SERMON 87 - SUNDAY 4 DECEMBER 2016

Sermon at St Peter’s Church, Pitton -  Morning Worship – Sunday 4^th December 2016

Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Luke 3:1-12

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

Well, today sees us only three weeks away from Christmas! 21 days away. How has the year gone by so quickly?  Are you prepared for the celebrations which always accompany the event?  Cards written, gifts purchased, dinner plans in place, invitations sent out to relatives and so on. All done and dusted!  I have to confess that each and every year Christmas creeps up on me quicker and quicker despite knowing full well that it is celebrated on the 25^th December each and every year and the shops seem full of Christmas decorations and gifts as soon as the summer holidays are over to remind me.  This year, in particular, it has come exceptionally fast for me because I shall be celebrating a most important event in my own personal life only four days later!

Advent, is a time in our Christian Calendar which often seems to be neglected because of all the rushing about and planning associated with the secular festival – which is a pity, as I think it is one of the most important seasons of our liturgical year – as important as Lent.  After all, it is the wonderful anticipation of God’s incarnation in the form of Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins. Jesus, the Messiah, was long awaited as he was the subject of the Jew’s long wait as foretold by Isaiah in our first reading. Advent is a time when we dig out the Old Testament prophecies to re-affirm our own faith as Christians. For this reason it should be a time when we reflect on our own frailties and limitations remembering with certain hope of the incarnation and Christ’s coming to redeem us. 

Today we lit the second of the four Advent candles on our Advent Wreath – the Candle of Preparation – in anticipation of that celebration of God’s coming to Earth.  A light to the Gentiles, as both Isaiah and later Simeon in the Temple put it.  Isaiah, in our first reading is making it clear that Jesus is not coming simply as the Messiah of the Jewish people but also for all humankind.  Isaiah, and also later prophets, declare : “Prepare the way of the Lord”. Prepare, prepare, prepare – a theme which clearly leads from and links 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.  Isaiah is clearly prophesying the coming of Jesus when he says “A shoot shall come out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots”.  The genealogy of Jesus does indeed go right back through David to Jesse and back further to Ruth.

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 as quoted by John the Baptist in our Gospel reading.  Isaiah is clearly talking about the coming of a king but not a king as they would know him. 

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 our second reading, Paul, in his letter to the Romans starts by saying

“For whatever was written in former days was written instruction so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.”

Paul implores his readers to take on board God’s encouragement and live as Christ would have us, in harmony with one another welcoming each other as Christ welcomed us. For many of us, we need to change our ways, to repent to begin a new way of life; to think primarily of others before ourselves.  What a wonderful world if, as Paul hoped, all of Humankind thought and acted like that!

I am sure that many of us make New Year’s Resolutions.  I expect many Christians make Resolutions during Lent and maybe even on Easter Day as we think about new beginnings in the Spring season.  However, I wonder how many of us use Advent for this purpose?  Our Scriptures are full of the message of waiting and repentance.  Unfortunately, we live in a world of “having it now” and not waiting.  My mother always had a phrase she used “If it’s worth having, its worth waiting for”. I have, by bitter personal experience, learned the wisdom of those words.  Here is a time for us to take time out, to reflect on the past year and to think where we could have done better.  Repentance is about turning away from our sins and turning to God.  We can’t repent though unless we reflect upon what it is we are turning away from and how, by changing our life, we can be better followers of Christ.

Jesus didn’t just descend from Heaven one day, he was born.  There was a period of gestation following the Annunciation.  At the first miracle in Cana, Jesus told his mother that his time had not come – in fact following his birth in Bethlehem it took 30 years before his ministry began.  We know little about his life before then but can surmise that he was in a period of intense preparation for his short yet equally intense ministry. Likewise, Advent is a time for intense reflection and preparation.

I was reminded a few days ago of a quotation from one of my favourite theologians – the famous and very brave Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He said

“…our whole life is an Advent season, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth”.

I think that is an absolutely lovely phrase.  Within it is encapsulated the whole essence of this season – the season of waiting.  We lead a life of waiting – waiting to be called to a better place. It also reminds us that whilst we wait for that final time, we should be in a constant state of readiness.  Jesus himself tells us that we do not know the time or the place of his next coming but we should be alert and in readiness.

We can become so complacent.  I am also reminded of the taking of Singapore by the Japanese in the Second World War.  The British had always assumed that any attack by the Japanese or other force would come from the sea. Accordingly all the colony’s heavy guns were pointed seaward.  The Japanese mounted a land attack across poorly defended marshland to the north.  The British were not prepared despite thinking that they were.  During their period of waiting for the inevitable attack, they could have taken steps to prepare stronger fortifications to the north.  Likewise, we cannot assume that we can gainsay God’s plans for us.  His timing is not our timing – just as the British timing was not the Japanese timing.

Bonhoeffer’s phrase also reminds us that we are here on earth for just a limited time – as Paul reminded us, we are here to help others and not think just about ourselves all the time. We are here for a relatively short time, as the hymn reminds us and then we are borne away (O God Our Help in Ages Past) . We are here just for a season and in that time we should spend it living the Christian way – the way of Christ.  John the Baptist is telling us 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.  He has truly repented.

Scrooge needed to be visited by four spirits, we only need one – the Holy Spirit, which was left for all of 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 Isaiah.

As you leave today pray that the Holy Spirit will show you the best way for you to prepare for his coming this Christmas and help you lead the Christian life throughout 2017. 

Amen

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SERMON 86 - SUNDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2016

Sermon at Holy Trinity Church, East Grimstead, Wiltshire

 – Sunday 13 November 2016

Remembrance Day Address

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

I have always had a great love of English Cathedrals and so far have visited all but, I think, three of them – Bradford, Derby and Leicester. Indeed it was always my secret wish to live in or near a cathedral city – and here I am.

 I recently re-visited Coventry Cathedral, after an absence of many years, following a request by my partner, as we journeyed up for a family visit in the north of England.  We both remarked that we could each remember visiting Coventry with our respective parents, as children in the sixties and that in each case our visits at such a young age had made a lasting impression.  We therefore decided to spend a couple of hours in mindful contemplation visiting Coventry and, especially, the ruins of the old cathedral.

On the night of 14^th/15^th November 1940, the city of Coventry was hit by one of the heaviest raids by the German Luftwaffe on any English city.  The beautiful medieval centre was so destroyed that a new German verb was invented “To coventrate” or to totally obliterate by bombing.  Ironically, most German towns and cities were themselves “coventrated” before that great war ended.

Visiting on the morning of 10^th August 2016, the same scene depicted in so many books on the Coventry Blitz is now an oasis of peace and reflection as well as a garden of remembrance within the centre of the new busy city.

On the exposed wall close to the 295 –foot spire, (the third tallest in the UK after our own Salisbury and Norwich) which survived the bombing, can be found a plaque bearing the words, in the King James Version, from Haggi 2:9.  A more modern version will be found in the NIV as

 “The latter splendour of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts; and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord of hosts.”

This is a direct parallel of the rebuilding of Coventry Cathedral with the re-building of the Temple at Jerusalem after the Babylonian Exile.

On that terrible morning after the raid in 1940, the Provost of the Cathedral, The Revd. Richard Howard, arranged for the charred timbers from the roof of the destroyed cathedral to be made into a cross and placed on an altar at the east end of the cathedral.  The first symbol of Christian love after the terrible destruction.  He also scrawled the words “Father Forgive” on the wall just below though skeletal remains of the former fine east window.  Those words today form the basis of the Litany of Reconciliation which is prayed in the new Cathedral every weekday at noon (in the Ruins on Fridays), and is used throughout the world by the Community of the Cross of Nails of which more a little later.

On the south side of the main nave of the former Cathedral will also be found a most poignant tablet made from lead which, following the conflagration of the cathedral, is badly scared.  It is a very simple memorial to those who died in The Great War of 1914-1918 as it is described. It reads simply

1914-1918

“To the Glorious Memory of the Officers and Men of the 7^th Battalions, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who fell in the Great War.  This Tablet was erected by their Comrades.”

As I stood and read that tablet, with all its scars and holes created by the massive destruction created by the German incendiary bombs, I could not help but reflect that those fallen soldiers had been commemorated by comrades for whom the Great War had been sold to them as a “War to end all Wars” – and here their memorial was now also a memorial and reminder that despite all their hopes, a further and in some respects even deadlier war had followed.  It made me realise that humankind, even today, is capable of such destructive powers even after this devastation on the home front and that wars continue all over our planet’s surface.

The new cathedral is dovetailed into the ruins of the old, which remains consecrated and continues to be a place of worship from time to time, and especially on Fridays.  The architect, Sir Basil Spence, wished to incorporate the old as a constant and deliberate reminder that new life and goodness can spring from old destruction.

On the north side of the ruined cathedral’s nave will be found a sculpture called   “Reconciliation”, originally created in 1977 by Josefina De Vasconcellos and entitled “Reunion”  who said:

"The sculpture was originally conceived in the aftermath of the War. Europe was in shock, people were stunned. I read in a newspaper about a woman who crossed Europe on foot to find her husband, and I was so moved that I made the sculpture. Then I thought that it wasn't only about the reunion of two people but hopefully a reunion of nations which had been fighting." 

In 1995 (to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II) bronze casts of this sculpture (as Reconciliation) were placed in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and in the Hiroshima Peace Park in Japan. An additional cast can be found on the grounds of Stormont Castle in Belfast. To mark the opening of the rebuilt German Reichstag (parliament building) in 1999, another cast was placed as part of the Berlin Wall memorial.

Resolved to live out the Christian message of forgiveness and running counter to the feelings of most people in Coventry at the time, the Cathedral Community took steps in 1945 to follow the biblical imperative to love our enemies and become friends with those with who we had been at war. Firm and lasting relationships were symbolised by the building of the new cathedral which was completed in 1962. The friendships and story continue to be an inspiration and an example to hundreds of communities as they emerge from their own situations of conflict. 

Three mediaeval nails, which were rescued from the rubble of the ruined cathedral, were welded together as a “Cross of Nails”. As soon as the war was over similar crosses were sent to the German cities of Dresden, Kiel and Berlin whose people had also suffered and where major churches had been destroyed.  By the 1970s a Cross was to be found in many of the world’s major conflict areas and the Community of the Cross of nails was established.  Today CCM partners include churches, voluntary and community groups, as well as peace and reconciliation agencies.  I have been proud to be a member of one such – Glencree Centre for Reconciliation in Ireland.  Together they share a common commitment to Jesus’s command to love our enemies by addressing community division, the personal and social and economic wounds of violent conflict and alienation that arises from differences of religion, ethnicity and nationality.  So far 130 such Crosses have been sent out from Coventry.

Provost Howard scrawled Father Forgive on the walls of the destroyed Coventry Cathedral on the morning of 15^th November 1940.  Many in the city reviled him for doing so.  How could the citizens of the city forgive such wholesale destruction and death wreaked on this medieval English Midlands city.  Some 568 people are reported to have been killed that night with another 900 injured; 4,300 homes destroyed and two-thirds of the city’s buildings damaged.

In his Book of Forgiveness, Emeritus Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells us that forgiveness is hard but that when we forgive we release ourselves from much pain and bitterness which could destroy us – further destruction beyond the original hurt. 

Forgiveness, though is not about forgetting.  Recently I attended the evening “Last Post” at the Menin Gate in Ypres. Even today, 100 years later it remains a moving and very important ceremony. We must always remember.  It is important not to forget – we must constantly be reminded of the terrible things which humans can do to each other.  As Christians it is our duty, as Christ’s disciples, to remember his teaching about loving ones enemies.  It is a difficult thing to do but something which from this simple action has resulted in the Cross of Nails Community extending the hand of love and reconciliation.

The ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral stand as a symbol of both Remembrance and Reconcilation. I mentioned earlier that Provost Howard’s words inspired the Litany of Reconciliation and so as we remember those who gave their lives in not only the two World Wars but in conflicts elsewhere across the globe so that people might be free from tyranny, let us say together the words of that Litany.  At the end of each phrase which I speak you say those two words of Provost Howard - “Father Forgive”:

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class,
Father, forgive.

The covetous desires of people and nations to possess what is not their own,
Father, forgive.

The greed which exploits the work of human hands and lays waste the earth,
Father, forgive.

 Our envy of the welfare and happiness of others,
Father, forgive.

Our indifference to the plight of the imprisoned, the homeless, the refugee,
Father, forgive.

The lust which dishonours the bodies of men, women and children,
Father, forgive.

The pride which leads us to trust in ourselves and not in God,
Father, forgive.

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

 Amen

MFB/86/12.11.2016

SERMON 85 - SUNDAY 2 OCTOBER 2016

Sermon at All Saints’ Parish Church, Whiteparish – Sunday 2 October 2016

Habakkuk 1:1-4/2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10

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

One of my greatest heroes of all time is the Antarctic Explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton – the man whom, before the expeditions of Scott and Amundsen in 1911/1912, had gone further south than any person before.

The pole having been conquered in 1911 by Amundsen, there only remained one thing left to do to better that – and that was to cross the whole of the Antarctic Continent from one side to the other – from sea to sea - from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Weddell Sea south of the Falklands across the icy wastes to emerge at the Ross Sea at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean beneath New Zealand.  Shackleton set out to do this in 1914 just before the beginning of the First World War.  To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. 

Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was slowly crushed and sank before the shore parties could be landed. The crew escaped by camping on the sea ice until it disintegrated, then by launching the lifeboats to reach Elephant Island and ultimately the inhabited island of South Georgia, a stormy ocean voyage of 720 nautical miles and Shackleton's most famous exploit. Shackleton later died on a further expedition and at his widow’s request was buried on South Georgia.  It remains my ambition to one day visit his grave there and pay my respects to “the Boss” as he was affectionately called.

The one thing which impresses me above everything else is that although Shackleton was largely responsible for the loss of Endurance, because he insisted that the ship be sailed much further south than recommended by the skipper, and the subsequent hardship which his whole team had to endure (the ship was appropriately named) his crew never lost faith in him.  He promised the crew that not one single one of them would be lost and he succeeded in bringing every last member of his team safely home to England in 1917.  The saddest thing of all is that having done so, many were to later lose their lives on the killing fields of Flanders in that senseless war.

Have you ever lost faith in anything?  A person, a project, a promise?  When I think of the hardship suffered by Shackleton’s men I can imagine that there must have been times, on the ice floes, in the little lifeboats and finally waiting for the Boss’s return, to resign themselves to the thought of dying in that cold wasteland.

Shackleton was a great Christian and he believed fully that God would see him through. One of the things which he saved from the Endurance were important passages of scripture which he tore out of a bible given to him by the then Queen Dowager, Queen Alexandra before he left England.  He needed to carry as little weight as possible so had to tear out passages and abandon the bible on the ice (where it was later picked up by another expedition). Amongst them were Luke’s Gospel and Psalm 107.  Later, when he wrote his account of the ill-fated expedition in his book “South”  he penned these words:

“When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.” Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels “the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech” in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.’

Shackleton, in particular, reflected on Luke 24 and the road to Emmaus.

Each of today’s readings emphasises these thoughts though and got me to thinking about how we can develop our own faith.  The prophet Habakkuk in the first section of this morning’s reading cries out in despair – asking how long does he have to wait for help?  Echoes of those same thoughts of the men left on Elephant Island. To the prophet, it seems that only the wicked prevail and justice does not seem to come forward; but in the second part he answers his own questions of despair following a vision he has of God.  The answer being that in due time, in God’s time, it will all come right – just as it did for the men on Elephant Island. They had to wait over a year for the Boss’s return but God will answer their prayers just as he will answer ours.

Paul reminds his young protégé, in our second reading, not to shy away from God’s call to ministry – that in evangelising the gospel suffering may very well be a part of the whole thing.  Paul is writing this in prison imploring the young Timothy to place all his trust in Jesus Christ as Saviour.  The young protégé must have seen how his mentor, Paul, had been persecuted and imprisoned for his strong Christian beliefs and at times wondered whether it was all worth it.  Paul says – “Do not be ashamed, God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” I cannot but think that these would all be incredibly wonderful gifts for the men of Elephant Island to have had.  They had to survive in a small community, in adverse weather conditions – but a belief that God was with them, that they could help and protect each other with the power of love and self-discipline just as Paul had told Timothy. Above all, Paul reminds Timothy, in the very last sentence that he must “guard the good treasure entrusted [to him], with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.”

These are both good readings and reasons for having faith but there will always be times when our faith gets tested to such a limit, hopefully not having to live on an island for a year with only seals and penguins to eat, when we really do struggle.  These are often things which each and every one of us has to deal with at some time in our lives – illness, bereavement, redundancy, finances, joblessness.  There are often natural disasters and wars creating death and poverty which will make us ask “Where is God in all this?” Why is there so much suffering?

There are no easy answers.  Being a Christian won’t supply them easily either.  The apostles in our gospel reading themselves needed to know how they could increase their faith.  Obviously they struggled with this question too.  But Jesus answered that even the smallest amount of faith will result in great things. Having faith (however small) is what is needed because it grows itself within us if we allow it.

Jesus’s further explanation might at first appear strange and difficult.  Here he is saying is that it must be taken as read that if we have faith and believe in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour then we have done what is expected of us.  There is no magical formula in which we are any better than the next Christian.  We are equal in the sight of God as members of his wider church – and here I mean the worldwide community of Christian believers of whatever nationality and denomination.

In other words, as Jesus’s disciples in this modern world, we should do only what is expected of us – to keep faith and love our fellow humans.  Then our own spirituality will grow within us with which we can continue to proclaim the gospel and bring others to faith.  That is the duty of all Christians and something which Jesus himself is telling us should not surprise us.

Shackleton, with the guidance of “Providence”, as he puts it in his book “South”, had a job to do.  He was “the Boss”, he was responsible for the lives of his team. He messed up and lost his ship but for him it was his duty to see them through safely.  He believed that Jesus was with them across the icy wastes and that kept him and his companions going. That was all the faith he needed – to know the love and care of Jesus Christ.  To put everything in his care.

The message is clear.  Have faith, keep your faith and it will grow itself within you as you continue to live out your life in accordance with God’s own plans for you.  To surrender to his will, read his word and let the Holy Spirit do his work.

Amen

 85/29.09.2016

SERMON 84 - SUNDAY 7 AUGUST 2016

Sermon at All Saints’ Parish Church, Whiteparish – Sunday 7 August 2016

 Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3; 8-16; Luke 12:32-40

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

There was a TV Series which ran between 1979 and 1988 of which I was particularly fond – not least because of the dancing girl at the beginning – I think it was probably one my Dad’s favourite too for that reason although probably in secret!  Can anyone think what it was?  Well a clue -  many of the stories came from East Anglia and some of these were introduced by Roald Dahl.  Still not got it? Well I mentioned one of the words in its title at the beginning of the service – yes “Tales of the Unexpected” – and this is the theme of our scripture readings today – the unexpected - just as last week we heard the story of the rich man who intended to store all his grain and lay back to enjoy his wealth when God demanded his life.  Despite his own planning  this was not planned for, not expected.  Even when we do go out of our way to plan our life then often circumstances or a lack of understanding of our surrounding will lead to results we never expected.

Roald Dahl illustrated this point in one of his famous “Tales of the Unexpected” short stories called “A Dip in the Pool” concerning his frequent character Mr. Botibol. 

Mr. Botibol is travelling across the ocean in a large transatlantic liner and wants desperately to win the passenger auction. Each night the captain of the ship estimates the distance that they will cover in the next 24 hours, and a range of possible numbers are then auctioned off to the guests. Whoever owns the correct number the next day wins the amount of money in the pool. Mr. Botibol notices that the sea has suddenly become very rough and that this will surely slow down the ship and throw off the captain’s estimate. Confident of victory, then, he uses his life savings to win the “low field” number (meaning any number more than 10 nautical miles less than the estimate). When he wakes up the next morning, though, the sea is calm and the ship is clearly making up for lost time. Mr. Botibol arrives at the desperate conclusion that jumping overboard is the only way to slow down the ship and therefore win the pool. He plans his strategy very carefully (as he thinks) and deliberately – he will wear light tennis clothes (so he can swim better), he will make sure another person witnesses his “fall” and reports it to the captain, and he will swim as far from the ship as possible so that it must turn completely astern to pick him up. He finds the deck deserted except for one older woman. After talking to her briefly he concludes that she is neither deaf nor blind, and within moments he has plunged into the water directly in front of her, screaming for help. The woman acts confused for a moment, then relaxes and watches the small bobbing man get further and further away. At the very end of the story, a bony woman comes out to collect the older lady and admonishes her for “wandering about” and telling stories and tells her that it is time for her medication. The old woman is seemingly a psychiatric patient or suffering from dementia!  The story ends with the ship ploughing on into the distance with Mr. Botibol bobbing up and down in the waves, desperately trying to attract the attention of the ever diminishing ship.

Well, the outcome for Mr. Botibol was certainly an unexpected one as the tale seeks to show.  How many times in our lives has the unexpected occurred?  We can never ever plan for the unexpected but we can be prepared for it.  Neither does unexpected have to be negative.

In our Old Testament reading this morning, we heard that Abram had resigned himself to the fact that at the ages of himself and his wife Sarah, he could not expect to have children and that his inheritance would pass to his kinsman Eliezer of Damascus. He cried out to God that as God had sought to make him childless then only a servant of his household would inherit.  This was in accordance with the then Jewish rules of inheritance.

But God reassures Abram that he will not be childless and that his heirs would be as numerous as the stars in the sky. It is such a lovely piece of prose and a wonderful reminder to all of us that for God nothing is impossible. There then takes place the covenant which is made between Abram and God – that the heirs of Abram shall be God’s chosen flock.  For Abram this was indeed an unexpected turn of events.  Sarai, his wife, was well beyond child bearing age and therefore it seemed to Abram to be an impossibility that that he could have legitimate heirs.  Indeed we later read in Genesis 16 how Abram sought to bring about God’s prophecy by producing a son, Ismael, through a liaison with Sarai’s maidservant, Hagar.  However, in another unexpected turn of events, Abram learns that Ismael isn’t meant to be his legitimate heir but Isaac born of Sarai. Abram’s attempt to bring about the prophecy is thwarted.  Abram attempted to plan things his way but God had other ideas.

In the letter to the Hebrews, the author seeks to remind his readers that it was because of Abram’s Faith, ultimately, that God did indeed do the unexpected and grant him a legitimate heir through Sarah.  It is well worth reading Chapter 11 in its entirety as it lists so many miracles and incredible unexpected turns of event which have occurred through Faith.  It reminds us that whatever we may think or do or plan, ultimately it is God who knows what lies ahead.

The bible is littered with this theme – Proverbs 16.9 says  “In his heart a man plans his course but the LORD determines his steps”; in Jeremiah 29.11 again “For I know the plans I have for you, … plans to prosper you and not to harm you” and again in Psalm 139.9 “… if I settle on the far side of the sea even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast”.

I don’t preach pre-ordination – it is important that you know that I fully believe that to function fully as God’s creatures he gave us full free will to act independently and sometimes foolishly. However,  if we live by Faith, by believing that he is our Creator and as such we are stewards of the world he created, that he sent down Jesus Christ his only Son and left us the Holy Spirit to guide and protect us and to follow Christ’s teachings, then God will always be there for us and ensure the best for us;  even if that is not what we are expecting or planning for ourselves.  It gives us a great sense of freedom to know that if we do “muck up”, God will be there to pick up the pieces and help us put our lives back together again if only we have the humility and wisdom to ask for his help through prayer.  Sometimes we can be very surprised indeed when he does this and I can think of so many examples where people have reached a very low ebb in their lives only to have their lives restored and feel the fullness of God’s grace after prayer and the refreshing of their Faith.

But we mustn’t ever let our guard slip or sit back on our laurels – especially when we are in the good times. We can so easily forget God, we can so easily ignore him when we are enjoying life to the full.  We can become careless in our devotions and thereby allow our Faith to slip.  This is what Jesus is saying in our gospel reading today.

Jesus in these few words is reminding us again that to store up treasures for ourselves in this world means that those treasures will remain in this world after we have moved on – but if we use those treasures wisely for the good of others as is expected as mere tenants of the world, not owners but just passing through, then we shall store up treasures in the next – for we do not know when Jesus might return in judgment and so we must act as though that could be at any time.  In other words, we should not be found wanting in our Faith at any time.

My grandfather used to dig graves for a churchyard in Norfolk.  He also assisted in laying out the bodies.  He never stored up riches for himself but lived frugally and gave generously.  I remember him saying, on more than one occasion, that all the times he has been involved in funerals he has never seen pockets in  a funeral shroud.  “You take nothing into the world and you can take nothing out” he would say.

The unexpected does occur.  We can prepare for it but we cannot plan it.  Mr. Botibol could have, I suppose, equipped himself with a life jacket and some provisions but he could never have expected that the old lady he so carefully cultivated would not be believed.

Only God has planned when he will return; only God has planned when our term on this Earth will come to an end; only God knows his plans for us.  We must pray constantly that our lives and own plans follow along his steps for us and ask for his guidance when things, usually through our own actions, go wrong.  Unlike Mr. Botibol’s ship, God will never abandon us and sail away without noticing our plight.  Have Faith and always trust in God – then we can cope with the unexpected and hope for the future.

 Amen

 

MFB/84/03.08.2016

SERMON 83 - SUNDAY 10 JULY 2016

 Sermon at St. John’s Parish Church, West Grimstead – Sunday 10 July 2016

Luke 10:25-37

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

The parable of the Good Samaritan is probably the best known of all of Jesus’s parables – by both Church-going Christians and non-Christians alike. The word “Samaritan” is now synonymous with helping others in times of stress and difficulties and especially people with suicidal ideations. 

In essence the parable tells us that if you want to be a Christian, a true follower of Christ – this is how we should behave and act.  When we see somebody by the roadside broken down, then we should go to their aid and give what comfort and support we can.  Most people know this parable beginning with the words of Verse 30 – “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho” without reading or hearing the words of the preamble to this story beginning, as we did today at Verse 25. To skip the first five verses is to read the passage out of the context which prompted Jesus to tell this story in the first place.  Let’s look at those first five verses in a little more detail this morning.

First of all, it is important for us to understand that within Luke’s narrative of Jesus’s life, set out in his Gospel, this event occurs well into his ministry and, as we heard last week, he has already sent out the seventy-two disciples to spread the new good news of the coming of the Kingdom of God and how to inherit eternal life.  Mission is well under way and has caught the attention of the Jewish authorities in a big way.  They feel threatened by this new ministry – that it might subvert and detract from the established way of Jewish worship and adherence to its customs and religious observance.

There was a great fear; therefore, amongst the Jewish lawyers and elders, the keepers of the Torah, that Jesus was preaching a form of religious anarchy or heresy.  They were concerned that his teachings went against the Jewish view that a very strict observance of the law was the proper way to salvation and appease God.  We read, therefore, at the very outset of this passage in Verse 25 that it was “a lawyer” or in the words of the NIV translation “an expert in the law” who stood up, not to ask a question for his further understanding, but, as it is written by Luke, “to test Jesus”.  To see, in effect, whether what Jesus had been preaching and teaching fell in line with the Jewish law of observance and belief.  ‘What must I do’ he asks ‘To inherit eternal life?’ By this question he is testing Jesus to see if he will answer in a way consistent with the observance of the law and Jewish teaching or whether he might give an answer which will contravene it and therefore condemn him.

As a qualified lawyer myself, of over 40 years’ experience, I have spent many happy, and unhappy, hours in court as an advocate.  One golden rule I was always told during my training was when cross examining a witness never to ask a question to which the advocate did not already know the answer.  The whole purpose of cross examination is to get the witness on the other side to say something which you know will aid your own client’s case. Conversely, avoid questions which might provide an unknown answer as that answer might have the unfortunate effect of condemning your own client.

Here is an example from real life.  During the course of an employment tribunal I conducted for an employee in Middlesbrough I had been given information by the employer that as you drove out of their factory compound there was a sign which read:

 “Do you have any company property in your possession? Staff taking property off site without permission will be treated as thieves and will be prosecuted”.

Our defendant (a delivery driver) had taken a hammer, several plastic bags and a ball of string off site for his own use. Please don’t ask me why.  He was duly caught and dismissed.  During my cross examination of him in court I thought that I would go for the “jugular” and just before I finally sat down I ended with one last, as I thought, crushing question – imagine the scene

“Oh, Mr. Smith, just before you sit down, just one final question I’d like you to help me with.  There is a sign as you leave the factory gates, isn’t there?” 

“Yes, that’s right, a big sign”

“How times a day on average do you think you pass it as you go to and from the factory in the van”?

“About six or seven”

“Would you like to tell the court what is written on that sign?”

“I’d love to, but unfortunately I can’t – you see, I can’t read or write”

I then compounded the situation by asking a quick supplementary one:

“So how do you read road signs when out on your deliveries?”

“With extreme difficulty”

 So you see, I have quite a bit of sympathy for our lawyer in Luke’s Gospel because I am sure he was confident that Jesus would fall foul of his cross-examination style question or be unable to answer but like me he was pole-axed.

As ever Jesus, deals with the question very carefully and cleverly by turning it back on his questioner with another question.  This was not entirely and unknown way of dealing with a question and in Jewish culture was quite a common way of answering but, in Jesus’s case, he was a master at this as we can observe many times in the gospel passages ending ultimately with his discourse with Pilate before his sentencing.

Jesus ironically asks the lawyer if he knows the law and the lawyer answers Jesus’s own question with those two Commandments which Jesus himself preached himself time and time again – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbour as yourself” and Jesus tells him that he answered correctly.  He tells him that if he does this he will live – that is – he will have eternal life – the answer to the original question.

However, just like me in that employment tribunal, the lawyer is not content to leave it at that but has to put forward a supplemental question – we are told to justify himself (or perhaps his own known failings at the latter part – to love his neighbour – something which for many of us can be difficult at times.  He has to ask the question – a typical ploy of lawyers, for a definition of the words which make up the law – “who is my neighbour?” or “what is the legal definition of a neighbour?”

Jesus answers this question will telling the story of the Good Samaritan in order, just as I did with my little story about the Middlesbrough employment tribunal, to give a clear example of how it works in practice.

I don’t intend to dissect the story in great detail because, as I said at the beginning of this sermon, we all know it so well – but it is important to pick out one or two salient points which I believe have great significance to us today.

We are not told whether the man on the journey is a Jew – he is simply referred to as a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. As he was “going down” from Jerusalem I think it is fair to assume that he was Jewish.  Therefore, after he has been mugged, the first two individuals who passed by on the other side would have been his close neighbours – a Jewish priest and a Jewish Levite (a member of that select group whose role was to look after the temple and worship – a sort of lay minister or church warden type).  Both being Jews and being heavily involved in the church or Temple, they would have been expected to know that they should love their neighbour.

At this time Samaritans were hated by the Jews.  That hatred was well steeped in history going back to the time of the return from the Exile when the Samaritans (the remnants of the former 10 Jewish tribes of north tried) to prevent to establishment of a southern Jewish province by those returning from the Babylonian captivity.  All we need to know for the moment is that this hatred was long and deep-seated. 

It was for this reason that Jesus chose to use a Samaritan as the person to come to the aid of the Jewish mugged victim. In essence, Jesus is telling the lawyer the definition of “neighbour” is anyone who isn’t you or God.  In other words, God loves us, we should love ourselves as God loves us and we should love all others as God loves us and them.  There are no boundaries to this love.  It encompasses all of God’s created beings.

Today we are seeing increasing persecution and intolerance between people of different nationalities, races and creeds. It has upset me recently that following the Brexit vote there appears to have been released an open xenophobia.  I don’t necessarily blame Brexit for this but it worries me that this has been bubbling below the surface for some time and the recent opportunity to debate the issue has highlighted this.

We as a Christian community are called upon by Jesus through the Holy Spirit to be that voice which reminds people that those two great commandments – loving God and loving our neighbour – are the true way to a better life for all on this planet as well as our own eternal life.

We seem to be in a political vacuum in this country at the moment.  Vacuums are dangerous as they can suck in dirt and evil and extremism can emerge.  As Christians we can and should show, by the way we live our lives, that we can be like the Good Samaritan, willing and able to go to the aid of those who feel mugged by our sometimes intolerant and self-centred society.  We can set an example and be true to the scriptures we profess to read and follow.  Never before has this seemed so important as it does today.

Amen

MFB/83/08.07.2016

SERMON 82 - SUNDAY 3 JULY 2016

Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish  - Battle of the Somme  – Sunday 3 July 2016

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

Amen.

When I was a child at school in the playground, we would spend our break times and lunch times playing war games.  Back in the late 50s and early 60s our cinemas and TV screens were full of heroic war films where the blood looked fake and our heroes, by and large, always won the day; surviving  the massive onslaughts from the nasty guys on the other side in grey German uniforms.  In fact in those days most uniforms were grey as we only had black and white TV sets. We would re-enact the Dambuster’s Raid over the ditch behind the primary school I attended in north Lincolnshire where real blood was spilt one day when Geoffrey Tufnell’s head was split open as he tried to destroy one of the great dams by ducking, not quite low enough, under a  piece of ironmongery designed to keep us little ones out!  The Germans had never thought of that one!

We were fed tales of daring do’s, films like Reach for the Sky, The Cockle Shell Heroes, The Guns of Navarone, 633 Squadron, the Cruel Sea which all told of the excitement which a relatively recent conflagration had engendered.  If we are honest, some of us were a little disappointed that we hadn’t lived through the war – it seemed such good fun; but for our parents it certainly wasn’t and they frequently told us so.

More recently films, thanks to modern graphics technology, have spared us little from the true horror of war.  My heart still beats fast with adrenalin when I watch those opening minutes of Saving Private Ryan, and we have films telling us some of the story of battles like Gallipoli in the First World War.

When I was at school, 100 years would have taken me back to the Crimean War of which I knew very little. I had virtually no idea why English soldiers died near the shores of the Black Sea. That seemed just such a long time ago and today, as we remember one of the biggest and most costly battles of the First World War it must appear, from the point of view of our younger generations – a complete remote and distant world.  We must thank God for that but as we sit here today, warfare of a very different, but equally terrifying style faces us.

This past week, following two massive upheavals to the English – the decision to withdraw from the EU and the dismissal of England’s national football team of the Euro 2016 competition by largely amateur Iceland, a third occurred in Turkey when gunmen opened fire and killed and injured so many at Istanbul’s International airport – an airport I am familiar with. Why?  What was the purpose of such destruction?  I think this same question was asked 100 years ago.

  On the Somme, there were over a million casualties – 1,088,907 is the official figure.  It started as an offensive by the Allied Forces against German lines which had dug in over a complex series of trenches. The plan was for a quick and decisive push after the heavy artillery had softened up and broken up the Germans’ defensive lines over a six day period. That first push on the first day following the bombardment resulted in nearly 100,000 casualties – think of it, twice the population of Salisbury mown down in a single day. Both sides thought they were fighting for a just cause. Both sides would have looked up to heaven for God’s blessing on their cause.

The Sixth Commandment tell us “Thou shalt not kill” and as Christians we are expected to adhere to that principle and the two commandments which were given to us by Jesus Christ himself – To love God and to love our neighbour; to love our enemy even!  The waging of war seems totally contrary to both the commandments of the Old Testament and the teachings of Christ.  Theologians have therefore grappled with this problem over the centuries with two schools of thought having emerged – and excuse me if I lapse into schoolboy Latin for a moment – jus ad bellum or the “right to go to war” and jus in bello – “right conduct in war”.  St. Augustine of Hippo argued that Christians should not be afraid to pick up the sword and fight to protect peace and punish wickedness and writing nine hundred years later St. Thomas Aquinas set out three basic rules which justified going to war:

·         First, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state. (Proper Authority is first: represents the common good: which is peace for the sake of man's true end—God.)

·         Second, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain (for example, "in the nation's interest" is not just) or as an exercise of power. (Just Cause: for the sake of restoring some good that has been denied. i.e., lost territory, lost goods, punishment for an evil perpetrated by a government, army, or even the civilian populace.)

·         Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.^[15] (Right Intention: an authority must fight for the just reasons it has expressly claimed for declaring war in the first place. Soldiers must also fight for this intention.)

Recently theologians have added a third dimension to the idea of a just war:

Jus post bellum or “the right to proper conduct and re-construction following a war” – i.e. not exploiting the vanquished or taking revenge for revenge’s sake.

In 1992 the Roman Catholic Church came up with a Just War Doctrine (sometimes mistakenly known as the “Just War Theory”) to help their flock understand how Christians could ever condone acts of violence in a war setting.  This was in the context of controversy surrounding the First Gulf War. Their four points were as follows:

·         the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

·         all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

·         there must be serious prospects of success;

·         the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition).

All too often those going to war, or more accurately, those caught up as instruments of the belligerents, do not know themselves exactly why they find their lives on the line.  In the case of the Battle of the Somme it must have seemed, at times, incomprehensible to those crouching in the muddy, vermin ridden trenches as what was going to be achieved by shifting forwards a few kilometres across a landscape with seeming little strategic value to them.  Nevertheless, both sides prayed to the Almighty for courage and strength and protection believing their cause to be the right or just one.

Very often, before going into battle the soldiers on each side would take solace from the words of the 23^rd and 91^st psalms, both of which we are singing today in their form as hymns. For most, the words provided comfort in overcoming the fear of death and the thought that they might never see their nearest and dearest again; but they were also making a plea to God to help them triumph over their enemies in order to remove the root of the evil they perceived.

We look back now and sense the futility of it all.  The First World War started with excitement and a deep sense of righteousness.  Soldiers sang jolly songs as they set off for the slaughterhouse of the trenches.  Songs we still hear today like Tipperary and Pack up your Troubles. Marching off to a war to end all wars.

Some conscientious objectors and later deserters were shot and only recently pardoned; but there can be no mistaking the valour and courage of those who, whether or not they believed in what they were doing, gave their lives for a cause they believed to be just.

Europe has, by and large, lived at peace for the last 75 years.  Certainly there has been no major conflagration as we saw between 1939 and 1945.  Memories of the horrors of both of the last World Wars still do remain fresh thanks to our modern media. A recent visit to Auschwitz testifies to the potential inhumanity of humankind.  But today we face increasing attacks upon our Christian beliefs and values which would and could throw away any sense of warfare being just.  Are we prepared to stand up for those important values in the face of these attacks?

Those men we remember and honour this morning fought for decency and the protection of what they thought were the values which God would wish to preserve.  As Christians we respect them today but we also need to honour them by the way we lead our lives in this modern day and age and protect the values which they fought and died for.  In the words of the famous hymn – “Onward Christian Soldiers” for as disciples we are also the soldiers of Christ.

When you go home, tell them of us, and say,

for your tomorrow we gave our today.

Amen

MFB/82/01.07.2016