Sermon
120 – “Being There”
Delivered in each parish of the Clarendon Team between Sunday 22nd July and Sunday 19th August 2018
2 Kings 5:1-14; Matthew 9:9-13
May
I speak in the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen
This is the last in a series of nine sermons which are
being delivered to each and every one of the churches of the Clarendon Team
under the banner of Pray, Serve, Grow
– The last 3 are on the topic of Grow being
delivered by each member of the Clarendon Staff Team and I have entitled this
sermon “Being There” after the title of a lesser known American comedy film of
1979 starring Peter Sellers, for reasons I shall explain later as this talk
develops
The first sermon in this series which I preached during
June and the first half of July was entitled “Going Ape with Prayer”. In it we looked at three aspects of prayer
A-Attentiveness, P – Persistence and E – Expectancy. A-P-E, and you may recall
that I said that whenever we pray we can often be surprised at the results, but
we should always expect our prayers to be answered – even if not quite in the
way we expected. I gave the examples of
Eli and Jonah. I left you with the thought that in prayer we should be prepared
to expect the unexpected and that this was often the exciting outcome.
This leads us on to our final topic today – Grow and in this we must again be
prepared to expect the unexpected – just as those around Jesus did – time and
time again. A growing church is one
where its members welcome the unexpected and embrace the changes which having faith
sometimes necessitates. Bishop Nick has been at great pains to point out that
when we talk about growth we are not merely talking about growth in numbers but
more importantly growth in terms of the depth of our faith. This is something which is very dear to my
heart too.
As I prepared this sermon and read again the two passages
of scripture which we heard today – and specifically chosen for this topic – it
became very clear to me the importance of being prepared to embrace the unusual
– to understand that nothing at all limits God’s power to be everywhere -
omnipresent, all powerful – omnipotent
and all knowing – omniscient at the same time.
We can too often be tempted to put God in a box. As any horticulturalist will tell you, and
I’m no expert, if you confine a growing plant to the same small pot it will not
usually thrive – it needs space to grow and thrive. So does our faith. It needs to be deep rooted and ever thirsty
for more nutrients. To be nourished and
there is nothing better to nourish our faith than the one great fertiliser left
to us by Jesus – the Holy Spirit.
Recently I heard a story which I had been told before
many years ago. It might be apocryphal but it is still a good one. Just like us
in the Clarendon Team, a church was waiting for a new pastor or rector;
somebody to lead it following the departure of the previous incumbent. Only a
few people (the selection committee) had met him before.
Just before the service began a dirty dishevelled tramp
arrived at the church and sat himself at the back of the building all on his
own. Not one person welcomed him or
would sit near him. He was, in fact, totally shunned by the congregation such
that he felt unable to come up and receive Holy Communion. At the end of the service the officiant stood up and
announced to the congregation that the following week the new incumbent would
be attending the church for the first time and he hoped for a full church to
warmly welcome him and to show the depth of their love and support for him. At the end of this short notice the tramp at
the back stood up and walked slowly and purposefully up to the front of the
church to stand next to the officiant and calmly announce to the congregation
that he was indeed the new incumbent who had come a week early to quietly
observe his new congregation and from what he had just witnessed there was much
work needed to be done if it was to be the welcoming and loving church the
officiant had suggested it was.
Archbishop Temple once said “the Church of England is one
organisation which exists primarily for its non-members.” If any church is to grow then it needs to
extend its arms out to everybody and be that welcoming body where anyone can
feel a part of it. The church has been
described as the bride of Christ and as such needs to be as supportive and
welcoming as Christ himself.
Our two readings this morning give us great scriptural
examples of this unexpected welcoming.
In our first reading we hear of Naaman, a great general
to the king of Aram who is suffering from an horrific skin disorder. During one
of his campaigns he captures a Jewish girl who becomes his wife’s mistress. She
knows of Elisha the Prophet in her former homeland whom she tells Naaman’s wife
has the power for her God to heal her husband.
Telling the King of Aram of this, the king writes a letter of safe
passage and introduction to the King of Israel together with many expensive
gifts of persuasion. The King of Aram assumes that it’s through the King of
Israel’s good offices that Naaman might be healed misunderstanding that it is a
deep belief and faith in the God of Israel, Yahwe, which can provide the power
of healing.
Eventually Naaman finds Elisha who tells him to wash
seven times in the River Jordan in order to be cleansed of his illness. Naaman, knowing the geography of the area,
simply does not believe him and refers to the two great rivers of Damascus
(Syria) being cleaner and therefore more likely to induce healing than the
dirty Jordan. Naaman’s own knowledge and
expectations are such that he cannot comprehend why he should be asked to
undertake such a demeaning task as stripping off and plunging into the dirtier
Jordan. Naaman had believed that as he was such an important person, a senior
officer in the King of Aram’s army, it would be sufficient for Elisha to come
out to him, say a few words of healing and he would be restored to health. No,
the unexpected occurred. He was now expected to do something he never thought
he would be asked to do; to provide evidence of his faith in God’s healing power
by doing exactly as Elisha had commanded him. The result, eventually, as we
read, is that what he wanted happened.
He was entirely cured of his horrible skin condition. As a result
Naaman’s faith in God’s power was established; it was deeply rooted.
In our second reading once again the disciples of Christ,
together with many others, witnessed the unexpected. Jesus sought out the lowest of the low in
Jewish life – a tax collector. Under
Roman jurisdiction, the Romans recruited people of their conquered lands to
collaborate with them – especially over the collection of taxes for Roman
use. The incentive was that the local
tax collectors could cream off some of the money collected for themselves. Thus
they were considered thieves, collaborators and much worse. They were hated,
detested by the ordinary Jewish people. In common parlance they were
sinners.
The Message puts the story in really graphic easy
language. It describes Jesus eating
supper with “disreputable characters”
and the Pharisees saying to the disciples
“What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cosy with crooks and
riffraff!”
Jesus’s answer is one of the classic pieces of scripture
which we would all do well to remember –
“Who needs a doctor, the healthy or the sick”?
The story is also told of a new incumbent who placed a
large poster at the front of his new church in an affluent part of a large city
announcing that “All sinners Welcome”. The
PCC appealed to his bishop that the poster should be removed because it was
likely to attract “crooks and riffraff”. It
is sad to report that not only was poster duly removed but so was the new
incumbent. I wonder how many members of
that congregation had ever understood Matthew 9:9-13.
We should all remember that God loves us always just the
way we are but also loves us so much that he also wants us to grow too and not
always stay that way. He wants us to be ready to change our ideas and
thinking.
Recently, as part of my training to be a spiritual
director, we, the students, have been looking at how we grow our faith and the
stages which we all go through.
James W Fowler was an American theologian and professor
of theology. He recognised seven stages
we all go through in our faith journey from “0” to “6”. From a primal
understanding at an early age through to enlightment. Not everybody reaches Stage 6 and many only
ever reach 3 or 4. We pass from one to another as we engage with our spiritual
selves. It is not a gnostic principle of
somebody at stage 3 being better than somebody at stage 4 or 5; but as we grow
in our faith through experience and scriptural understanding – wisdom – so our
faith, just as for Naaman, is challenged and our ability to accept the
unknowing, incomprehensible, all embracing love of God and put aside our pre-conceived
ideas and prejudices will make us grow in our faith.
Many of you will know that I am an amateur astronomer –
that I used to write a column in the Winterslow magazine for many years on the
subject of the night sky. There is so much we have learned about our universe
in recent years as technology has advanced but as we have learned more so we
have discovered more and more how much we don’t know. That is the same with
God. When I look up in the night sky I
am continually amazed at the awesomeness of God’s creation and stare in wonder
at the infinity of space and time.
Pre-conceived ideas and a lack of willingness to allow
ourselves to be subject to change can stunt our growth – just lack the
pot-bound plant.
I mentioned the film “Being There”. In this film simple-minded
Chance (Peter Sellers), a gardener who has resided in the Washington, D.C.,
townhouse of his wealthy employer for his entire life and been educated only by
television, is forced to vacate his home when his boss dies. While wandering the
streets, dressed smartly in his former employer’s best suit and bowler hat, he
encounters business mogul Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas), who assumes Chance to be a
fellow upper-class gentleman. Soon Chance is ushered into high society, as Mr.
Chauncey Gardiner (really Chance the Gardener) and his unaffected gardening
wisdom makes him the talk of the town including a post as adviser to the
President of the United States when Chance's
remarks about how the garden changes with the seasons are interpreted by the
President as economic and political advice, relating to his concerns about the
mid-term unpopularity that many administrations face while in office. If
you haven’t seen the film then a similar plot occurs when in an episode of Father Ted, the character of Father
Jack, the drunken old priest, is taught to repeat the phrase “that would be an ecumenical matter”
whenever a bishop asks him a difficult theological question.
The illustration here is that it is so
easy to be taken in by our own pre-conceptions about people and their positions
in society. Jesus had no such illusions.
He came for everybody – rich, poor, sick, healthy, religious, non-religious and
so on. Once we dispense with those pre-conceptions we are really ready to grow.
Our church, as the bride of Christ can
only grow if we, its members, grow – grow deeper in our faith and aim to be
like Christ; giving time for others but also allowing ourselves time to be
ourselves and put aside our own egos; being there for God, Son and Holy Spirit,
being there for others, being there for ourselves and being our true selves –
the person God always wanted us to be. Open to change and challenge.
We should start always with prayer,
serve others, be prepared for change and challenge and then we shall truly grow
both as individuals and as the whole body of Christ.
Amen
MFB/01062018
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