SERMON 59 - SUNDAY 28 JUNE 2015

Sermon delivered at St. Mary’s Church, West Dean – Sunday 28th June 2015

Lamentations 3:23-33; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-24; Mark 5:21-43.

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

“Down this road, on a summer day in 1944. . . The soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community which had lived for a thousand years. . . was dead.”

Does anyone know where that quote comes from?  Here is a clue, it was famously narrated by Sir. Laurence Olivier in the early 1970s. 

Here is the rest of the quote:-

“This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road . . . and they were driven. . . into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then. . . they were killed too….” 

It is the opening and closing sequences of that epic series, The World at War, which continues to be shown on the satellite channels and is an enduring memorial, as is the village of Oradour itself, to the sufferings, deprivations and sheer evil perpetrated during the Second World War, the end of the European part of which we have recently been celebrating 70 years on.

A week ago I had the opportunity to visit Oradour whilst on holiday in France.  The old village (really a small town like Stockbridge) has been preserved just as it was left by the Nazi German forces which carried out its destruction. After shooting 642 men, women and children in a few hours on 10^th June 1944 and looting the deserted houses, they systematically set fire to every building in the small town and burned the bodies of those they shot – many of whom were still alive.

In 2012 I revisited Auschwitz-Birkenau another great memorial to Nazi atrocities and suffering – the place reeked of death and destruction and evil – even nearly 70 years later – for it was a place designed and constructed for death. 

However, despite the terrible events of 10^th June 1944, and the suffering and evil committed in and to that French community near Limoges, Oradour did not have that same feeling of sheer evil which pervades the site of the great death camp in Poland.  Admittedly what happened at Birkenau was on the scale of millions, rather than hundreds, but Oradour had been a town built for life, not death, and despite its destruction many symbols of normal and happy life are still to be seen – cars, bicycles, children’s bicycles, buggies and toys, sewing machines, pots and pans, even the butcher’s scales upon which he would have weighed out his last sausages that fateful Saturday morning before the Germans arrived.  The small town has a feeling of defiance of good over evil and this is highlighted by the building of the new town of Oradour immediately to the north of the destroyed and preserved old one.  In that new town is a beautiful new church of similar design inside to Coventry Cathedral, that other great symbol of rebirth or resurrection. Oradour may be preserved to remember the evil of that dreadful day, and rightly so, but to me it also emphasised what all us Christians believe – suffering will ultimately lead to resurrection and eternal life – just as our Saviour died on the Cross and was raised up three days later.

Each of today’s readings, and Psalm 30, which is the alternative text to our first scripture reading this morning, talks about this topic.  In Lamentations, we hear some comforting words for us in time of great trial and suffering, when God may seem to have deserted us, we are reminded that we must stick with him and bide our time:

“It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord … to give one’s cheek to the smiter and be filled with insults;

For the Lord will not reject forever; although he causes grief, he will have compassion

according to the abundance of his steadfast love;

For he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone”

In other words, being followers of the Faith does not necessarily bring about a total lack of grief or suffering, indeed, as Christian we can often more readily expect it as our brothers and sister are enduring it now in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The writer of Lamentations is telling us it is good to wait upon the Lord, to show our faith and belief in his salvation - for those things which trouble and afflict us will turn around on God’s compassion for us. 

In Psalm 30, which we did not have read today, we hear from the psalmist of his lamentation at the way he has been treated by his enemies, but this becomes a song of praise for his redemption at the hands of the Lord. He has been “brought up from the dead” (Verse 3) and gives thanks to God “For his wrath endures the twinkling of an eye but his favour endures for a lifetime. Heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning” (Verse 5).  What a beautiful line and I’ll say it again - “For his wrath endures the twinkling of an eye but his favour endures for a lifetime. Heaviness may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. How encouraging is that? And later on the psalmist writes “You have turned my mourning into dancing” (Verse 11).

On the west wall of the new church in the new town of Oradour-sur-Glane  is a magnificent mural of St. Martin on his horse, cutting his cloak to give a part to the naked beggar before him and it reminded me of the passage which we had read this morning from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.  St. Martin, when confronted by the beggar showed to him that compassion which is spoken of in Lamentations – “According to the abundance of his steadfast love” (Verse 32).   St. Martin could have given the whole of his cloak to the beggar but did not.  He took his sword and cut off a portion of it just sufficient for the beggar’s needs without detriment to his own personal safety and comfort.  Likewise, I firmly believe that God will often test us, as Paul is testing the church in Corinth, by giving to God and to our fellow creatures sufficient for their needs in a sacrificial but not a self-destroying way.  God frequently tests us, tests our fidelity and commitment and will provide trials but also opportunities to demonstrate our utmost faith in him.

In our gospel reading, we heard the two very well-known accounts of the bleeding (and by the custom of day “unclean”) woman and the dead girl of Jairus. Both of these instances involve people who believed that they were in a terrible and terminal situation – the women had been afflicted, we read, for twelve years and couldn’t be cured despite the administrations of several doctors, and as for Jairus’s daughter, Jesus had been delayed by the sick woman and it appeared all too late for him to cure her.  Here we learn three lessons about Jesus and God’s good grace – first of all, as with the sick woman we can act audaciously and connect with him outright for his forgiveness, healing or any other supplication – the woman simply touched him; secondly, He is never too busy for us (and we should never be too busy for him – Jesus was rushing off on an errand of mercy to heal Jairus’s daughter but he had time to stop and talk to the sick woman and heal her; and thirdly it is never too late for God to deal with our own sufferings and we should realise that he works to a different time scale to us – Jairus and his wife thought it was too late to heal their daughter, she was dead – but we are never too late to be redeemed. Jesus worked to his time scale not theirs and resurrected her.

Whether our supplications are personal, for others or for our church, these rules apply. God will stop and listen to us, however busy he might be, he will act and redeem us but at times which are more suitable to him and us, knowing our needs better than we do ourselves.  Things may look hopeless, evil may be around us, we may feel persecuted or unable to cope, but by prayer and faith he will overcome for us all our difficulties. Faith is the key and that Faith will be tested from time to time.

At the moment you may feel that the Christian community here in West Dean is struggling – and yes maybe it is – but in time, and in God’s time, and by Faith – our Faith, those struggles will turn to joy.  Things may be very different to how we have them now, and we are currently praying for a new minister here, but God wants us to thrive – in the words of Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know what plans I have for you, to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future”.

At the beginning of this sermon I quoted the words spoken by Sir Laurence Olivier at the beginning of “The World at War” and which are repeated at the end of the very last episode:

“Down this road the soldiers came….”

It echoes the words of John 18:12 in the Garden of Gethsemane:

“Then a detachment of soldiers with its Commander and the Jewish officials came…”

This, of course, would lead to the cruel death of Jesus on the Cross but with it the Glorious Resurrection.

Amen

 

MFB/59

SERMON 58 - SUNDAY 14 JUNE 2015

Sermon delivered at St. John’s Church, West Grimstead – Sunday 14th June 2015

Ezekiel 17:22-24; Psalm 92; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34.

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

Anyone who knows me well will also know that I am no horticulturalist. Some people, and I do envy them, have wonderful green fingers, not only growing wonderful shrubs, flowers and vegetables in their gardens but also on their allotments as well – such gluttons for punishment in my world - and it always intrigues me to see how well the plant stalls do at our fetes and local produce shows.  For me, I need to keep away from those stalls because anything and everything I buy ends up dead quite soon afterwards. I have a massive number of empty plant pots in my shed, like tombstones, to testify to this!   I am the one person who, in a glut year for runner beans managed to grow just five of them on the four plants I bought, whose crop of tomatoes worked out at around £20 per pound after all the plants, growbags and fertiliser had been bought – for me it was better and cheaper to drive into Salisbury and buy a pound of them off the market for 50p.  My gardening experience is now confined to mowing, strimming, weeding, burning and generally those more destructive activities which I am rather good at.  I have always left the creative bit to others who know what they are doing. So don’t ever put me on a church flower rota please! The gifts of the Holy Spirit don’t extend to me in that area!  I am, however, slowly beginning to appreciate the wild flowers in my garden – they do seem to do so well so I now leave them alone – well that’s my excuse for not weeding in some areas.  Having just sold my house and buying a smaller one, I am delighted that the new garden is laid almost exclusively to lawn and hopefully, somebody who knows what they are doing, will tend to my potted plants and herbs leaving me to do what I do best – mowing and weeding the lawn. 

I know, this makes me sound like an absolute Philistine - especially in this wonderful rural part of England where I am preaching to a rural community, but I must be honest with you - I hate gardening.  However, my failure at horticulture does not mean that I do not appreciate and love God’s green creations.  In fact, this year in particular, I have taken to enjoying long walks and cycle rides in the country and, at these more leisurely paces, I have really come to love and enjoy the trees all around us - more so than I can remember.  We are so lucky to live in a part of the world which has, on our very doorsteps, such a wealth of forest and woodland – the heart of the New Forest being literally ten minutes’ drive from here with its massive and interestingly shaped oaks.

Today’s readings, and today’s psalm (92) have references to trees and plants and, throughout the bible, they feature heavily in the scriptural messages we find – from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden in Genesis to the wooden tree (the cross) to which our Lord was nailed. Trees even get a mention in that apocryphal book, Revelation.  Let’s just think for a moment at some of those other horticultural references we find in the bible – the thicket or hawthorn bush which caught the horns of the ram when Abraham went up to sacrifice Isaac;  the vine in Joseph’s prison dream; Moses’ burning bush in the desert; the cedar trees from Tyre (Lebanon) used to build King Solomon’s Temple; the vine that provided shade and anger to Jonah, the withered fig tree which did not bear fruit in the gospel passages; the tree and its fruit in Matthew’s gospel; the sycamore tree which Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus; the tree on which Judas Iscariot hanged himself; and trees have also feature in popular literature too – the talking trees in Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” and the wintery trees in C. S. Lewis’s “The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe”. They are symbols of longevity, of strength, of beauty and precious resources for us to use or abuse.  We can build or we can destroy with the wood they provide. Without really trying, I found 48 references to trees in the bible showing their importance both as actual or allegorical scriptural objects.  Indeed, trees are often referred to as the lungs of our planet – filtering out carbon dioxide and producing life vital oxygen and we have seen the devastation which deforestation can inflict on our world climate – not just the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil; but also the removal of trees in the foothills of the Himalayas has brought about increased flooding in Bangladesh where the River Ganges enters the flat plains of its delta. Those removed trees once stabilised the banks of the Upper Ganges and prevented excessive rainwater entering the river in its upper reaches. Such is their massive importance.

So what is Jesus saying to us in his parable of the mustard seed? And why use this allegory?

 Well first of all I have to admit to being a bit confused when I first read this parable many years ago.  The mustard seeds I was used to as a child produced those small seedlings which my mother would add to egg sandwiches – cress - and in my limited horticultural knowledge mustard was really that yellow paste made in Norwich which accompanies Wiltshire ham on the plate or between two slices of bread! I had never heard of a mustard tree let alone seen one. Having done a little research it appears that the tree which Jesus is almost certainly referring to is the Black Mustard Tree whose botanical name, for you experts, is brassica nigra – a relative apparently of the cabbage plant. It grows mainly in the southern Mediterranean areas, Middle East, Ethiopia and southern Asia and its seeds are used in curries and other spicy dishes where the small seeds are dropped into a pan of hot butter, ghee, and burst releasing their pungent flavour.

However, if the seeds are allowed to grow in the ground then quite quickly they produce a woody stemmed bush or tree some nine-ten feet in height – taller than a human – which would indeed be capable of supporting wildlife – especially birds and providing shade to anyone who sat under it in the hot arid climate.  So Jesus’s use of this in his parable is quite appropriate.

This parable is one of those which appears in all three of the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – and therefore must be an important lesson for us to receive from Jesus. He is saying that from the smallest of seeds – and the mustard seed is indeed small - can grow something which can provide life and shade – a bit like our English saying – “from the little acorn the mighty oak does grow”. In the version read this morning, from Mark, Jesus does not explain fully what he is getting at and looking at the other gospels in isolation doesn’t help either. We simply have the parable. What we do know is that he is comparing the Kingdom of Heaven to this small seed and the other parables surrounding it likewise start with “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” so we must take all those parables together in order to understand fully what he is saying.  Many people thought that Jesus had come to establish a kingdom in Israel to overcome the Roman occupation but he is emphasising that the kingdom he wishes to establish is a spiritual one.  Indeed, he is probably talking about the establishment of the church here on earth – and indeed it grew rapidly in the years following his crucifixion and resurrection and still exists today – but as well as providing shade and food it could also be used by those who would seek to destroy it or use it for their own evil purposes.

Many scholars take the view, and I agree, that this parable, in particular, was directed at the disciples. At this time Jesus’s church consisted essentially of those few disciples who were following him – disciples who probably felt that they were at odds with mainstream Jewish thinking.  Indeed, we know that after Jesus’s crucifixion they hid away for fear of persecution, not from the Roman authorities, but from their Jewish elders. Jesus is saying that though they are small in number, quite inconsequential in the context of the total numbers of people in Judah at the time, nevertheless like the tiny mustard seed they will grow into a major influence in not only the Holy Land but the whole world – something large and significant. A prophesy of the establishment of the church.

I take much comfort in this.  Look what the Christian church has done in the world? Many organisations for the relief of poverty, oppression and natural disasters, medical care,  housing, reconciliation and counselling,  have their origins in the Church – even Southampton Football Club started life as a church football team – as did Aston Villa, Manchester United, Everton, Liverpool, Celtic and so on.  If Jesus wasn’t right then how do we explain being here today in church [at a church service] worshipping and listening to the word of God through the gospels 2000 years on?

We are the today’s disciples – we follow Jesus – therefore the parable speaks to us today just as much as it did in the First Century.  In this busy world we might often feel that our Christian beliefs and values are under siege and find it hard to keep the Faith.  We might feel small and insignificant whilst others around us prosper without our Faith.  Just look at the trees.  They are numerous and fill our countryside – each one of them started as a small seedling, then a sapling and finally a mighty tree. God is so good and wants us to know that whilst we have him in our hearts, we are never alone but are members of that wonderful forest which is the Christian family.  Just don’t give me a chain saw!

Amen

 

MFB/58