Sermon at All Saints’ Church,
Whiteparish - BCP Evensong
– Sunday 12th March 2017
Numbers
21:4-9; Luke 14:27-33
Let the words of my mouth, and the
meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord. Amen
This evening
we’ve heard two rather gloomy sounding readings – not much it appears on first
glance to excite or gladden the Christian heart and probably the sorts of
passages which many non-Christians believe the bible is full of – lots of
negativity and little optimism. But if
we drill down further we can be assured that contrary to what first appears in
those texts, we have much to be thankful for and that following Christ is
indeed something to cherish and evangelise.
Which of us
has not felt, at some time in their life, like those Hebrews in our first
lesson? Having been brought out of Egypt
after the ten plagues, and having won a great battle against the King of the
Canaanites, Arad, they find themselves wandering and wondering
about why they left their slave masters in that land of seeming plenty to be
brought by Moses into the desolation of the Sinai Desert – the wilderness –
where we read they spent forty years wandering about until eventually they
reached the promised land. Time for
three new generations to have been born before they finally settled. No wonder they cried out “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? There
is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food?”
It must have seemed pointless and
presumably many of the older members of the group would have died on the way –
indeed, Moses himself was not to live to cross into the Promised Land. It all seemed just such a hopeless and futile
exodus. However, the people’s complaint about “this miserable food” was a reference to the manna which God had
provided to them day after day and, as this was bread from heaven, the
blasphemy of this statement was a major wrong to God resulting in the people
being stricken by the serpent.
Of course,
we know how it ended – with the Hebrews crossing into Canaan and the land of
milk and honey there to establish the kingdom of Israel; but at the time they could not know how it
was going to end. The only way they
could have any hope was to keep faith with Moses who remained in contact with
God. Any lack of trust in Moses was, in
fact, a lack of trust in the same God who had delivered them from captivity in
Egypt. I wonder what wilderness do you
or I now think we are in? How difficult is it for us to trust in God at times
of extreme hardship or when we don’t really know where we are going? Eventually, we read that the people of Israel
recognised that in speaking in the way they had done had been disrespectful to
God – although it did take poisonous serpents to do so.
In our
Second lesson, Jesus does continue this theme in that he tells a great crowd of
people who have been following him that great sacrifices are needed if a person
wishes to be a true and genuine disciple of his.
This is a
theme which is repeated time and time again throughout Jesus’s teachings and
therefore is something which we all need to consider an important aspect of our
Christian following – to follow Jesus, to become his disciple it is necessary
to give up all your possessions.
Lent is a
time when we often choose to give something up – when we fast. However, why do we do this? For what purpose do we fast? If you are giving something up what are you
doing in its place? The answer is that
we should be giving out – not just giving up – we should be reflecting on our
Christian lives and the teachings of Christ and acting accordingly. It is one thing to feel good about one’s
self, to feel self-righteous but it is quite another to use that self-sacrifice
for God’s greater power and glory and for our fellow humans.
Jesus, in
his sermon to the people in our Second Lesson, is asking that we consider
carefully what and how we are living our lives – to think carefully about what
we are doing. As he puts it – even when
building a tower then we should not even lay the first foundation stone until
we have carefully thought out whether we have the resources to finish the
project; similarly when going to war, he says, we should consider again whether
we have the resources to win and if not whether peace terms would be
better. In our daily lives that’s about
spending time with God and praying to seek his guidance on all our projects and
ideas.
Likewise,
when we set out on a course of fasting or giving up we should determine what
the outcome could or should be and be prepared to give our all for it – not
some half-hearted measure – paying lip service to what we think we should be
doing without some real understanding and measured outcome. Again we need prayer to guide us.
Jesus wants
no half measures, he wants total commitment from his disciples. In the same way Moses was looking for total
obedience from his followers through the desert even if, at times, things
didn’t look so good.
During this
Lent I have chosen to find more time and space in my day to listen to God and
to try and hear and understand what plans he might have for me and my ministry
following significant changes in my life.
I want to be more contemplative – something which can be very hard for
an extravert like me; so that I can hear God more clearly. Prayer is not simply about listing our requests in a babble of supplicatory
prayers but allowing time for God to speak to us and not hastily dismissing him
when our lists of requests do not seem to be answered in the way we would
like. The people in our first lesson
wanted bread but instead they got a strange substance called manna which
clearly was not as tasty but did fill their stomachs.
The Hebrews
with Moses wanted a quick fix – nothing has changed, in this 21st
Century with all our modern technology.
We expect our computers to give us quick fix answers at the click of a
mouse. Jesus is telling us that often
there are no quick fixes as we would like, we need to place everything in God’s
hands and follow him unconditionally and unreservedly free from all those
possessions (and here I am not talking about material ones necessarily) but
distractions which would separate us from our wholehearted commitment to God.
So my
message to you this evening is “What things are we doing or thinking which keep
us from a full commitment to God?” It
might not be chocolate, or wine, or sweet puddings or biscuits but something
far less obvious and perhaps like the young ruler, something much much harder
but which will help you to carry our cross and fully follow Jesus.
Let us pray
Almighty God, we thank you for your
Son Jesus Christ who gave his life on the Cross that we might be freed from our
sins
We ask that you show us what crosses
we carry and help us to give up those things which can keep us from
wholeheartedly and unconditionally following him as his disciple
We ask that when we pray your Holy
Spirit will guide us in what we say and more particularly help us to listen to
your words of wisdom and guidance.
We ask this all in the name of your
Son and our Saviour, Jesus Christ
Amen
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