Sermon at St. Birinus’s Parish
Church, Morgans Vale, Redlynch, Wiltshire – Sunday 27th July 2014
Romans 8:26-39;
Matthew 13:31-33; 44-52
May I speak in the name
of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and may these words be a blessing to all who
hear them. Amen
It is good to be with you this morning here at Morgan’s Vale;
my first time here leading and preaching.
I must confess to not knowing much about either this church or Saint
Birinus before so I thought that I had better do a little research before
coming here this morning. Earlier this
week I drove over here to find out where the church was and was greatly
rewarded in also finding that you have a lovely pub which does nice meals – and
Ringwood best bitter too - so that was my first revelation. Secondly, I looked up St. Birinus on the
Internet to find that he was a Frank (that is not a reference to your Rector
mind!), who, having been commissioned in 634 by Pope Honorius I to come to
Britain, became the first Bishop of
Dorchester (on Thames) and responsible for converting many Anglo-Saxons in
Wessex to the Christian faith. He also became involved in converting the
“heathen” of Northumbria and Mercia. I
was delighted to find out that he landed in this country at Hamwic, which is
now better known as the St. Mary’s area of Southampton where the football
ground is located - so I must acknowledge him to be truly a Saint!
Both of today’s readings emphasise the importance of living
our Faith and the need to lead prayerful lives dedicated to following the
teachings of Jesus about how we should conduct ourselves in the difficult and
dangerous world around us. Jesus’s
various parables – the Mustard Tree, the Leaven Bread, the multiple and peculiar
fish, the pearls, the hidden treasure and so on are all told to emphasise the
fact that the Kingdom of Heaven is actually here if we try to tune into
it. Yet how often do we do that? Jesus says that this is how it will be at the
end of the age. Yet we are indeed at the
end of that age – which was started when God sent his only son, Jesus, down to
earth. That was the first step in
establishing the kingdom of heaven here on earth – not converting people so
they go to heaven but preaching the gospel, the good news, so that we can see
heaven here on earth now. We as Jesus’s
disciples are expected to continue that work. At each service we pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven”. Not, I believe, at some future time but here and now, today
in this place.
But what a task we have.
Not a day goes by in which we do not read or see in the media of “persecution, famine, nakedness and sword” as
Paul writes it in his letter to the Romans – nothing, regrettably, has changed
since his time. Paul wasn’t in jail when
he wrote this letter, although he had been there not too long before, and we
know would be again. It must have looked to the outsider as though the rulers,
the powers and everything else in creation were having their own way and that
the purpose of God, entrusted to this little man Paul, had been stopped in its
tracks. How often do we, as Christians, followers of Christ feel like
that? We are frustrated that as the
world continues to spin on its axis in its orbit around the Sun - as it has
done for millennia - wars , famine, greed, selfishness, disrespect, rudeness,
ruthlessness, tyranny and so on continue to flourish on its surface. In fact, with modern day advertising and so
on we can continue to grasp for those other gods which we are told will make
our life complete. If only we had the
next type of phone, that particular car, that particular house and dare I say
it, that particular partner, everything would be so much better than it is at
present. Contentment, as Paul remarks in
Philippians, does not require a vast amount of material wealth – contentment is
based on a good relationship with God even if we have little else.
Today, unlike in Paul’s time, the advances made in
communication technology means that we can so easily be seduced by those things
which can separate us from God - so Paul’s words of advice ring true above all
this today as much as they did when he wrote them in the first century. We may not ourselves, here in this beautiful
part of England suffer the slings and arrows of the types of persecution Paul
speaks about but we must still guard against the subtler things which can
seduce us away from God’s love.
Paul’s message, however must give us all the greatest of
hope. It is an optimistic message which
he gives to the Church in Rome where they could see, at first hand, the
terrible persecution of the Christians being carried out nearly every day.
He acknowledges that sometimes we can find it hard to pray
when the pressures of life and, in the case of Paul’s examples, persecution and
tyranny are all around us. This is often
brought about by our own human weaknesses.
I have to confess that there have been many occasions in the past where
I have been involved in a prayer group and we have included ten minutes of
silent prayer. After the initial splurge
of supplications – asking prayers - it slows down and I simply run out of
things to pray for. I might even start praying for stupid things like a good
ending to Coronation Street this week!
Sometimes I find that I have not taken any time out to pray at all. Paul in this passage is giving comfort to
people like me when we can’t think of things.
He says that if we have truly accepted Jesus into our lives he will
intercede on our behalf – our belief will fill us with the Holy Spirit which
will do our work for us – as he says “God, who searches the heart knows what is
in the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints (that’s
us, each and every one of us) according to God’s will.
In other words, Paul’s theology of Justification by Faith
(the washing away of sins by the simple but significant act of belief that
Jesus Christ was sent down to earth and died for our sins) overrides everything
and it was on the basis of this theology that the Reformation Movement was
formed by Martin Luther in the 1500s.
Salvation by simply accepting and loving Jesus Christ as your Saviour
and not repeated acts designed to bring about salvation. God knows what is truly
in our hearts – as the psalmist puts it in Psalm 139 – “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely …
such knowledge is wonderful to me”.
Paul goes on to ask – “If we God’s “Elect”, the “Saints” in
the non-beatification sense of the word – the absolute believers in the risen
Christ – can be justified by our faith then God, who gave his only Son will not
withhold anything from us and we will be atoned for our sins. Not only that, if
God does not condemn us then who else has the right to do so? Again echoed by the writer of Hebrews – “the Lord is My Helper I will not be
afraid. What can anyone do to me?” (Heb. 13:6)
Paul describes us as conquerors – and that no power on earth
can destroy us – yet repeatedly we can feel destroyed. - Maybe that job didn’t materialise, that
relationship broke down, that person we prayed for didn’t recover their
health. That doesn’t mean that we are
poor Christians, that doesn’t mean that we as Christians should expect that
nothing should ever go wrong for us – but it does mean that when those things
do occur, if we stand steady in our Faith, God will nor desert us and will be
with us through those difficult times.
He is always with us and he knows our needs and sufferings.
Paul ends this passage with a reminder that nothing can
separate us from the love of God – not death, not life, not rulers, not angels,
not powers, not anything in creation provided our love of God is founded in the
belief of Jesus as Saviour.
I started this short sermon by a brief description of St.
Birinus – a saint I knew very little about.
We have many saints recognised by the Catholic Church and memorialised
by the Church of England – we hear of relics and burial places of those
beatified saints and we talk about the “communion
of saints” in the Creed we shall shortly be saying – meaning those who have
gone before us. But before I end this
homily, do look at the person next to you – to the left and to the right – take
a good hard look – smile too if you want to! - in truly accepting the Lord
Jesus as Saviour and acting as a disciple in carrying out his teachings in the
way you act, think and pray - you are looking at the face of a living saint.
Amen
MFB/44
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