Friday, 13 March 2020

SERMON 147 - SUNDAY 8 MARCH 2020


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


147/06032020


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