Sermon
delivered at All Saints’ Church, Winterslow and St. Mary’s and Holy Trinity, – Sunday 9 February 2020 – Morning Praise and
Morning Eucharist
Isaiah 58:1-9(a)(b-12); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12
(13-16); Matthew 5:13-20
May
I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may the light of
Christ shine through those words to all who hear them.
Last week, our Gospel Reading told the story of Christ’s
presentation in the Temple in accordance with Jewish rites and customs and you
will recall the words of both Simeon and Anna, that elderly couple who spent
much of their time in pray and meditation the Temple. You will also, no doubt,
recall the words of Simeon as we so often hear them in the Nunc Dimittis – Jesus is to be
“a light to be a light for the Gentiles and to be the glory of the people of
Israel.”
When preparing for today’s service and after reading the
gospel reading in Matthew, it seemed a good idea to continue the candle theme
and a little later on I shall be inviting you to come up and place a candle
here on the chancel steps.
The importance of Jesus’s words, spoken at the Sermon on
the Mount are an invitation to all his followers that they/we should not merely
sit back and bask in his glorious light but are expected to go out ourselves
spreading that light to all nations and in this dark world which we seem to
inhabit today these words, I believe, have never had a greater relevance.
Isaiah, in our first reading, is giving the Jewish exiles
a stinging rebuke which, as Tom Wright puts it, sows the seeds for what Jesus
was later to preach on the Mount. True godliness, true piety must be to share
your blessings with the world and not keep them to yourself. Fasting and
religious observance is absolutely useless, Isaiah says, whilst injustice goes
unchecked, if darkness continues to dominate. It is a call to the Jewish
people, just as Jesus’s sermon is, not to refuse to carry out God’s chosen
vocation for them. At that time there were many Jews who were focused on
bringing God’s swift judgment on those pagan nations which did not hold to the
Jewish faith, especially in that brutal area of the Middle East, rather than
bringing God’s light to them. Just as
Jonah was upset when the people of Ninevah turned to God and weren’t wiped out
by him.
God, through Isaiah is condemning his people for
forgetting and ignoring their calling but the passage ends on a positive note –
that water will spring up from the parched places and ancient ruins will be
rebuilt – if only God’s people remember and follow their vocation. It is when they feed the hungry, when they
welcome the homeless into their homes, that his light shall break through.
We often hear the term “to hide your light under a
bushel” in the context of not showing off about yourself – not being boastful
and likewise when we say “he certainly doesn’t hide his light under a bushel”
we are often talking in derogatory terms about a person’s fondness for himself;
but Jesus wants us not to hide our light, for when we do that we are hiding his
light too. As he says, we must be
visible like that city on the hill. Let others see how you live for him, not
forsaking all those good deeds and attitudes which Isaiah mentions are
important if we are to be true to God and letting people see the love and light
of God through us.
St. Teresa of Avila warns us, though, that there is also
a spiritual danger in being that community of faithful witnesses. We can become
focused on “manifesting the appearance
of virtue” because we want our “goodness” to be noticed by others and not
simply to give the glory to God. I know I can easily fall into this trap
because it feels good when somebody affirms your goodness.
From the outside, too, it can be difficult to distinguish
between someone whose good deeds are done from love of praise and someone whose
unselfish goodness is offered solely to glorify God. Outwardly they will appear very similar but
inwardly they are an entirely different matter. If we truly are truly
transmitting the light of Christ within us to another then it will be a matter
of total indifference to us whether our part in this transmission is evident to
others. Our sole aim will be the
transmission to the recipient filling them with God’s grace and mercy so they
too might carry the light on – a bit like the Olympic Torch. It is the transmission of the light to its final
destination that is important not the individual who carries it.
Paul, in our second reading, touches on this when he
challenges his readers who, while professing faith in Christ, still cling to
the values of the world – in particular the desire for glory and status. He
talks of the difference between wisdom learned in this world compared to true
and secret wisdom learned from God and this through experiencing the Holy
Spirit. Paul ends the passage by a
rhetorical question – “No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of
God. We as Christians have not received the Spirit of this World but the Spirit
from God and acknowledge that this is freely given to us so we might spread it
to others.
As we
light our candles later on in this service, let us remember that as Christians,
followers of Jesus Christ and blessed with the Holy Spirit we carry that light
within us all the time – sometimes it is only a little pilot light flickering
away almost undetected, but at other times it whooshes up and fires us to do
great things in his name. If you come
here this morning and don’t yet feel that you have Christ’s light within you,
still leave your candle here at the front and pray that the Holy Spirit will
enter your life and turn on that inner flame.
We must, like Simeon last week, have the faith to recognise God at work
in this world; have the faith to trust that God has a plan for his
world; we must, like Anna, be able to look to the dawning of a new age
however dark the dawn may be for some today.
Look again into the face of the person or persons sitting next to – you
are looking into the face of God’s created image – a glimpse of God himself who
loves you and say to that person “God loves you today and always”.
Above all, we must go out from this church today shining our light,
given to us by Christ, into the dark places of the world. St. Teresa reminded
us, in a prayer, that aided by the Holy Spirit, we are here to continue Jesus’s
work on earth. To bring the glory and grace of God to those we meet. To pass on the flame of salvation to all.
Let us pray the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are
the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he
blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the
eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
Amen MFB/08022020
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