SERMON 175 - SUNDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2022

 

SERMON 175 – ALL SAINTS CHURCH, WINTERSLOW

–  SUNDAY 11^TH SEPTEMBER 2022

REFLECTION UPON THE LIFE OF HER LATE MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II

Like so many of you here this morning, I am not old enough to remember another monarch reigning in this country.  I was born a couple of months after the Coronation in 1953 not far from Sandringham, in Norfolk, close by where my maternal grandparents lived – indeed my grandfather delivered milk on the estate.  My mother was baptised in Wolferton Parish Church next to the railway station for the Sandringham Estate from which the body of the Queen’s father was taken by train to London to lie in state when he died in 1952 and it was quite common to see members of Royalty in and around the local villages. My mother until mobility problems arose would go annually to the Sandringham Flower Show and mingle with the Royals. Apparently when I was literally a babe in arms the late Queen came across on one such occasion and smiled at my mother and me.  Now all that is a distant memory but the legacy of Her Late Majesty as a Great Queen and Christian Leader will continue for all eternity.

I therefore choose to rejoice today in the sure and certain hope of resurrection, joining with the ancient praise of all God’s people in the famous words of Job 19:

I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and he will stand upon the earth at last.
And after my body has decayed,
    yet in my body I will see God!
I will see him for myself.
    Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.
    I am overwhelmed at the thought!

Job 19:25-27 (NLT)

Pause and pray

On Christmas Day 1952 the new, 26 year-old monarch of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth nations, spoke for the first time to the world in what was to become her annual Christmas broadcast:

'Pray for me,’ she asked, ‘that God may give me wisdom and strength to carry out the solemn promises I shall be making, and that I may faithfully serve Him and you, all the days of my life.’

 

It was a prayer God answered. Elizabeth would make a series of solemn promises six months later at her coronation, which she kept faithfully for the next seventy years. The newly crowned Queen promised three things: to govern appropriately, to maintain justice, and to profess the gospel of Christ. All this she surely did until her final breath. 

Also, at her coronation the Queen was presented with a Bible as these extraordinary words rang out in Westminster Abbey, and around the world: 

‘We present you with this book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is wisdom, this is the royal law, these are the lively oracles of God.’

She was wearing a priceless golden crown adorned with 2,901 precious stones, she was sitting upon a throne in a thousand year old vaulted abbey, and yet God’s Word was recognized as ‘the most valuable thing this world affords’. Thousands of years earlier the Psalmist put it like this :

Oh, how I love your law!
   It is my meditation all day long.
Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
   for it is always with me.
I have more understanding than all my teachers,
   for your decrees are my meditation.

Psalm 119: 97-99

In her Christmas broadcast of 2000, the Queen reflected on the millennium year with complete candour about the importance of her own personal faith: 

‘For me the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to lead my life.’

 

Almost twenty-two years after that speech, more than seventy since Elizabeth became Queen, we witness contemporary leaders failing and falling all around us at an unprecedented rate. Notions of duty, of promise-keeping, and of accountability to God can seem antiquated and even naive. But at such a time, Queen Elizabeth’s lifelong example of consistency in private faith and integrity in public service is both startling and inspiring.

Following on from his mother’s own plea for prayer in 1952 we now pray that her successor, King Charles III, will continue to uphold her strong sense of duty and purpose and especially uphold the Faith which meant so much to his dear mother.  In his accession speech yesterday he indicated that he will do just this and we, as a Christian Community in this country, must do all we can to support him in this important promise by the way we too act towards and pray for all his subjects, irrespective of race, creed or colour, just in the same way Jesus himself did so during his years of ministry on this Earth.  All that remains to be said at this time, therefore, is

GOD SAVE THE KING!

Amen                                                                                                             MFB/ 175/10092022

 

SERMON 174 - SUNDAY 28 JULY 2022

Sermon at All Saints’ Farley Parish Church, Evensong - Trinity 11 – Sunday 28 July 2022

Luke 14:7-14

Today I want to do something a little different from just talking to you about my own thoughts and reflections on the readings we have heard this evening – I want to involve you in an exercise which was used extensively by the great theologian St. Ignatius of Loyola and adopted by the society he founded – The Society of Jesus or more commonly known as “The Jesuits”.  The exercise, I dare say you know well, bears the posh erudite Latin title of lectio divina or more simply “holy reading” and we are going to use the process together to unpick our New Testament reading from Luke’s Gospel and listen to what God might be saying to each of us through the words.  I think we are the right sized group to do this.  You may say as much or as little as I you wish but, hopefully we will all go away all the wiser for our study of the passage in this way and might have heard a message from God for ourselves or someone else.

The way we do this is for me to read the passage again, and for each of you to look out for any particular word or passage which stands out for you and to make a mental note of it. This first reading is a bit like setting the table for a meal – don’t worry too much about the historical or biblical context too much – the meal is yet to be served - just let it speak to you. After that we will then read it out again, a little slower and this time think about yourself being one of the characters in the story - immerse yourself as though you are there.  What message is there for you or your character?  Perhaps you are a “lowly guest” at the wedding or somebody of standing. Perhaps you are the host.

Finally, we shall have a short discussion as to what the story means for or to you, for yourself or others, what message it contains,  and I will happily share with you my own thoughts.  Finally, we will read it one last time to see if anything else has been communicated to us through this piece of Scripture.  It’s an exercise you can do at home anytime you have a spare moment when you get out your bible and read a passage.

Here is our reading:

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honour, he told them a parable. ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honour, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honoured in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

 

 

 

Amen                                                                                           MFB/174/28082022

SERMON 173 - SUNDAY 31 JULY 2022

 

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

SERMON 172 - SUNDAY 10 JULY 2022

 

Sermon at All Saints’ Farley Parish Church, Trinity 4 – Sunday 10^th July 2022

Deuteronomy 30:9-14; Colossians 1:1-14;  Luke 10:25-37

I think that the true and important teaching of Jesus, in the parable of the Good Samaritan can easily be lost to us because of the familiarity of the story.  I am sure, like me, many of you will have heard it, and probably even play-acted it, at junior school. The word “Samaritan” has become synonymous with the concept of doing good, of being a person who comes to the aid of another in times of distress. The word is also used as the name for that most important of listening organisation which has saved the lives of so many disturbed and depressed people.

It is important to go back right to the beginning of the story.  Jesus is being questioned by a lawyer – his purpose, a bit like Prime Minister’s Question Time – is to try and catch Jesus out – to test him and God’s manifesto.  Referring back to our first reading where Moses emphasised to the Jewish people the importance of obeying God’s law in order to prosper, Jesus asks the young lawyer (who of course could be expected to know and understand the law better than many others) what the law reveals about salvation and therefore provides the answer to his question “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” The young lawyer is able to parrot the answer but clearly does not entirely understand its meaning for he has to follow up with another question – “who is my neighbour” and Jesus is compelled to explain the answer not by academic legal discussion but by telling a story in the simplest of terms.

Before we go into the parable in further detail let’s look at the historical context of the story. The Samaritans were a people living between Galilee and Judaea who didn’t follow the laws and customs of the Jewish people. They were, therefore, culturally different and in the eyes of the Jewish people inferior in every way.  Accordingly they suffered dreadful discrimination at the hands of the Jews.  You will recall the Samaritan woman at the well who engaged Jesus in conversation after all the other women had already been and filled their buckets. She was ashamed to be with them and probably suffered much abuse. Having had several husbands too probably didn’t help! They were the “wrong” people, with the “wrong” traditions and “wrong” theology and treated very much as second-rate people. How often do we view others in that way?  Not members of our club or society.  It is that context which makes this parable so powerful.

So, asks the lawyer, who is my neighbour?  Jesus does not, as so often the case, give a clear unequivocal answer – for two reasons, first, he is acutely aware that the question is a lawyer’s attempt at getting him to compromise the Jewish faith and secondly, and more importantly, he wants the lawyer to work out the answer for himself and to do this he sets out the little scene so familiar to us all.

I don’t need to labour the story itself as it is so well known to us all but it does also reveal a couple of dark moments it.  In the story the poor victim, who is left injured by the side of the road, is passed-by by two individuals who should know better. We are told in clear terms that they are of the Jewish Faith – a priest and a Levite.  Both would be well versed in the law quoted by the lawyer – the priest by virtue of his learning and the Levite by virtue of his learning and service in the Temple or other holy place. Levites were a special class of Jew who assisted the priests in the Temple – a bit like LLMs I guess!

And so it is left to the third pass-by, a hated despised Samaritan to come along and give assistance to the poor victim.  The lawyer correctly responds to his own question that it is this unlikely and perceived unfriendly man who has proved to be the real neighbour of the victim – who has demonstrated proper compassion and rendered practical assistance in the circumstances and not the holy, pious clerics.

Let’s think about that for a moment – especially in the context of Jesus’s parting comments to the young lawyer – “now go and do likewise”.  How easy do we find it to go and give assistance or welcome to those who are not like us.

Our first reading this morning from Deuteronomy recalls Moses telling the Jews that they must obey the law.  As a lawyer myself I have no problem with that.  The rule of law is what should bind up any nation and prevent anarchy and disruption. The importance of Moses speech is that he is telling his people that in order to do so it is not necessary to go to any great lengths or call upon any messengers to go to heaven or across the sea. Obeying the law is by honouring God in the here and now.  By doing so and obeying his commands and teachings – and we as Christians add the teachings of Christ who proclaimed that he had not come to set aside the law but to fulfil it – we can prosper.  St. James reminded us that although we are saved through our Faith that is not sufficient alone and that we need to turn that faith into actions or deeds as he calls them.

Let me tell you a personal story – how I have come to be wearing these robes and am preaching to you this morning. I was brought up on the idea that in order to go to heaven you needed to be good and that somewhere up in heaven there is a book in which all your bad deeds are written down.  When you get to the gates of heaven the account is balanced between the good marks and the bad marks; a bit like the scales of truth and justice wielded by the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. That was simple theology and resulted in God being an entity to fear, a truly frightening concept.  Indeed, when we look at the Doom Painting in St. Thomas’s Church in Salisbury we realise that this has been the ecclesiology over many centuries.  I think many people even today are of this view and for this reason fear that becoming a Christian is a joy-killing moment they want to avoid.

In the early 2000s I first attended a Spring Harvest event in Minehead – that great Christian Gathering over a week long.  On the second or third night, in the Big Top I listened intently to a wonderful Christian speaker who explained to us that being a Christian is not about us personally climbing the stairway to heaven through our good deeds and generally being good but that our principal aim should be to bring the Kingdom of Heaven down to Earth so that we can experience it in the here and now and that by doing this we are indeed good neighbours to all.

We live in a globally aware today.  Back in Jesus’s day the world was much smaller in terms of known different cultures. We integrate more and, in this country alone we have become multicultural in many regions and cities.  Never before have we had the opportunity and needed to act as Good Samaritans.  It has been heartening to see our response in our local villages to welcoming in some Ukrainian families from that dreadful conflict.  That is a prime example of being good neighbours.  It also pains me to know that there are still many who find it difficult to accept people of different creeds and cultures but we can make a difference by the way we, as Christians, show that love and respect to our neighbours.

So, in the words of Jesus at the end of the gospel passage, “go now and do likewise”.

 

 

Amen                                                                                           MFB/172/08072022

SERMON 171 - SUNDAY 12TH JUNE 2022

Sermon at West Grimstead St. John’s Parish Church, Trinity Sunday – Sunday 12^th June 2022

Proverbs 8:1-4,22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Trinity Sunday is always a difficult one for the preacher – I think this is often the reason that sermons on this day are often given to the more junior members of a ministry team and today is no exception.

Each of the readings sets up a challenge.  When I first saw the reading from Proverbs, I had just completed reading Professor Jo Dunkley’s account of the current hypothesis for the creation of the Universe with its complicated explanations of quarks, bosons, dark matter, dark energy, gravitational lensing and so on. Here, in Proverbs we are told that Wisdom was created before all else – before the creation of the Universe and all it contains! Was this the answer?  Well, no, and it certainly contradicted the scientists’ current view of how the Universe came into existence. 

The writer of Proverbs, believed to be that great monarch who was famed for his wisdom, King Solomon, is using prose and poetry to express his idea of the importance of wisdom in our daily lives. Proverbs is regarded by biblical scholars as not being one of historic or autobiographical fact but a book of wise sayings which still, in my view, provide an important tool for world today.

In our modern technological age we are obsessed with obtaining knowledge.  Every day we look at our computers and smart phones or televisions to find out what is going on and we are constantly fed with the opinions of others as they seek to persuade us of their own thoughts and ideas – this is one of the dangers of social media and the easy way in which ideas, both good and bad, can be communicated to millions. Knowledge often is no longer turned into wisdom but the new thirst is for “information” often whether true or not.  Instead of looking at original sources we are tempted to read accounts by self-publishers often without verification.  It is an easy option.  I can scarcely believe that when I was at university there were neither calculators nor computers and that my research had to rely on learned books, pens and paper. No getting the laptop out and searching Google or Wikipedia for that important law case to support my essay – I had to go to a text book and then the library to thumb through endless law reports to find the original text. How much easier, and better grades I would have received, perhaps, if I had been able to sit at my computer and churn out the essays more easily. However, it did mean that I had to use my own brain and resources to find answers to my tutor’s requirements. As an interesting experiment, I have written this sermon today without the use of my computer other than as a typewriter.

Knowledge, as opposed to simple information, is certainly useful in trying to understand what is going on in the world but it should never be confused with wisdom.  Wisdom is, essentially, the gift of knowing what to do with the knowledge obtained.  It is, in my view, a far greater gift than a massive reserve of knowledge. As the writer of Proverbs so beautifully puts it – “I was daily [God’s] delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighted in the human race”.

I have been fortunate to have been brought up in a country where education is relatively good and free. I have been fortunate enough to attend good schools and universities with support from my parents and family. I was also brought up in a house of books where the pursuit of knowledge was encouraged.  My parents were not themselves professionals or academics but they had wisdom – wisdom to encourage and assist both my sister and myself to pursue better careers than themselves.

Wisdom is about knowing what the right thing to do in any given circumstance and to know that it is necessary to have sound knowledge of the circumstance first and apply it.  I sometimes feel that I know quite a lot more than I actually need for life – lots of useless facts and figures – be it football or cricket scores, steam locomotive numbers or the registration numbers of Grimsby buses – yes I do know those!  My knowledge has been useful in helping my teams win pub quizzes on occasions and people may describe me as clever, but in my opinion the cleverest people are not those with such knowledge but those who we would describe as being wise.  During times of prayer I nearly always include one for wisdom and not knowledge. Let me give you a personal example.

You will all know, I have no doubt, that in recent months I have had to undergo some intense treatment for a chronic condition and this is the reason I have had to step back to some extent with my ministry. In the months leading up to my treatment I was bombarded with facts about my condition but, ultimately, I had to make a decision based upon those same facts as to which treatment it was best to have. I prayed a lot about it – asking for wisdom to choose what was best for me.  Following that I felt able to be humble enough to ask the right questions which resulted in a clear decision being made – a decision for which I shall be eternally grateful.  I was also grateful to have the prayers and thoughts of those around me and I am convinced that they contributed, in a large measure, to the “stupendous success” as reported by my consultant on Thursday.  In my mind, wisdom is the greatest gift which God can give us but it does require us to have a certain humility and great Faith too.

Our second reading, containing one of my favourite quotes from St. Paul, encapsulates this perfectly. He says, and it is worth repeating it again here, “Since we are justified by Faith” – in other words since we, as Christians, have been saved through our firm and unshaken belief in Jesus Christ – “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand…” – here Paul’s saying that we have access to the support God can supply by his grace through sending us his son, Jesus as our Saviour – “… and we also boast in our sufferings, knowing 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”.  In other words, although things can get tough, yes especially for Christians it often seems, such sufferings can be the making of us and we can continue to live in hope.  This message was further illustrated in a real historic drama when Ernest Shackleton’s aptly named ship “Endurance” was trapped and crushed in the Antarctic ice and although he and his crew suffered the most ghastly of deprivations they showed the character which produced hope and a safe return for every crew member to their home country.

Finally let us leave the final word to Jesus himself. In our reading from John’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples that they will be blessed with the Holy Spirit – “the Spirit of Truth” - as he calls it. “When the Spirit of Truth comes he will guide you into the truth” promises Jesus. Here he is telling his disciples – and don’t ever forget that us Christians today are his modern day disciples that the Holy Spirit will provide the wisdom we need being what God gave to Jesus in order to save the world.

Although the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is never fully explained in the Bible these passages are especially important for us to use the wisdom we have been given to understand the concept better. Proverbs tells us that Wisdom was with God right at the beginning, Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit is Wisdom and John tells us that Jesus (“the Word”) was also with God at the beginning and Genesis tells us that God was at the beginning. In other words Father, Son and Holy Spirit were all three at the beginning and therefore are the Three in One Trinity.

This is the inevitable universal conclusion we must reach. Before quarks, bosons, and the like we had the Trinity; and that is what we celebrate this Sunday.

 

 

Amen                                                                                       MFB/171/10062022

SERMON 170 - SUNDAY 13 MARCH 2022

Sermon at West Grimstead St. John’s Parish Church,  2nd Sunday in Lent  –  Sunday 13^th March 2022

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Philippians 4:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35

This week has been a particularly difficult one for me when, on many occasions, I have felt a sense of absolute hopelessness about many things.  Each and every morning I have woken up to worse and ever worsening news about Ukraine and the suffering of its people; on Wednesday I had to assist in officiating at the funeral of a close friend who died quite unexpectedly at the age of 53; a friend who had been staying at my home only four hours before he died as well as grappling with my own personal issues. A feeling of absolute fatigue and despair fell upon me by the end of the week as I prepared this short homily. Was there any good news out there? Even attending a football match in Southampton on Thursday resulted in a defeat for my team too!  Nothing at all seemed to be going right. Prayers didn’t seem to be answered.  Where was God in all this?  I attended a prayer session on Tuesday when we spent a considerable amount of time praying for the situation in Eastern Europe and things seem to be just getting more and more desperate. Just like Abram, in our passage, I can normally take solace in the stars but this week it has been permanently cloudy it seems.

I am sure I am not alone in wondering what on earth is going on in the world.  War and economic depression seem to be upon us and it is not unnatural to ask again and again “where is God?  What is he doing? Why is he allowing so much suffering?  Questions posed to me also, this week, by a spiritual directee of mine. What do I answer, how do I answer?

I think we can take some comfort from the passages of scripture we have heard this morning.  In our first reading, Abram, later Abraham, is also feeling in a desolate hopeless situation.  Here we have a man in old age without an heir.  Back then, not having an heir was a terrible situation to find yourself in – nobody to secure your land and possession in your family. Indeed, we learn that Abram is resigned to the fact that all his wealth and inheritance will pass, by default, to his Damascan slave Eliezer. Abram is confused as God had uprooted him from his home in Ur and made him travel to the Holy Land; yet it seemed his lineage would die out. A feeling of absolute confusion and hopelessness must have descended upon him.

God reminds him of the promise he made – a miracle.  Abram would indeed bear sons despite his old age and his lineage would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  What an amazing promise.  Anyone who has looked up in the night sky of a desert will know just how wondrous and wonderful such a sight is.  Today, as I look up at the night sky with the eyes of scientific knowledge, it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up with awe and wonder.  And so God made a covenant with Abraham and it all became true.  He was indeed to bear a son, Isaac, and the fountain of the Hebrew nation sprung forth.  This story reminds us today that how ever hopeless and impossible a situation we might find ourselves in, God can make things happen and so we must continue to pray for a good resolution.

Paul, in his letter to the church in Philippi is responding to those church leaders who were struggling with the concept that many ungodly people seemed to be doing very well for themselves. Paul reminds his followers that those others have their sights set on earthly things – things which give instant gratification.  Their god, he says, is their belly – that is feasting and leading a hedonistic life. Repeatedly, Paul in his various letters reminds his readers that to lead a Christian life is to run a long race – not instant gratification but delayed gratification.  My wife often comments that when we eat together I always leave the best piece of food to last, not gobble it up at the beginning of the meal.  That is delayed gratification – enjoying the best at the last – just like the wine at Cana. Paul is telling us that we have to endure many “slings and arrows” – as Shakespeare put it – to reach the right result.

In our final gospel reading Jesus is warned by the Pharisees, no less, that King Herod is out to kill him.  Jesus’s response is that he wants to send a message to Herod that he will continue to undertake his ministry, however difficult Herod might make it especially as his time has not yet come.

In our present global crisis, we have seen how the Ukrainian solidarity has so far prevailed against the evil forces of Putin. Whenever we see interviews with displaced Ukrainians they display the one great asset they are continuing to maintain – hope.  In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul reminds us that the three great pillars of Christianity are Faith, Hope and Love that is – to have the faith that Jesus died for us to save us from our sins, the hope of life eternal and the love of God which defies understanding. All three are necessary although Paul goes on to remind us that the greatest of these is love, agape.

Going back to my original sentences – yes this week for me has brought many challenges and difficulties and a feeling of hopelessness.  The way I have overcome this, as I sat down to write this piece, was to remember the other two pillars of support – faith and love. The Ukrainians have shown hope and if they bolster this up with faith and love they will prevail over darkness and evil – just as Paul promised. It might just take some time – as it did for Abram – but with our support and prayers we can maintain hope during a time of great despair.

 

Amen                                                                                       MFB/170/11032022

SERMON 169 - SUNDAY 6 FEBRUARY 2022

Sermon at Whiteparish All Saints’ Parish Church, - 4^th Sunday before Lent  –  Sunday 6^th February 2022

Isaiah 6:1-8(9-13); 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

Each of the three readings this morning has, essentially the same theme. Can you identify what it is?  Well, for me, the message which each of these three pieces of scripture portrays is that of “renewal” after a period of desperation and I think that we can all identify with this topic as we hopefully move out of our own Covid exiles into a new beginning.

I have always liked the gospel reading in particular.  Many of you will know that I was brought up in a tough northern town – Grimsby on the southern bank of the Humber Estuary famed for its fishing and food processing. Indeed, when I was growing up it boasted of being the largest deep sea fishing port in the world with literally hundreds of trawlers sailing daily out of the port and spending several weeks at sea before returning with their catch – mainly haddock and cod. My grandfather was a trawler skipper captaining one of these vessels.  On their return to Grimsby, he and his crew would be well rewarded with a percentage of the money from the sale of the fish, but if either there was a glut which kept the price low or a poor catch they would receive little if anything.  It was literally feast or famine.  For the most part they did well, as attested by the plethora of smart shops in the town at that time, but if not their only hope was to go back to sea and hope for a better catch and, indeed, return with their lives too!

These fishermen were tough and sometimes quite rough characters and I have no reason to suppose that Simon Peter and his brethren were any different.  We know from the direct way Simon Peter often spoke that he, like his counterparts in Grimsby, would get straight to the point.  I would see all the fishing nets strung out on the dockside for repair or for returning to their ships and every time I read or hear this passage the sights, sounds and smells of my home town come flooding back to me. Unfortunately it is pure nostalgia now as there are only a handful of vessels still sailing out of Grimsby and then only for a few days at a time into the shallower waters of the North Sea.  Most of the fish processing which still occurs is mainly using fish imported from overseas and not directly landed in the port. The town itself has lost its main reason for existence and can be described as a deprived area of the country.

I am using this example, not to make any political statements, but as a reminder that when Jesus chose his first disciples, his first followers, he was not choosing theologically learned people as most “rabbis” would have but ordinary hard-working men just as he might have found in one of the pubs along Freeman Street in Grimsby. These were men who probably drank hard, partied hard and swore frequently – they were as far from the Pharisees and Elders of the Temple as you could get.  They probably laughed at this “preacher-type” who had used one of their boats (probably at a price) to preach to the crowd. When he told them to go out and fish on the lake, Simon responded that they had had no luck despite their superior knowledge of where the fish might be. However they did humour him, (or did they find something special in the way he had preached?} and put out to sea and were astounded by the catch they had – so many fish that other boats had to come to their assistance. If they had been sceptical about Jesus and his ministry, they were no longer because he had, effectively spoken their language – the language of fishermen – the catching of fish.  Jesus then went on, in inviting them to join him, to use “fishing” as a metaphor – “From now on you will be catching people” or as some translations have it “You will become fishers of men”.  And so, here we have a most unlikely scenario – rough and ready fishermen becoming disciples – ministers of religion if you like.  But, as we saw, this had happened before.

Our reading in Isaiah is one of those pieces of scripture which is most often read at services of ordination and licensing – especially the phrase “Whom shall I send?”. There is a hymn – “I the Lord of Sea and Sky” which I had hoped to have today but couldn’t find it in either of the church’s hymn books. I am sure you all know it. Once again we have a situation where the writer feels totally unprepared and unqualified to take on the role of prophet.  He says, perhaps pre-empting the thoughts of the fishermen several hundred years later after hearing and listening to Jesus – “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts!”  We read that Isaiah’s lips were touched with a hot coal from the Altar of the Lord and his guilt departed him such that he then felt ready to offer his services in ministry.

Our third reading again touches on this theme.  Paul was always conscious that he had never been an actual disciple of Jesus – living and working with him – but only met him after Jesus’s death and resurrection on the road to Damascus where he was going to persecute Jesus’s followers. Accordingly we find throughout his writings his need to justify his authority – especially on those occasions when he comes into conflict with Peter, Andrew and James (those self-same fishermen).  In this passage though, he humbles himself for once and describes himself as “the least amongst the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted Jesus’s church.  But he recognises that inspite of this he has a story to tell which makes his testimony all that stronger because he was chosen by Jesus despite his appalling antecedents.

What I really love about all three of these readings is that in their individual and collective way, they remind us that whatever we might have done in the past, however educated or uneducated we are, we are all qualified to be disciples.  Indeed, Paul went even further in reminding us of the concept of the priesthood of all people. It shows us that to know Jesus is not necessarily about knowing about him intellectually, it’s about having a personal relationship with him. It also reminds us that God will meet us where we are.  He met Isaiah in a Vision of Heaven whilst Isaiah was contemplating the destruction of the Temple and the Exile; He met Paul through Jesus on the road to Damascus on his way to officially persecute Jesus’s followers, and he met the fishermen in their workplace – on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

And today he continues to meet people in their everyday lives.  We hear reports that thousands of Muslims have been converted to Christianity after seeing visions of Jesus. In the Bible too there are many instances of people being called to service from where they are.

As Jesus’s modern day “fishermen and fisherwomen”, I guess I should now say “fisherpersons” we should recall the instructions he gave to his first disciples in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel :

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”.

 

Let us pray

Father God, we remember your call to those first disciples

by the Sea of Galilee

who left their occupation and followed you without question.

Grant that when so called, we too may have the courage to answer

with the words of Isaiah :“Here I am, send me”

so that the Good News so much needed may be spread throughout the world.

We ask this through your Son and our Saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord

 

 

Amen                                                                                       MFB/169/04022022