SERMON 110 - SUNDAY 4 MARCH 2018

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Parish Church, Whiteparish, Wiltshire – Sunday 4^th March 2018 (A reworking of Sermons 46 and 55)

Exodus 20:1-17; 1  Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22

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

There is an immense richness about each and every one of our readings this morning which I think can all be linked together with the one word “love” – just as Jesus left us the two greatest Commandments of all – Love God with all your heart and strength and love others as you would have them love you.  We’ll unpick that further in a moment.

In the first of our readings we are reminded of the Torah, the book of law handed down to the Hebrews by Moses and upon which the Jewish faith is so heavily founded – laws or a code of conduct given by God directly to his people for the proper governance and guidance of his chosen people – laws which were frequently broken but which, by a strict adherence the Jews thought they would ensure that Yahweh or Jehovah, the unspeakable God would look down favourably upon them.

Let us just recall those Ten Commandments and here is a very easy way to remember them in the order they appear in our reading from the book of Exodus:

1.         The is only one God – no others

2.         Don’t two time God by falsely worshipping other idols

3.         There are three names for God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – don’t use them wrongly.

4.         Remember the Sabbath – the letter “4” looks a bit like a deckchair to rest in

5.         Honour your father and mother – How often do children take their parents for granted and think of them as simply a cash machine – No. 5 “lend us a fiver Dad”,

6.         Do not murder – the letter “6” resembles a hangman’s noose

7.         Do not commit adultery – think of the “seven year itch” we are sometime told about

8.         Do not steal – the letter eight looks like a pair of handcuffs if turned on its side

9.         Do not bear false witness – No 9 is not 10 – it is not the last of the commandments

10.       Do not covet etc. Think of thin “1” and fat “0”. Have and have not.

That was just a bit of fun but I bet you will remember the order of the Commandments after this. We’ll see later! 

The Old Testament is full of examples of where those commandments were broken – time and time again and we only have to look at David as a really good (or should I say bad) example of somebody who broke nearly every one of them – especially murder, coveting, adultery and theft.  We read how, during the course of the history connected with the Jewish people an attempt to keep to the law still brought about trials and tribulations and eventually, God sent down his only son, Jesus, to redeem his people – and us today.

Today we still live in a world of great hardship and poverty.  A world which more than ever needs to remember those Commandments and especially the two great ones left to us by Jesus. We read in our daily newspapers of such terrible examples of greed and selfishness – and I guess we have all, at some time or other, been victims of those two vices.  We read statistics about the fact that such a small handful of extremely wealthy people own more than the entire gross national product of the world’s 80 poorest countries.  My son said to me only the other day that he wishes he had been born thirty or so years earlier when it was possible to buy a property fairly easily, or walk into a job from university or have a decent pension scheme.  Now all these things are not easy because money is not being re-circulated into society – there are only so many cars or boats that a Premier League footballer on £140,000 per week wants or needs.  The world’s answer is print more money – quantitative easing as it’s called.  The fact of the matter is that the money printed is not backed by gold reserves but on debt which has been created in the first place by lending to people who couldn’t afford the repayments! To me it seems mere folly, in fact immoral.

As the Chaplain here in Salisbury to some of the homeless and Veterans, I get really angry when I read of many injustices which have created the homeless person’s problems in the first place. Many are not entirely of their own making - but victims of dubious war or crime. The unfairness of the Sanction system for example, food poverty - one child in every nine in “prosperous” Britain going to bed hungry at night.  It’s wrong, it shouldn’t be and it certainly shouldn’t happen if we followed Jesus’s two great commandments – Love God and Love each other as you yourself would wish to be loved. You only have to watch the film “I Daniel Blake” to have a better understanding of the unfairness and inequalities of life – especially for the poor, disabled and ill-educated. 

Many people think that religion and politics shouldn’t mix; that church ministers should stay away from politicians – but it is my belief that we, as practising Christians, should become involved.  More and more the Government is relying upon charities and particularly Christian organisations to work towards alleviating poverty both in this country and abroad,  That’s fine but I believe that we should also tackle the root cause of many of the those problems. Pope Francis recently said

 “If I say I am Catholic and go to mass, but then don’t speak with my parents, help my grandparents or the poor, go and see those who are sick, this does not prove my faith, there’s no point,”

In our gospel reading we have the finest example we could possibly have of a Christian getting angry at injustice – Jesus himself.  But we have to be angry in a righteous, not self-righteous way.  We need and should get angry when we see the world turning its back on our Christian principles.

As a bit of background to Jesus’s “tantrum” in the Temple it is necessary to understand something of the Temple system.  The Temple was made up of a series of boxes – courtyards – with the Holy of Holys at its centre and spreading out in a number of courtyards restricted to people of different class or hierarchy.  On the outer part was the courtyard where small animals could be bought for sacrifice.  However, to purchase your sacrificial dove or chicken or whatever you needed to use Temple money which you exchanged for your Roman coinage.  These were the money lenders or money changers who would take a massive commission both for converting the Roman money into Temple shekels and then converting back before the individual returned to the outside Roman world.   They probably also loaned money at exorbitant rates to those who didn’t quite have enough – in league with the livestock vendors, no doubt.  Does it remind you of anything today?  Cash Converters, Wonga and the like?  How many times do we read of extortionate rates being used against the poor – those with poor credit ratings - indeed, it is quite clear that the ones in this country who are being exploited the most are those who can least afford it!

I am a great admirer of Bishop Desmond Tutu.  Here is a man who has successfully embraced politics from his religious seat. A man who once was labelled by White politicians as a “communist” until he pointed out that the principles he preached were not from some tome by Karl Marx but from within the 66 books which make up the Holy Bible – the same book on which those same white politicians swore their oaths of allegiance when taking their seats in the South African Parliament.

It is right and proper that we should get angry as Christians.  We are first of all human beings and experience human emotions and secondly the Holy Spirit has put into our hearts compassion and feelings of sympathy and empathy for the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves together with an understanding of what Jesus felt as he preached to sinners and those who found life difficult.  However it is also important that our anger should be directed for the right reasons and with a positive aim in mind.  Jesus was angry because the money changers were cheating the ordinary folk and making money out of their reliance on an antiquated system of worship.  By dying on the cross he ended all that by giving us direct access to the Trinitarian God.  Likewise, we should become angry at those things which make God angry.  Vicky Beeching, the now controversial theologian and songwriter wrote (addressing God) “Break my heart with the things that break yours”.

How often do we – you and me – seek to put things “right” without bringing God, through Jesus, into the equation?  Howe often do we stand on the solemnity and sometimes inflexibility of the law or systems without looking at things from a deeper and wider perspective? How often do we build a fortress which, whilst seeking to protect what we have, also shuts out the Holy Spirit which should be allowed to freely enter us – especially in times of trial – when we need him most – to actually do something to stop the injustices we see around us and which we frequently bemoan.

Now before we end, let’s see how many of you can remember the order of the ten commandments ...

I would like to end with a prayer using the words of Vicky Beeching’s song

Father God,

Break our hearts
With the things that break Yours
Wake us up to see through Your eyes

Break our hearts
With the things that break Yours
And send us out to shine in the darkness

It's time to move outside our comfort zone
To see beyond our churches and our homes
To change the way we think and how we spend
Until we look like Jesus again

Amen                                                                                                    MFB/110/02032018