Sermon at All Saints’ Church, Farley - Sunday 10 September 2023
Ezekiel
33:7-11; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
Let us begin with a prayer,
Father God, we bless and praise you that we can meet here this morning without fear of persecution knowing that you are always present; especially when we are assembled together as your Church. We thank you that you gave us Your Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us to redeem our sins and that we are forever forgiven. We thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit and, in these current times of political and economic uncertainty and unrest, may that same Holy Spirit be there with us as an inspiration to us all in making and keeping the presence of God deep within us even when the going gets tough. Amen
In that prayer which I have just said, we bring together too
fundamental principles of our Christian Faith – the knowledge that we are all
members of Christ’s family irrespective of our own individual cultural and
economic backgrounds and upbringings and that our sins can and will always be
forgiven just as we should forgive others who sin against us.
Our last two readings from the New Testament this morning are both very
rich in describing and illustrating Christian doctrine and how we should
behave. In our first reading from Ezekiel we are shown how that Christian
doctrine is overlaid on what went before the coming of Christ – a strict
observance of Jewish laws and customs – the simple idea that just to live a
Godly life was sufficient to be saved.
Jesus, when questioned by the Pharisees and also when he spoke in his
local synagogue in Galilee made it clear that he had not come to break the law
but to fulfil it – meaning that through Him and Him alone, we could be forgiven
for our sins and not suffer God’s wrath.
Through Him we could view God as a loving God and not a vengeful
one. Indeed, Ezekiel alludes to this
when he says “As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the
death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn their ways and live”.
This therefore illustrates that the God of the Old Testament was always
a loving God. In conversations which I
have with people, when they learn that I am a church minister, I am often asked
how I reconcile the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the teachings of
Christ in the New Testament – indeed, on one occasion somebody who was a
regular church-goer even told me that they never read or listen to scripture
from the Old Testament and restrict their Faith solely to the scripture from
the New. That, I believe, is to miss the point entirely. To understand fully
the role of Jesus in coming to a broken and ungodly world two thousand years
ago, we need to understand and appreciate the history of the Jewish people and
appreciate the role and teachings of the prophets such as Daniel, Jeremiah,
Isaiah and Ezekiel – during the times of the Babylonian Exile when the Jewish
people had been cut off from worshipping God, Yahweh or Jehovah to give Him
their name.
In the Old Testament God did not derive any pleasure in his wrathful
nature and did all in his power through the prophets and leaders to avoid “the
death of the wicked” as Ezekiel puts it.
There are so many examples of this – the pleading of Abraham concerning the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, God’s saving of Nineveh from destruction
much to the chagrin of Jonah who had done so much to avoid sending the message
of salvation to its people and then had hoped for its destruction.
The Hebrew word used for repenting is metanoia or “turning away” – the
word used by John the Baptist when he travelled through the wilderness
proclaiming the coming to the Messiah. He was imploring the Jewish people to
turn away from their evil ways and live Godly lives by accepting the salvation
of Jesus who was to come – and the best way is to show love to one another.
In his letter to the Romans, Paul takes up the theme of a loving God by
saying in very simple terms that if you want to fulfil the law, in other words
lead a righteous life as understood by the teachings and law laid down by Moses
in the Old Testament, then you can do no better than “love one another”. As Paul puts it, “love does no wrong to a neighbour and therefore you are
fulfilling the law”.
We have to see this in the context, again, of a nation which fully
believed that to reach salvation, to be right with God, one simply had to obey
the letter of the written law. Jesus, by contrast, said that this was not
so. Even today I have met people who
firmly believe that by simple lip service and ritual they are saved but the
truth is that being a Christian is not simply attending church once a week but
is living your life in accordance with the teachings and example of Jesus.
Although not part of our readings today, you will recall that Jesus was
asked a trick question by the Pharisees to ascertain his credentials and
hopefully trip him up. He was asked
which of the Ten Commandments was the most important. His answer was that there are two of equal
and complimentary importance – to love God and to love your neighbour as
yourself. Because God loves you then by loving your neighbour as God loves you
there is really no need for the other eight commandments because if you obey
those first two then you are unlikely to commit any of the other eight sins.
For me, when I first heard this it was an absolute revelation. I had learned the Ten Commandments off by
heart at school and now they could be condensed into just two. However, as we
all know, it is not always easy to love our neighbour especially when that
person is of a different cultural, social or economic background. We so easily
gravitate towards people like ourselves and can, likewise, grow our own
prejudices. We know this and that is why
we often need to ask for forgiveness – that is why forgiveness continues to be
at the root of Christian doctrine and why forgiveness is such an important
topic within the Lord’s Prayer – the prayer which Jesus said we should pray and
which features in every Anglican service.
Early I said that it is not just paying lip service to religious ritual
that ensures the promise of eternal life, nor is it just being “a good person”.
It is metanoia, turning back to God through Jesus who is the one and only way
(as He himself put it) to salvation or eternal life. That has to be a true and
genuine belief that Jesus was the Son of God and that he died on the Cross for
our sins – not that he was just another great prophet.
In our Gospel reading Jesus points out to his disciples this truth when
he explains how to deal with errant followers.
It is not to castigate them publicly but to talk to them quietly away
from others – to give them a chance to put right whatever it is that they have
done wrong or giving them an opportunity to apologise. Only after that has been
done and they have continued not to listen to advice should they be denied
salvation – in the words of Jesus “whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in Heaven and
whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven”.
In our gospel passage Jesus ends by stating the importance of the
church as a group of two or more like minded faithful individuals and
emphasises the power of prayer. You will
recall that Jesus always sent his disciples out in twos – indeed, only
yesterday morning I was visited by two Jehovah’s Witnesses and saw a whole
group of them in my road evangelising their beliefs. Here in this morning’s
passage Jesus is reminding us of the strength in numbers by pointing out that
if two or three gather together in his name then he will always be amongst
us. I find that so comforting.
In recent weeks I have been reading in a particular broadsheet and in
the Church
Times about the imminent demise of the Anglican
Church through the dismemberment of the parish system. Debbie McIsaac can speak more knowledgably
than I on this subject, but what I can tell you is that even though our numbers
may be fewer than in the past Jesus will not abandon us but will always be
among us. He promised that and this is a
promise which we must always remember and heed.
In conclusion, following Christ is not about following all rules and
rituals religiously but remembering and if we follow just the first two
commandments – love God and love our neighbour – and believing in the presence
of Jesus with us now then we can look forward to that eternal life which he
promised to us remembering that a good starting point is to forgive those who
have sinned against us – not for their sake but for our own.
Amen
MFB/190/09092023
