goes on to explain it in clear terms – the seed on the path represents those who hear the word but allow Satan to snatch it away from them.  The seed which falls on the rocky ground represents the person who receives the word with joy but since no root can grow it lasts for only a short time and as we have seen the seed falling among the weeds represents the person who allows everyday distractions and worries of life to choke their faith – making it unfruitful.   I think we can all think of people in each category, and maybe ourselves occasionally, although, hopefully, most of us hear do have eyes to see and ears to hear.  However, I often feel, in all sorts of different roles in life, we sometimes have to go back to the basics – and this is what Jesus does time and time again in his parables.

The gospel of Matthew is littered with them.  They take us back to some very basic but fundamental elements of our faith and because they relate to everyday things in everyday lives we can apply them to the way we speak, act and think in our daily lives today.

Jesus, in the next few verses of Matthew’s Gospel goes on to explain the parable of the weeds in greater depth.  How the weeds should be allowed to grow up with the good crop and the two harvested at the end – weeds to the fire the wheat to the barn.

I take heart in the fact that although Jesus explains to the disciples that they should already know the meaning of his parable, he does then go on to explain it to them. 

Many of us, as long term Christians, should never be afraid to say that there are aspects of our religion or theology we do not quite understand.  There are many blind spots in the bible which are difficult to follow and not all, like the parable have a clear explanation.  Adrian Plass has even written a book called Blind Spots of the Bible which I have used at House Groups.  Our faith can only grow if we question it from time to time – to ensure that we truly do understand the meaning of sometimes quite complex theology.  Jesus used plain simple words and there is nothing wrong with that.  Let us get back to basics, clear away the weeds, and plant our seed in good fertile ground – there to grew and flourish undisturbed by the distractions of our earthly life.

Amen

 

MFB/43

SERMON 42 - SUNDAY 6 JULY 2014

Sermon at All Saints Church, Whiteparish - Sunday 6 July 2014

Romans 7:15-25a; Matthew 11:16-19; 25-30

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who hear them.  Amen

What a wonderful hymn our last one is – “Amazing Grace” – so well known and loved by so many – both in church and outside.  But of course, it has a darker origin and reminds us that we still live in a dark world where Satan’s influence can be so strong – and this is the message which comes across loud and clear to us in our two New Testament readings this morning.
 

I am a frequent visitor to the city of Liverpool, where I once lived and studied law, and I am always amazed at the immense number of churches (it has two cathedrals for a start) and other places of worship in the city, which has unfortunately, been stereotyped as a rather  lawless place.  Many of these churches were built by rich merchants and ship-owners seeking salvation for their souls by providing places of worship for the ordinary folk of the city; but historical research often reveals a much darker side to their characters.  I frequently still worship in one of these churches myself – a cavernous church called Christ Church in Toxteth Park which could easily seat 600 or more parishioners in its heyday.  Today, its congregation averages about 40 – 50. Its tall slender spire soars over what, at one time, was one of the wealthier areas of the city – inhabited by merchants and shipowners, shipwrights and chandlers.  Of its 600 seats though, only about 24 were reserved as “free” – for the poor of the parish.  The benefactor was a shipping tycoon himself who exploited the world’s resources and his crews to make a “fast guinea”.

John Newton, who wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace, was himself a native of Liverpool – also a very successful seafaring trader - sailing frequently from Liverpool Docks to the west coast of Africa then across the Atlantic to Antigua where he would unload his human cargo and take on board raw sugar to be refined by Tate & Lyle in their factory back on the banks of the Mersey. 

This regular trip was known as the Triangular Trade – the ship sailed empty to the Ivory Coast (or with cheap trinket bribes for those in Africa), took on board its human cargo of slaves, from there to be transported to the sugar cane plantations of the West Indies – to produce the sugar to be refined for the British tea table in Liverpool.   Newton made this terrible journey many times because it was so lucrative and it became the financial foundation upon which Liverpool grew to become, for a time, the second largest city in Great Britain.  But it was on one of these triangular trips that his ship was caught up in a terrible storm.  It was not unknown, then, for a captain to lighten the load of his ship in a storm by jettisoning his human cargo over the side.  However, on this occasion, he prayed fervently to God that if his ship, cargo and crew would be saved he would leave the slave trade and work towards its abolition.  That dark night was a turning point in Newton’s life.  He became an ardent abolitionist and a Methodist minister – and the hymn is a reflection upon his conversion - “salvation” coming to “a wretch like me”. The hymn is by far his greatest legacy but it is quite extraordinary how many people who sing it don’t realise its origin.  Salvation came to Newton, not by building big churches or preaching the gospel from the pulpit, but by the simple act of genuine repentance for the wrong he knew he was doing by selling people into a lifetime of slavery – all for personal profit and cheap sugar – and by giving his life to Christ.

In our reading from Paul’s letters to the Romans, Paul talks about another form of slavery – the slavery to sin.  His letter is addressed to the Christians of Rome and although, because of its length, it appears in the New Testament as the first of his letters it was, in all probability, one of his later ones – a letter setting out Paul’s life-long theology with its emphasis on the codes of moral conduct  expected of the followers of Christ.  
 

The book is as relevant to us today as when it was written in the 1^st Century.  David Suchet, better known perhaps as Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective in the TV series, was, a few years back, interviewed on Desert Island Discs by Sue Lawley who was intrigued by the strength of his Christian Faith and she asked him how he had become such an ardent follower of Christ. He responded by telling her that his faith had come about because somebody had sent him a letter to read.  Sue asked him about the letter and who had sent it and Suchet responded - “It was a letter which the apostle Paul sent to the Church in Rome”.  For Suchet, it encapsulated all that Christianity was about and brought about his complete conversion – over 1,900 years after it had been written.

In the passage read to us this morning, Paul is reminding us that whilst those of us who are Christians have been baptised into the Faith and have received the Holy Spirit, and we may have the Holy Spirit in our minds,  there can still lurk within all of us or close to us, evil which can influence us and make us do things which we don’t want to do and know are wrong.  He says that “If I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwells within me”.
 

We are all human, yes even us Christians, and whilst we may aim to be Christ-like we never can be completely like Jesus because none of us, I would suggest, is completely free of sin at any time. 

I am a great believer in spiritual warfare.  I have seen it happen on many many occasions when a person becomes close in their relationship with Christ.  Inevitably, Satan will turn up and try and destroy that closeness.  C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful work “The Screwtape Letters” illustrates this in the lessons which the Senior Devil, Screwtape, sends to his young apprentice, Wormwood, to help the younger Devil turn his “patient” away from his Christian faith.  It is interesting that, time and time again, Screwtape tells Wormwood not to try too hard – the patient himself is already doing such a wonderful job himself to achieve Wormwood’s task.  We can all be like the patient.  Screwtape tells Wormwood that he must work ever more diligently on those patients who have a strong faith because those are the people they most want to win over.

We often hear in sermons about the grace and love of the Trinitarian God – and that is wonderful.  That is a grace and love which we should try and emulate at all times – but it is not easy – for often we are not reminded of the way in which Satan can get to us and try and turn us away from our Christian values and prevent us from showing that grace. I know myself that when I have been through difficult times it can be so easy to try and work ourselves up and out of a situation instead of calling upon God to help us – for when we do leave it to God, some wonderful things can actually happen to turn round that difficult problem.  It is only by praying constantly and focussing on Jesus as our Saviour, the one sent to die on the cross for our sins, can we overcome the temptations and distractions which might lead us away.   As Screwtape instructs his apprentice,  preventing the patient from having time to pray is one way of disconnecting him from God.  As Paul says, “evil lies close at hand – who will rescue me?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
 

In our gospel reading we heard Jesus’s famous words of comfort spoken to the people and in particular addressed to the children and youngsters in the crowd – “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”.

Perhaps the most comforting words in the whole of the bible.  Jesus is saying – don’t keep struggling on trying to solve issues and carry burdens yourself.  You will simply burn out and there will be no rest for your soul.  Swap the burden with Jesus.  Be Christ-like – learn from him and the burden will be much lighter.  Remember, evil is always close by and you need to have Christ close by your side – the same Christ who fought off Satan’s temptations in the wilderness so effectively.  He is a past master at dealing with Satan.  Hand it over to him through prayer.

In recent months I have had to deal with some very difficult personal issues and I am still having  to weather a terrific storm which was not forecast.  Life can often throw up these storms and it can be tempting to throw our cargo, human or not, over the side in an attempt to save ourselves.  That cargo can be our faith and I have seen many lose their faith through a false idea that they can carry the burden themselves – that somehow they can weather the storm alone. 

Screwtape knows this in his instructions to let the patient destroy himself, to do the Devil’s work for him.  But just as John Newton did, we can hold on to our faithful cargo and call upon Jesus to give us rest from our struggle. It worked for Newton, it can work for you and for me.  If we seriously and reverently put our trust in God, we can weather any storm and can truly experience his “amazing  grace”.

Amen