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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