SERMON 147 - SUNDAY 8 MARCH 2020

Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Farley  -  Morning Worship During Lent  – Sunday 8^th  March 2020

Genesis 12:1-4a;  Romans 4:1-5,13-17;  John 3:1-17

May the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord.  Amen

This morning we have three quite distinct and difficult pieces of scripture to consider and reflect upon. The first describes Abram’s or Abraham’s (as he was later to become known) commission from God to leave his country of birth and nurture, his family home, and go to another entirely new and unknown place (to Abram) chosen by God.

In our second reading, in his letter to the Christian community in Rome, Paul is making a distinction between those things we do for reward (working for our wages for instance) and those things we do simply by faith – the latter Paul describing as those things which can be considered righteous.

Jesus in his discourse with Nicodemus, a learned Jewish elder and a member of the Sanhedrin discusses the need to be “born again” in order to see the Kingdom of Heaven.  Nicodemus for all his learning and knowledge of Hebrew scripture takes Jesus’s words literally and completely misses the point of what Jesus is actually trying to convey. By being “born again” – a greatly overused term in my opinion when I was a member of my student’s Christian Union in Liverpool – Jesus is really saying that we need to repent of our old ways and then by accepting the Holy Spirit we will be more open to what God has in store for us – we should let the Holy Spirit, like the wind, blow where it chooses and we ourselves will then see the world and our own calling through the eyes of God.

All three passages seem, at first, to set impossible tasks or very difficult tasks for us, In the first, Abram is being asked to uproot himself and his family, leaving everything he has been brought up with behind to go where he knows not, God knows where in fact! This is an example of blind faith – putting his whole life at the disposal of God.  At times we ourselves may be asked to do this – to take a gigantic leap of faith for God with seeming no immediate reward. Abram is told that the only reward he will receive will be for him and in particular his future generations to be blessed – something in the future not in the here and now; not in the immediate.  As his wife was well past child bearing age his faith must have been exceedingly strong indeed to be presented with what appeared to be a strong impossibility.

Our second reading reminds me of that great film Schindler’s List. At the beginning of that great epic we see this great Czech pro-Nazi industrialist making money for himself on the backs of forced Jewish labour.  His motivation is purely financial; taking advantage of the Nazi occupation of Poland and the availability of cheap labour to operate an enamel ware factory in Krakow to make money for himself and live a hedonistic lifestyle. As the film develops he begins to see and understand the horrors and injustices and death which this same Nazi regime, with which he hitherto conspired, has brought upon so many innocent lives. We see the moment of this revelation and indeed repentance as Schindler looks on in the scene where we follow the little girl in the red coat during the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto – the only colour we see in an otherwise black and white film. It never fails to move me to tears. 

Towards the very end of the film we see Oscar Schindler himself, played so brilliantly by Liam Neeson, moved to tears as he reflects upon how much more he might have done had he sacrificed his earlier greed and hedonistic life style sooner. For the Jewish people his remorse and repentance is a true mark of doing something without expecting monetary reward but doing it out of faith and seeing things as God sees them. Feeling God’s grief for the treatment of those Jews and doing something about it without seeking wages. That, Paul tells us is acting righteously. Today, Oscar Schindler is still honoured by the Jewish Nation as being “Righteous Amongst Nations” – an award for all those non-Jews who selflessly and often at great risk to themselves, helped Jews escape the Holocaust.

So, what are the lessons and reflections which we can take from these three readings?

Well, first of all, I think that like Abram, where we feel or hear God’s call we should take serious notice of it, even if it is something which might seem difficult or impossible for us. God will never call us to do something which he feels us incapable of if it is a true calling. The difficulty can often be in discerning it as a true calling and not just some idea in our own head. It is often useful, in those circumstances, to talk to a spiritual director or accompanier as we prefer to call them, to examine closely that calling.  Is it really a request from God.

Secondly, we should never expect any immediate reward from anyone for the things we do outside of our paid occupations. As Paul tells us, when we work and expect wages we are simply receiving what is our due. If we do things without expecting or receiving a reward then what we are doing may indeed be considered a righteous act especially if, like Oscar Schindler, we are also taking a great risk at the same time.

Finally, we need to be born again of the Holy Spirit; that is to receive the Holy Spirit through which we can discern the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth as God does. Each Sunday, if not at many other times, we pray the Lord’s prayer part of which reads “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth it is in Heaven”. “Thy Kingdom come”. We pray this continuously but what do we do to help bring it about?  Well first of all we need to see God’s will for ourselves – to see the Kingdom of Heaven through Jesus’s eyes. To see what is wrong and then do something about it. That was what Oscar Schindler saw from his horse overlooking the Krakow Ghetto in the film; the girl in the red coat – the discernment that this was wrong. What a wonderful piece of cinematography to show repentance through the realisation of the effects upon the little girl in red. It is the moment for us all when we turn away from those ways which separate us from our love of God and dedicate our lives to his will.

One of our roles then, as Christians, is to continue to pray that prayer – “Thy Will be Done” and act and speak out in ways which can truly help bring that about.

A favourite prayer of mine, which reminds us that Jesus Christ left us the Holy Spirit so we could continue his work toward establishing the Kingdom of Heaven here is the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila

Let us pray :

Christ has no body now but ours

No hands, no feet on earth but ours

Ours are the eyes through which Christ looks with compassion into the world

Ours are the feet with which Christ walks to do good

Ours are the hands with which Christ blesses the world.

Amen

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SERMON 146 - SUNDAY 1 MARCH 2020

Sermon at St Peter’s Church, Pitton  -  Morning Worship  – Sunday 1st March 2020

(Adaptation of Sermon 92)

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19;  Matthew 4:1-11

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord.  Amen

We are all familiar, I hope with the words of the Lord’s Prayer – that prayer which Jesus gave to his disciples and followers and which we recite every week and contains the well know lines:

“Forgive give us our sins (or trespasses as the old version has it) as we forgive others and lead us not into temptation”.

I emphasise the “and” because despite what many may think, temptation and sin are two different sides of the same coin.

As we now enter into that great period of reflection in the Christian calendar, Lent, we may hear a lot about sin and temptation.  Many of us may have decided to give up something for Lent as a way of expressing our commitment to our Faith – following Jesus into the wilderness before he began his earthly ministry leading to his eventual death of the Cross.  As Jesus himself says, if you want to follow me you must take up your own Cross – and that, to some extent, is what we do during these six weeks of Lent – contemplate upon our own life’s commitment to Christ and the nature of the Cross we have to bear to truly follow him.

To be tempted, is not in itself a sin, only if we accept that temptation, which is to disobey God, is the sin committed. In the Lord’s Prayer we ask not to be tempted for if temptation does not come our way then, ergo, we cannot be led to sin.  A removal of the temptation is an act of prevention which is always the best outcome –  ask any doctor, police officer or fire officer - yet we are very fortunate as Christians because we know that if we are tempted and we do sin there is still a cure.  In the words of the same prayer, we can ask for forgiveness but, in the same breath, only if we forgive others too.  That is, what Desmond Tutu, calls the cycle of forgiveness.

This morning, in our readings, we are dealing with some extremely deep theological issues – issues which have taxed and been debated by eminent theologians for centuries. 

Our first reading, from Genesis, is well known to us as well as many outside of the church.  Having created the world and populated it with animals and humans, and having seen that all was good, God rested on the seventh day we are told; but it wasn’t long before things started to go wrong (as they always seem to do when humans are involved) and the first great temptation appears – that wonderful tree bearing such tempting fruit – made even more tempting by the Serpent, appealing to the curiosity of Eve by saying that eating the fruit will make Eve as knowledgeable as God.  What a great temptation and humans, being what they are, who wouldn’t be tempted.  How many of you, when confronted with a sign chalked on the pavement by a street lamp standard, or close to a doorway or fence with the words “Wet Paint” or “Wet Cement” haven’t been tempted to just test the truthfulness of that statement with a finger?  I know I have and invariably I have discovered the accuracy of the statement by acquiring horribly sticky fingers or hands. The sign is there to warn with an implied request not to touch.  By touching we may have discovered the truth but we have also been disobedient.  Our temptation has turned to sin.  The serpent or snake represents all those who would seek to deceive us – in our modern language to seek to mirepresent a situation through “fake news”.  “You will not die”, says the serpent, “go on eat”. We must all pray for the gift of discernment to know what is true and what is false to prevent us falling into sin.

Adam and Eve were given very strict instructions, we read, not to touch or eat the fruit of this tree yet in doing just this they were being disobedient to God and therefore sinned – resulting in the punishment meted out by the Fall.  They fell for the snake’s trick.

In our epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the apostle is comparing the sin of one man, Adam, “his trespass” to use words familiar to many in the Lord’s Prayer, to the action of one man, Jesus, in his “act of righteousness” as Paul calls it, leading to justification (salvation) for all through our belief that Jesus died on the Cross to save us from our sins.  In other words, the situation is put right, the Fall is reversed and humans, through Faith, can be restored in God’s grace to being what God always intended them to be. But it is important that they do have Faith – something beyond simple belief but a commitment to the teachings of Christ and to follow him unreserved and unconditionally.

Romans 5 is not easy to read in isolation from the whole Letter to the Romans and Paul’s way of speaking or writing can, at times, be quite difficult to follow and it does require some study beyond just listening to snippets being read out on a Sunday morning.  The twelve earlier verses of Romans 5 set the scene for us a little better in that Paul reminds his reader that it was only through the suffering of Jesus upon the Cross, an act of the deepest humiliation for a human being to suffer at that time, can we share in the glory of God together with a belief that Jesus died for our salvation. That is the fundamental cornerstone of our Faith. 

Paul says “we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”. (Romans 5:4-5)

Wow, what a wonderful explanation of our Faith. God’s glory, God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.  I particularly love the passage “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”  If you get nothing further from this sermon this morning please do take away that one line – “hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”.

But, as Christians, that does not mean that we are now immune from temptation, from fake news in fact, why else would we need continually to pray that we should not be led into that very thing we seek to avoid. I am a great believer in spiritual warfare – good versus evil – the subject of so many books and films – even the Harry Potter series has this as its main overriding theme.  I believe in this context, the greatest and most disobedient temptation is therefore a moving away from God by indulging in our own fantasies and ambitions as opposed to those plans and desires which God has for us and by worshipping other gods – today they might be money, cars, a hedonistic life without thought or empathy for others, a forgetfulness and lack of appreciation of God.   We have no greater example of the spiritual warfare which we can be up against than the account of Christ himself being tempted by the Devil in the wilderness which formed the text of our gospel Reading today.

Here the Devil is testing God through the temptations of Jesus.  Three things Jesus is tempted with – things which any of us could probably equate to temptations which we have faced or have to face – first, tempting Jesus to turn stones into bread.  We know, from the first miracle that Jesus can do such things – he turned water into wine at a wedding – but the difference here is that the Devil is asking him to prove that he is the Son of God by this action not, as previously, as an act of love for his mother and the hosts at the wedding; second, by again proving he is the Son of God by testing God himself to save him from a fatal death by jumping from the temple roof – this would be not only putting God to the test but disobeying his Father who would, in due course, see his Son die of the Cross when similar jibes were exclaimed and finally, an attempt to make Jesus fall down and worship the Devil – a direct disobedience to God’s First Commandment which Jesus himself later proclaimed to be the first of two of the greatest Commandments.

So, we can take comfort and courage that though we may be tempted, so too was Christ.  It is how we deal with those temptations which will make us stronger and able, more closely, to follow Christ and the will of God.  We have the Holy Spirit to guide us and it is ever more important that we continue to have a strong dialogue with God through prayer and reflection.

In front of you there are some small pieces of paper and hopefully a pen.  If you wish to, and there is absolutely no compulsion to do so, I invite you to write down, anonymously, any temptations which you feel you need to avoid, especially during this period of Lent, it might be eating chocolate, drinking wine, having that second helping of bread and butter pudding, gossiping, not reading your bible, watching Love Island or Naked Attraction, anything at all and place the folded paper in the basket here at the front.  After the services we will take them away and destroy them after we have prayed the Lord’s Prayer over them.

As you do that let us pray:

Father we thank you that you gave your Son, Jesus Christ

To die on the Cross to save us from our sins

We ask you to lead us not into temptation so that we are not tempted to sin against the Holy Spirit and be led away from your saving grace.

Knowing that faith leads to salvation and hope will not disappoint us, we ask that we may always live our lives founded on the three great principles of Faith, Hope and Love.

Amen

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