Sermon
at St. Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean
- Sunday 23 July 2017
Isaiah
44:6-8; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43
Dear Lord, I pray that these words spoken next shall be your
words and shall be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen
It’s lovely to be back with you here at West Dean, a church
and congregation I have so much enjoyed leading and preaching during my six
years’ of ministry as a trainee and then as a licensed lay minister in the
Clarendon Team. It is therefore a great
delight to mark a special milestone for me here in this church today, for this
sermon is the hundredth I have preached since beginning my ministry. As you may know, I wasn’t planned to take
this service originally, you were originally to have Bill Thompson, but today
his son is taking his last service as curate in his parish near Ipswich before
taking up his appointment as a priest in his first own parish in the Oxford
diocese, and I was more than happy to step in and join you today and I pray
that Bill’s son will be a blessing to all those in Oxfordshire to whom he will
minister.
This morning we have had three very important readings;
readings which have a great relevance to the world in which we find ourselves
in this second decade of the twenty-first century. I don’t know about you, but I find today’s
world ever more confusing and despairing.
It seems every time I pick up a newspaper or listen or watch the news
there are reports of more suffering, more persecutions, more evil. We live in a world which seems to be choked
with evil weeds which Jesus describes in the parable we’ve just heard. It isn’t just the deliberate evil either that
sometimes makes us feel like we are being suffocated – it can simply be the
stresses and strains of everyday living in our affluent western society too.
Peer pressure,media pressure the pressure of being what others what us or
expect us to be. Just this last week I
have felt immense stresses on me from family and friends for a whole host of
different reasons and like the farmer in the parable, I thought should I stop
and start weeding out all of those things which seem to choke me or should I
concentrate on the nurturing and growing of the good wheat and deal with the
weeds later and all together at one time?
Paul, in our second reading reminds us of the path we should
adopt. He reminds us that if we have put our faith in God, just in the same way
that eventually the Hebrew slaves did in their flight from Egypt, and in
particular in the Holy Spirit which we have received, then through the Spirit
we can be assured that we are set free from sin and death – that we will not be
choked by the weeds of evil; but we have to give over our lives to the Holy
Spirit – as Paul says – we have an obligation to live by the rules of the
Spirit and not our own and the world’s sinful nature. In other worlds we have to also have patience
and make room and time for God in our lives.
Paul reminds us that Christ suffered on the Cross for us and
that as his heirs, his children, we too may and will share in that
suffering. It’s not a very sexy message
to give to those who may be on the brink of converting to Christianity – to be
told that just as the Lord Jesus suffered so will you; but the difference is
that as Christians we accept such suffering is part and parcel of our journey
of faith. Our faith will often be tested
through suffering, just as Jesus’s was in the Garden of Gethsemane, but, again as
Paul puts it so lovingly – “I consider
that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be
revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to
be revealed” (Romans 8:18-19).
It is a fact of life that love and
suffering are two sides of a similar coin.
Where there is true love then there inevitably will be suffering –
because in a true loving relationship we will feel empathetic for the worries,
stresses, sufferings and ultimate the loss of that other person. God himself
cries out and feels the same feelings of loss and suffering when we stray away
from our Faith and it pains him when we fall out of our relationship with
him. Remember the parable of the lost
sheep (Luke 15). Quite contrary
to the logical commercial view of accepting the loss of one sheep and the time
and effort required – of just 1% of the
flock - the shepherd in that story left his 99% to seek out the errant 1%. What
an amazing story and what an amazing revelation that God will do that for
us. It seems commercially crazy yet it
is by such acts as this that reveal the true glory of God to an otherwise
ignorant world. Yes, it did take the
shepherd time and effort, it might have made little or no difference in
financial terms to have lost 1% of the flock – no doubt in those days sheep
often were eaten by predators or fell off mountainsides – but the shepherd
showed patience and perseverance and he returned with 100% of his flock.
We live in a world of instant gratification; a world which is
hurried and never waits. Where time is money, where short cuts are taken, where
financial cuts mean a lessening of service and often lead to more suffering.
When I first started work as a lawyer back in the 1970s, I would be handed a
pile of files in the morning, read through them and if a communication was
required I would dictate a letter on an old dictating machine and then hand the
tape and file to a secretary in a pool.
The typed letter might be returned to me late that same afternoon but
more often than not it would reach me with the new files to look at the
following day. I might have to amend the
odd draft letter and return back into the pool.
It wasn’t unusual for a letter to take two or three days from dictation
to post room. Then I would put the file away for a week as seldom a reply would
be back before then. The letters were
unhurried and often more thoughtful and comprehensive. Today, we type our own
letters on our laptops and send them as an email attachment. Often if a reply isn’t received within an
hour a reminder might be sent. There is
a constant feeling of needing to be doing and little time for real thought and
patience.
The disciples in our Gospel reading couldn’t at first
understand the meaning behind Jesus’s parable. For them, the servant’s
suggestion to the owner seemed to be sensible one – shall we go into the field and pull up the weeds which have been sown
so evilly by his enemy? (Matthew
13:28). Let’s take immediate action now. The owner is wise – he realises
that in pulling up the weeds now the servants might very well pull up the young
wheat shoots too – something which his enemy would love him to do. No, says the owner, let both wheat and weeds
flourish, then when both are fully grown pull up all the weeds, bundle them up
and burn them leaving the wheat alone to be harvested.
In his explanation Jesus tells his disciples that all the
seed sown by the Son of Man, i.e. Jesus, is good seed and is planted in good
soil throughout the world. Both the seed
and the world are good – something which we should always remember as that has
to be our starting point as believers in Christ. Yes the world may appear mad
and bad but in reality it is good – God only ever created good things – us
included. What happens though is that the Devil, evil, creeps in and sows the weeds
– in other words we should always be aware that there are those in this world
who would try and destroy us and the loving world God created.
I wholly believe in spiritual warfare and
this is clear biblical evidence that it really does exist. However, it is so
easy to fall into the secular, non-biblical way of doing things – going into
the field and trying to pick out all the weeds and in so doing destroying the
good crop too. Action today leading to destruction tomorrow. Jesus advocated against this. He explains that we haven’t yet reached the
“end times”. Before that, as we read
elsewhere, we shall go through periods of suffering and persecution and so on
as we approach those end times (see Matthew 24). In the meantime, just as I had to be in those early
days as a lawyer, we must be patient, wait and trust in God through the Holy
Spirit – just as Paul tells us.
But all will be well in the end. That is the wonderful message which Christ
gave to us. Yes we might go through bad
patches in our lives, our enemies may appear to have sown our life with weeds,
the world may seem stacked against us but we can find comfort in knowing that
the world is, indeed, intrinsically a good place, that through and by the Holy
Spirit, we are being looked after so long as we remain faithful to the one who
created us and who continues to love us unconditionally.
Then, as Paul says, all our sufferings shall appear
insignificant compared to the Glory which will be revealed.
Let us pray
Lord God you created us and the world to be a
good place
Keep us and protect us from evil and those who
would sow weeds into our lives
Send your Holy Spirit and the Angels to protect
and guide us in the ways of the Cross
That following in the steps of Jesus’s suffering
we may share in the fruits of of faith in the full knowledge that you will
always be with us and will never forsake us now or at the end of time.
100/18072017
