SERMON 115 - SUNDAY 22 APRIL 2018

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Church, Farley, Wiltshire on Sunday 22nd April

Exodus 16:4-15; Revelation 2:12-17

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! May my words come from God and may they bless all who hear them today.  Amen

How many of us catch our selves saying “they were the good old days” or words to that effect when we look upon our present day life and the lives of those around us – yearning for how things used to be.  I hear it a lot and sometimes catch myself saying it – whether it is about the current political state of the world or the current size and price of a Mars Bar!  We are so good, especially us English, at complaining.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when it is right and proper to complain and to try and maintain those standards with which we were brought up but as is explained and illustrated in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s latest book – “Re-Imaging Britain – Foundations for Hope” we need to build a contemporary narrative of who we are; rooted in our traditions, values and history but resolutely forward thinking.

In our passage from Exodus in our first reading we join the children of Israel just six week’s into their long 40 years wilderness journey.  The ten plagues, the first Passover, the deliverance out of Egyptian slavery and the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea are all behind them.  They have already come a long way out of their bondage at the hands of the Pharaohs and on their way to establishing their own nation in Caanan.

Yet, here in the wilderness new fears and doubts arise and the people begin to grumble at their spiritual leaders who have brought them this far.  In doing so, they are also grumbling and doubting their own God too.

Our passage of scripture started at Exodus 16:4 but to understand it more fully it is necessary, I think, the read the preceding two verses of Chapter 16 which come immediately before our passage:

“The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.  The Israelites said to them “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger”

My immediate thought, when hearing these words was “You ungrateful so and sos”. God sent plagues from which you were immune to help your release, parted the Red Sea and drowned Pharaoh’s chasing forces and led you to safety away from an oppressive regime. Now you wish you had stayed behind to be further oppressed.

How easy it can be to look back on lives past through rose coloured spectacles. Were those good old times really as good as we thought.  God’s world is forever changing and we must allow ourselves to embrace that changing world yet at the same time ensuring that we do not compromise our faith.  Unfortunately this was exactly what these Israelites were doing.  Despite all they had been through, all they had witnessed, all the miracles they had seen and been part of, they were complaining not to God but through Moses and Aaron about God. They were doubting the wisdom and faith which had so far led them to this place.

We read in our passage how Moses was told by God that he would “rain bread” from heaven each day but to test the people’s obedience, he laid down certain conditions – that is God would provide just enough manna (heavenly bread) for their requirements on a daily basis but to ensure that they observed the Sabbath he would, on the sixth day of the week provide double to quantity to last for the remaining two days. 

The people also craved meat and so every evening quails arrived and so by the giving of the manna and the quails God once more showed himself by these miracles.  Unfortunately we read further on that some of the people didn’t collect all the manna on the sixth day but left some of it to collect the following the day.  This, they discovered on the seventh day had gone mouldy – another example of God showing the results of disobedience.

The story teaches us two things – first of all, God will deliver us at times of oppression and even doubt.  Remember the story of doubting Thomas.  Jesus showed himself by coming a second time to the room when Thomas was present and giving him a second chance to believe.  “How much more blessed are those that believe without having seen” Jesus tells him.  However, deliverance follows the second of these two things - redemption and a willingness to turn back to God – just as the Prodigal Son was delivered back into his family once he had turned his back (repented of) on his in dependent life. God does not turn his back on us, however much we whinge provided always we acknowledge him through Jesus to be our saviour and we truly believe this. He is our Father who only wants good things of us.

I said earlier that my original thought was what an ungrateful bunch these Israelites were.  In thinking this I am not thinking as God thinks, not as Jesus thinks.  We live in a modern society where people seem to be stuck with the notion that we need affirmation, feel needed, thanked and wanted by our fellow humans and if we do something and we are not repaid or rewarded we feel resentful and angry. We complain to others. We don’t get that promotion we feel we should have, we don’t get that thank you card, we don’t get that pay rise.  We resent those against those whom we think we should have received these.  Even the Prodigal Son felt that he did not deserve his Father’s restoration and expected his father to simply give him a servant’s job with the words “I told you so”.  By contrast the fattened calf was killed, a robe and a ring presented to him.  No recriminations.

Likewise in our passage God gives his people what they want to show what a gracious and compassionate God he is.

God had heard the cries of his people in bondage and released them. He heard their complaints and whinging but instead of punishing them for their unfaithfulness and insolence he sets a table before them complete with the necessities of life.

 In fact, I believe that God already knows what lies ahead of us – the choices we can make before we ourselves do but God will also test us – just as he tested those in the wilderness.

We have to have both faith and obedience.  Obedience alone will not suffice. Despite there being some who were disobedient – taking more than they needed and hunting for food despite God’s provision, he never went back on his word and was with them throughout the 40 years of wilderness wanderings leading them safely to the Holy Land.  Faith carried them through.

We would do well to remember at all times God’s immense compassion and grace.  If we are to be Christ like, and therefore God like. We need to think differently.  We need to think as God does, compassionate to those against whom we hold a grievance.  Jesus said on his Sermon on the Mount:

“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.  For if you love only those who love you what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters what more are you doing than others…Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Matthew 5:43-48)

Justin Welby, in his book, talks about compassion and grace which, in his view, is  how we can re-imagine our country.  He talks about the Blitz Spirit – how when in great adversity we pull together. How the early Christians pulled together and were witness to God’s great compassion and grace. 

How can we, individually, be more God like?  The answer, I believe, is by following Jesus’s example, recognising that all people on Earth are God’s creatures, good or evil, and extending Christian love, compassion and understanding to all inside and outside of our Church community.

Amen

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SERMON 114 - SUNDAY 8 APRIL 2018

Sermon delivered at St Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean, Wiltshire on Sunday 8th April 2018 (Easter 2)

Acts 4 : 32-35

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! May my words come from God and may they bless all who hear them today.  Amen

On Maundy Thursday I attended, together with a galaxy of clergy and lay ministers the Chrism Service in the Cathedral at which the three oils – the Oil of Baptism, the Oil of Anointing the Sick and the Oil of Chrism – used at ordinations, was blessed by the Bishop.  It was also the occasion when all the ministers present were encouraged and did renew their ordination and licensing vows.  There then followed the Service of the Eucharist.

At that service, the Bishop preached the sermon.  It is available for us all to read again on the Salisbury Diocesan website.  He touched on many aspects of the church’s role and relevance in today’s world including the difficult topics of the safeguarding problems which have beset the Church of England and closer to home the attempted poisoning of the two Russians in the centre of Salisbury. It’s a reminder that the world today, and probably as it has always been, has much toxicity and evil largely through individual or corporate greed, - greed for power or greed for money.

The bishop referred to a new book by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, himself a former economist and business leader entitled “Reimagining Britain – Foundations for Hope” in which the archbishop’s starting point is that when he was growing up there was a shared vision of Britain post-war with a commitment born of adversity to build a future in which things could only get better through a commitment to housing, education and the health service and, fundamentally, a commitment to the reconciliation of a fractured Europe. Justin Welby acknowledges that that unifying vision has gone.  The archbishop starts to construct a new vision around community, courage and stability, shared values and belief for a common good.  Sound familiar?  Well this in essence is what those three verses from Acts is saying – that which the early Christians achieved.

Following the service I went across to Sarum College bookshop and bought a copy of Justin Welby’s book. It is well written if a little erudite. One of the most startling facts I read in its introduction was that between 1990 and 2009 the total income share in Britain of the top one percent of people moved from less than 6% to nearly 9%.  Since 2009 that has dropped back but is still 7.9% and income inequality overall remains much higher than before the rapid increase of the 1980s. Between July 2012 and June 2014 the wealthiest 10 percent of households owned 45% of total aggregated household wealth.  Just think, the remaining 90% have to share just over 50% of the aggregate total household wealth between them.

In his book Justin Welby speaks about the Christian values needing to be expressed in actions.  Everybody can have good values, except there are many who don’t but unless they are put into practice through community, courage and stability they are really quite worthless.

Welby further gives an example of where countries have thought to help others by lending money.  He quotes the example of Greece where richer countries have lent Greece money to help the poorer breach the gap with the richer.  The result has been the building of the largest debtor prisons in the world.  What an absurdity when this was precisely the ridiculous situation which was written in Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century in his depiction of Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison.

Turning back to our scripture reading in Acts.  Those three little verses are, I think, so powerful and a blueprint for how Christians should act out their professed values. It is isn’t easy – Jesus himself argued that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  Jesus was himself well acquainted with commercial reality.  He probably helped to keep his carpenter father’s books of account.  Many of his parables include money in their subject – the widow’s mite, the parable of the talents, Lazarus at the gate of the rich man, the lost coin and so on.  Neither should we dismiss those verses as being in support of “some lefty vicars’ communist thing” as I have seen it described.

Paul reminds us that it is not just having wealth and possessions but rather loving those more than the word of God – and in particular those great two commandments – “Love God” and “Love your Neighbour” – that keep us away from his Kingdom.

Tom Wright gives us an insight into the significance of sharing possessions. He says “to sell ancestral property and share the proceeds was not a matter of some primitive  communism. It was a renunciation of one of the central Jewish symbols. It went alongside the rejection of the Temple as the centre, the Torah as the defining charter and Jewish ethnicity as the necessary qualification of God’s people.

Jesus and the Holy Spirit took all of that away and created the New Covenant.  For the new Christians it was an outward manifestation of a togetherness, a bond, and showed those attributes which Justin Welby says are need for a reimagining of Britain today – community, courage and stability. 

Let’s look a little closer.  Do open your bible if you have access to one – Acts 4: 32-35. We read:

 “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions.  Everything they owned was held in common.”

In  other words,  they were a community.  A community of like-minded individuals who believed in the power and love of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. They believed what they believed with one heart and soul – and we are reminded by Paul in  his letter to the Romans (Chapter 12:5):

 “So we who are many are one body in Christ and individually we are members of one another”.

“Community” means precisely that – holding in common.

Then we read :

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and grace was upon them all”.

This required great courage.  At this time, when they were such a minority, surrounded by those of the Jewish Faith and those who worshipped the Roman gods, it must have taken an immense amount of courage to go out on a limb and publicly declare themselves for this “new” religion.  They were truly acting out the New Covenant but with the two great old commandments.

And finally:

“There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to each as any had need”.

A few points here.  Firstly, it was only those who held land and houses who offered them; then they laid them at the Apostles feet for distribution.  Their feet.  A symbol of stability for it was left for the disciples to establish who were needy – it was a simple sharing out to all so that those who were rich might be richer too. 

Very often, as Justin Welby points out, politicians use averages.  Consider a company with ten employees – one chief executive and nine manual workers.  The chief executive pays himself £1 million and each of the manual workers £10,000 per annum.  If you take the average each receives it would give a figure of that company paying an average wage to its employees of £109,000 per annum!  Not bad eh!  But that does not give a true and accurate indication of what is really happening does it. 

I think we have much to learn from those early Christians especially in this era.

I often hear people older than me (yes they do exist!) tell me about the spirit of the Blitz. It is an interesting fact that it is during difficult and dangerous times that communities pull together for the common good. So why can’t it be that when times are good we can’t also pull together for the common good.

As a church community we can be a great and wonderful example just as were those early Christians. We can breathe God’s breath into our broken societies starting here in our villages.  The outside world looked at those early disciples and marvelled at their way of life – such that hundreds and thousands wanted to join.  It was something very special.  We read earlier in Acts that:

“Day by day as they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts [they praised] God and [had] the goodwill of all of the people; and day by day the Lord added to their number”.

We all recognise that we are small in number here in West Dean but if we emulate those early Christians I am certain that we will have the goodwill of the people and from that we can grow in number.  The time has never been more appropriate.

Amen

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SERMON 113 - SUNDAY 1 APRIL 2018 (EASTER DAY)

Sermon delivered at Holy Trinity Church, East Grimstead, Wiltshire on Sunday 1st April 2018 (Easter Sunday)

Acts 10:34-43b; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8

Alleluia, Christ is Risen! May my words come from God and may they bless all who hear them on this day of Resurrection!  Amen

“It is finished!”; so ended our reflections on the dark rainy afternoon of Good Friday. Those words heard by the centurion at the foot of the Cross as he waited for Christ to die.

“It is finished!” not “I am finished” but “it is finished!”  Some translation from the Greek read “it is accomplished”  - perhaps a better translation than that which are probably more familiar with; and as we know today Jesus was far from finished; his death and resurrection was just the beginning of a Faith which has lasted for 2,000 years and which continues to grow and embrace more and more people throughout the world.  Christianity is not dying out as many would have us believe, yes in Western Europe it may seem that way with societies more secular, but it is growing dramatically on a global scale. Just think for a moment, Jesus died amongst the Gentiles, the Roman soldiers. His faithful followers, Peter his right hand man amongst them, had fled, even after confronted with the amazing truth that he had risen.  The ending of Mark’s original gospel reminds us of this :

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.”

Yet the centurion, observing the suffering Christ die and seeing how, even in the midst of his pain and suffering thought of others – his mother and the young disciple John for example – realised that Jesus was something special and unique and proclaimed “Surely this man was God’s son!”

Many of us have travelled the road of Christ this week.  We waved branches and shouted “Hosanna” last Sunday, with or without a donkey; some of us attended the Taize services here at East Grimstead on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, the Team foot-washing and re-enactment of the Last Supper on Thursday at Farley and the Good Friday Passion and Reflections on Saturday.  We have followed closely the Passion Week of Christ and now we reach that glorious bright day when we celebrate Christ Risen, the Conqueror of Death and Darkness, the new beginning. 

For there to be a new beginning, a new covenant to use biblical language, there has to be an ending – the old is swept away, the curtain of the Temple which separated God from the ordinary people was torn in two – from top to bottom – indicating a divine hand here at work.  It could so easily have been torn from bottom to top by human hands but not from top to bottom. Darkness fell across the whole earth. This was a finishing, an accomplishing, an end so there could be a new beginning, a new covenant – one which allowed the ordinary human to have direct communication with God.  Jesus’s death had cleansed us.  As he breathed his last so he breathed out all our sins. We were free – not just the Jewish people but all people, even the Roman pagan centurion.

This is what we truly celebrate at Easter.  Renewal, a new beginning, freedom from all our sins; however awful they might be – provided that we genuinely repent of our sins, our wrongdoings, that we stick with Christ, believe in Him and continue to follow him.

Like the disciples who fled, it can sometimes be difficult – especially when we go through hard times ourselves – but we must always remember that Jesus himself went through the hardest time of all – a man of peace, a man who put others before himself, a teacher and healer, a good man – who was despised, spit upon, falsely accused and tried, mocked and finally judicially murdered. There is no trial, no suffering, no persecution, no lying or falsehoods against us, no betrayal, no frustrations which Jesus did not himself endure and overcome.  He took upon himself all our burdens. Yet he triumphed, over death, over all the sufferings which he endured.  He rose gloriously although, as we later read, it took some convincing for some of his most ardent followers such as doubting Thomas and the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

We all know the gospel story so well.  The good news. Paul, in our Epistle reading ably reminds us of the true and important meaning of the Resurrection as we ought to view it today as the modern day disciples, followers of Jesus Christ – Paul says:

Now I should remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you which you in turn received in which also you stand through which also you are being saved if you hold firmly to… [that] message”

Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve and then to more than 500 others at the same time.

The message of today is that Jesus was raised from the dead, a new beginning, a new resurrected body - that he remains alive today.  There is no grave to be found, Jesus conquered the grave and eventually returned to his father on Ascension Day leaving behind the Holy Spirit for all generations until he returns as promised.

We live in exciting times.  We wait for his return but we do so in the knowledge that he left a legacy of love and compassion through the Cross and Resurrection.

Today I would like you to turn to your neighbour here in church and say these words:

“God loves you because through his Son Jesus Christ he gave you eternal life”

That is the greatest gift we can be given.  It is a far greater gift than the biggest Easter Egg you could imagine.  Just believe and have the faith and conviction to spread this message, the Good News, to all you meet today and going forward. Death and darkness is finished, new life has begun.  Happy Easter!

Amen

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