SERMON 136 - SUNDAY 11 AUGUST 2019

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Parish Church, Winterslow  – Sunday 11^th August 2019 – Morning Worship

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 Ghost and may my words be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen

“So where your treasure is, then there is your heart also”  

    

so says Jesus, in our Gospel reading from Luke this morning and it continues from our gospel reading last week when we looked at the parable of the rich fool who having amassed an immense wealth of goods and grain decided to store them up for his future comfort and security only to find that he did not, in fact, have any future at all.  Death ultimately makes fools of us all for we cannot avoid it however much wealth and financial security we have – or as my wonderfully lovely yet simple grandfather often said in his almost incomprehensible East Anglian accent (he was an undertaker’s assistant in a Norfolk village) in this more direct way – “all the time I’ve been doing this job I’ve never seen pockets in a shroud”; simple wisdom from a wise simple man who lived a simple life – and a happy one too at that, for he loved his countryside and saw God’s beauty and wealth in creation all around him and not in bank balances.

Collecting and hoarding is something that we often do to feel good about ourselves and to provide comfort in having things around us.  It makes us feel that we have achieved something and that we matter in society. In my case my hoarding comes largely, I think, because I procrastinate in getting down to the de-cluttering that I need to do.

Jesus is telling us that there is much more to life than materialistic things.  Our passage comes immediately after the section in my bible labelled “Do not worry” where, you will no doubt remember, Jesus tells his disciples that they should not worry about their life – what they will eat, where they will sleep, or what they will wear – God provides for all feeding the birds who neither sow nor reap and so if God provides for the smallest of creatures he will certainly provide for the disciples.

That may be a simplistic message you may say – try saying that to the homeless man on the street or the woman hurrying on her way to the foodbank – but the true meaning of Jesus’s words is that we spend far too much time worrying about our own physical and material comfort and not enough of it on our spiritual well-being and the well-being of others.  We become distracted by those things which take us away from the important things – loving God and ourselves - for those are the things which Jesus tells us are the most important ones – the things from which everything else stems and flourishes; and that love of God from which all things flow is based on a strong Faith as the writer of Hebrews tells his audience in the reading which Dawn gave us earlier.  

Our scripture reading from Hebrews was written to remind the Christian Jews of their ancestry and of the many miracles and covenants or promises which God has made with his people and the fulfilment of the prophesies.  In particular he reminds us of the covenant with Abram, which Bill read out for us in the First Reading, that Abram’s descendants from his aged wife Sarah will be more numerous than the stars.

Many of you will know of my passion for astronomy and many people have often asked me how I can reconcile that scientific interest with my Christian Faith. Well the answer is easy – as we enter late summer, just look up at the night sky and in particular the billions of stars which make up the Milky Way through a pair of modest binoculars. The awesome spectacle of all those stars, so many incomprehensible light years away, just reinforces the vastness and the greatness of God’s universe and the importance and love he places upon us here on this tiny world. My Faith in such a context is not diminished but enlarged. So must Abram have been overwhelmed with the message he received; certainly Sarah found it all incomprehensible but the impossible became possible through Abram’s Faith.

As I was writing this sermon on Friday morning I received a phone call from one of the service users of Alabare Place where I am the chaplain.  Normally I would be on duty there but this Friday I was working at home.  He had recently returned to Salisbury to visit his ailing father but had gone through a dark period of his life which I described as his “dark night of the soul”. Without going into any details he had suffered many blows in his 35 years of life but he was at great pains to tell me that through all these difficulties he had kept his Faith and was now anxious to find a church where he could give thanks and grow it further and volunteer his services. For him, and he described this in these words himself, the important thing in life “was to steer his way through life using a good steady moral compass and by loving and helping others in the process.”

Jesus was very much an advocate for the poor.  If ever he had a bad word to say about anyone you will find that it was more often about those who thought they were in a comfortable position both spiritually and financially; those for whom status and wealth were more important.  People like the rich young ruler which provoked the phrase about the camel and the eye of the needle. The people that Jesus ministered to the most tended to be the poor and humble.

Being unwise with our money and wealth can lead to stresses and untold unhappiness.  Our man in the parable thought that by hoarding it for the future  he would be happy and secure – but no, his life came to a sudden end.  Christ repeats to his disciples in our Gospel Reading this morning that “where your treasure is, there is your heart also.”

I was recently listening to a sermon by a minister outside of the Clarendon Team who suggested that one of the best ways to know and serve God is through our hobbies or passions.  What is it that we are individually passionate about?  God created us, each and every one of us unique and individual and instilled into our heart interests and passions which he wants us to use for his greater praise and glory – not hoard or keep to ourselves.

In a moment Anita will be leading us in our Prayers of Intercession and afterwards I am going to invite you to come up and give away some of your treasure to God.

When you came in this morning you may have been surprised that the church gave you some money – normally we are taking it from you!  I want you to look carefully at the coin you were given and think of it as a bit of that treasure which you might be tempted to hoard – as representing something which you might find it hard to give away.

At the front here is a small treasure box, courtesy of Bill, and at the end of the Intercessions before we say the Lord’s Prayer together I invite you to come up and place your coin in the box to represent your own prayer or thought or promise to God to let go of something which is getting in the way of having a full relationship with him through Jesus Christ – a treasure which you might be keeping for yourself and not sharing with others or a talent or passion which you have which you are not using fully for God’s greater glory.  As Jesus puts it – “make purses for yourself that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” If we place our trust entirely in the hands of God, we will indeed enrich our Faith.

Amen                                                                                                    MFB/02082019

SERMON 135 - SUNDAY 4 AUGUST 2019

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Parish Church, Whiteparish  – Sunday 4^th August 2019 – Morning Worship

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

 “Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanities”

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and may my words be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen

“Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanities” so begins the Book of Ecclesiastes – that book of “Wisdom” attributed to King Solomon of Israel who was renowned for his wisdom throughout the then known world. These opening words are hardly ones of encouragement though, telling the reader that life seems to be pointless – people come and go – the cycles of nature and history are constantly repeating themselves – there is nothing new.  Our highest goal, he tells us, is wisdom and even that is futile - for the more one has the more one has to suffer he says.  However much wealth or status we have – life is still empty.  Wisdom is better than folly but in the end death makes fools of us all is the conclusion which he reaches.

These are depressing thoughts on such a lovely sunny Sunday morning and not an easy topic on which to preach. Yet the more I reflect on Solomon’s words and then reconsider them in the light of our second and third readings the more they make sense and the more they concentrate my mind, and hopefully yours, on the important things that matter in this life; the things we often overlook too.

Solomon was also renowned for his wise judgments – remember the story of the two women who had a dispute over the parenthood of the baby.  Likewise we read in our Gospel reading of someone in the crowd approaching Jesus to ask him to arbitrate over a family inheritance.  Jesus’s answer to him is that it is not his role to act as judge or arbitrator but uses the opportunity to give a moral warning with his parable of the rich man and his barns.

We all know that parable very well, I am sure, but how often do we, ourselves, take heed of its meaning and spend so much of our lives collecting and hoarding things – I am probably more guilty than many here as a quick chat with Liz over coffee will bear testimony or better still a quick visit to view the inside of our garage. I, like many others am often guilty of procrastination too – I recall early on in my school life a teacher scrawling on the front of a late essay in red ink “Procrastination is the thief of time”. I know that is true but I still procrastinate – hence the numbers of boxes still to be sorted into save, donate or bin.

Collecting and hoarding is something that we often do to feel good about ourselves and to provide comfort in having things around us.  It makes us feel that we have achieved something and that we matter. In my case I think it is often because I procrastinate in getting down to the de-cluttering that I need to do.

Solomon is telling us that “at the end of the day”, to use that horrible expression, what we have on this earth when we die is no more than we had when we entered it – or as my grandfather often said in his almost incomprehensible East Anglian accent accent (he was an undertaker’s assistant in a Norfolk village) – “all the time I’ve been doing this job I’ve never seen pockets in a shroud”; simple wisdom from a wise simple man who lived a simple life – and a happy one too.

Paul, in his letter to the Colossians sets out in very clear and unambiguous language that those of us who have been raised with Christ, in other words those who have come to believe and follow him should set their hearts and minds not on the transient things of this world, not on earthly pleasures and vices which he lists in some detail, but should get rid of those things, should de-clutter ourselves of them and concentrate on renewing ourselves in those things which God wanted us to have and to be. As all children of God, Paul tells us that we are all equal in God’s eyes – as he puts it no longer Greeks or Jews, circumcised or uncircumcised but Christ in all and all in Christ.  This is a message, also, which Jesus gives to his disciples when he sends them out ahead of him.

 I think some of our modern politicians would do well to heed the sentiments of Solomon, Jesus and Paul.  Too many times today we see examples of a world where the poor seem to get poorer and the rich get richer. Small barns are being pulled down to make way for larger barns – and this is not necessarily metaphorically; money is hoarded and often we seem to strive to make more of it in ways which destroy our natural world.  Solomon is correct – the cycles of nature and history do repeat themselves and, increasingly, it seems, despite having knowledge of these things we are not wise enough to learn from them and adjust our behaviour. I think this is an area where we as Christians should be actively engaged.

The first module of learning I undertook at Sarum College when I trained for church ministry was the art of theological reflection.  Taught as an academic topic I found it quite difficult at first to grasp in the context of theories by differing theologians but in essence it is quite simple when explained in the context of something called the Pastoral Cycle as simplified by one of our lecturers, Dr. Andrew Todd. This technique has also been used by investigators of near miss incidents involving aircraft and goes something like this – An Incident/Experience Occurs – We Analyse that Incident/Experience (i.e. We ask ourselves what actually happened?); We then reflect upon this and bring into the equation similar examples from similar cases or from our own previous experiences – after this we make a decision on what could or should be done to avoid it happening again  in the future and then finally execute that plan of action. In theological reflection we add in, at the reflective stage, examples from the Christian tradition – often examples of scripture from the bible to reach a conclusion and an action which conforms with our Christian beliefs and Faith.  We may be required to go round the cycle again modifying it as we do so that it becomes more of an upward spiral than going round in circles.

Jesus was very much an advocate for the poor.  If ever he had a bad word to say about anyone you will find that it was more often about those who thought they were in a comfortable position both spiritually and financially; those for which status and wealth was more important.  People like the rich young ruler which provked the phrase about the camel and the eye of the needle. The people that Jesus ministered to the most tended to be the poor and humble.

Decades ago many Christian missionaries went out into Africa and Asia to convert the heathen natives as they put it.  They did much good work it has to be said but sometimes their aims were double edged – wanting the local inhabitants to adopt Western ways and values – some of which were not exactly helpful to their own cultures and countries. Now it is interesting to observe that missionaries are now being sent out to the western world from such places as China, South Korea and many countries in Africa where Christianity is growing immensely. Christianity is growing rapidly in many of these countries and we are seeing miracles occurring not least examples of Muslims meeting Christ in visions and experiences. 

The decline of the Christian Faith is very much a myth.  For 2,000 years it has flourished and will continue to do so, so long as we take on board the teachings of Christ from scripture.

Let me add, finally, that I am not criticising those who are wealthy – neither did Christ. It is how you choose to treat it. Rob Parson’s in his book “The Money Secret” writes “The secret is as old as time itself, and no amount of money can replace its power. The poor who find it can find financial security, the wealthy who despise it can end their life as paupers”.

Being unwise with our money and wealth can lead to stresses and untold unhappiness.  Our man in the parable thought that by hoarding it for the future  he would be happy and secure – but no, his life came to a sudden end.

In my experience the answer is most often prayer – if God wishes us to do something and we do it, as Paul says, with God in us, then it can happen regardless of the cost.  That was the message of Jesus in the sending out of the disciples.

So today, as we go out, let us theologically reflect on our lives and our priorities.  Do we put God in us as a priority.  Who knows, I might even go home from here today and empty another box!

Amen                                                                                                    MFB/02082019