Sermon at All Saints’ Farley Parish
Church, Trinity 7 – Sunday 31st July 2022
Ecclesiastes 1:2.12-14; 2:18-23;
Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
Today, we
heard three scripture readings which individually and collectively provide us with
great wisdom in a world which seems to concentrate on wealth and riches and the
pursuit of money and possessions. The last gospel reading is a warning to us
all – storing up great treasure on Earth in the hope of an easier life in the
future is no guarantee that such a situation will occur – indeed in the example
Jesus gave, the rich man was to forfeit his life before he could build the
barns to store his wealth.
The Book of
Ecclesiastes, from which was taken our first reading, traditionally is considered
to have been written by that wisest of monarch, King Solomon, who himself, had
great riches and built an opulent palace at the same time as building the
temple at Jerusalem. Believed to have
been written towards the end of his life, Solomon in this book is reflecting on
life and achievements in the face of eternity and concluding that much of what
he (and also us) do is based upon our own ego and what we have done or achieved
in tangible ways and which, in due course will pass away just as our earthly bodies
will. He recounts how much time he has
taken toiling away, being busy busy busy and to what ends. All is vanity, he
says.
I have to
admit that there have been many occasions when, in answer to the question “How
are you?” I have responded “Very busy” as if that is something to be treated as
a positive but as I have grown older, just like Solomon, I have come to realise
that to live a full and prosperous life you need to take time out to simply
spend time with God – amongst his creation – walking in the countryside,
spending time with family, enjoying seeing animals and birds, experiencing
sunrises, sunsets and especially in my case enjoying the wonders of the night
sky. All these things are free to us –
they do not require money or possessions, they are there for us to enjoy without
cost.
In our
second reading, Paul asks us to seek things that are above, not on things of
the Earth. Here Paul is telling his reader of the importance of putting our
trust in God through Jesus and not on those icons which we make for ourselves
here on Earth. Of course, Paul was
addressing the people of Colossus in particular where there was much immorality
and greed amongst the population and Paul was reminding the Christian community
in that city that they should not indulge in those activities he lists –
fornication, impurity, passion, evil desires and idolatry and so on but
concentrate on those things which Gods wants of us.
Today, we
often find, in social media, examples of all those things which Paul talks
against. We tend to live in a hedonistic society in the western world where,
like the rich man in Jesus’s parable, we want more and more possessions and an
easy life. For many people, in recent years, life has indeed been very easy but
following the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis we have suddenly been
plunged into an economic crisis which we were not prepared for.
Having money
and wealth doesn’t always make us happy either.
I have told this story many times, so excuse me if you have heard it
before. One man who I have admired in my
life is not someone who I met during my years in politics or the law or in the
church – it is my maternal grandfather – a very simple straightforward,
straight talking (when you could actually understand his broad accent) Norfolk
labourer. During his 85 years of life he had been a milkman, farm labourer,
sugar beet factory hand, grave-digger, coffin maker, concrete maker and during
the war a member of the Home Guard looking after Italian prisoners-of-war. The
furthest he ever travelled was down to Sussex to work on the Duke of Norfolk’s
estate in Arundel – interestingly the duke always felt it important to offer
employment to inhabitants of the county from which he took his dukedom.
A simple man
of simple tastes, he lived well on his own produce and had few possessions,
living in a council property in his Norfolk village. He never had a large amount of money during
his life although, when he died, we discovered that his state pension had provided
him with more income than he actually needed.
For him, to be out in nature enjoying his beloved countryside, growing
his vegetables and keeping his chickens was enough other than the regular pint
of mild at the Compasses Inn and the odd flutter on the horses.
He always
seemed happy with his life and I asked him why he was content with his simple
life. His response was that throughout
all the years he had assisted the local undertaker with making coffins and
digging graves he had never seen any pockets in the shrouds of their
occupants. He explained that the one
thing which he had come to realise quite early on in life was that whether rich
or poor, death was a great leveller and having buried both the wealthy and the
poor it was all the same at the end of the day.
He could have been the author of Ecclesiastes with these words of
common-sense wisdom which have stayed with me throughout my life.
As we
approach the final quartile of our lives, just like King Solomon, we find
ourselves reflecting upon our past lives, opportunities taken and opportunities
missed and wonder what it was all about.
It was once said that the legacy which we leave is not about what we did
or achieved, what possessions we had; not even about what we said – although
sometimes those quotes like my grandfather’s can have a profound effect on our
lives. No none of those things are as important as how we made people feel in
our presence. I know when I talk about
people who have passed away it is often about how they made me laugh, or think
or feel when in their presence.
The writer
of Ecclesiastes tells us to make the most of the daylight whilst we still have
it; to accomplish those tasks which we need to do but also to remember that
those tasks in themselves should reflect the glory of God. The ancient Greek bishop Saint Irenaeus wrote
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive” – and that is a human being
full of the spirit of God himself who reflects God’s glory in creation in the
way he or she acts and behaves. It is not
about simply storing up treasures for ourselves but in sharing our Christian
love and beliefs with others to make the world a better place – one free from
greed, envy and selfishness. Then we can
truly say that “all is not vanity” but has purpose and provides a true and
lasting legacy.
Amen MFB/173/28072022
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