Sermon
delivered at St Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean, Wiltshire on Sunday 8th April
2018 (Easter 2)
Acts 4 : 32-35
Alleluia,
Christ is Risen! May my words come from God and may they bless all who hear
them today. Amen
On Maundy Thursday I attended, together with a galaxy of
clergy and lay ministers the Chrism Service in the Cathedral at which the three
oils – the Oil of Baptism, the Oil of Anointing the Sick and the Oil of Chrism
– used at ordinations, was blessed by the Bishop. It was also the occasion when all the
ministers present were encouraged and did renew their ordination and licensing
vows. There then followed the Service of
the Eucharist.
At that service, the Bishop preached the sermon. It is available for us all to read again on
the Salisbury Diocesan website. He
touched on many aspects of the church’s role and relevance in today’s world
including the difficult topics of the safeguarding problems which have beset
the Church of England and closer to home the attempted poisoning of the two
Russians in the centre of Salisbury. It’s a reminder that the world today, and
probably as it has always been, has much toxicity and evil largely through
individual or corporate greed, - greed for power or greed for money.
The bishop referred to a new book by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Justin Welby, himself a former economist and business leader
entitled “Reimagining Britain –
Foundations for Hope” in which the archbishop’s starting point is that when
he was growing up there was a shared vision of Britain post-war with a
commitment born of adversity to build a future in which things could only get
better through a commitment to housing, education and the health service and,
fundamentally, a commitment to the reconciliation of a fractured Europe. Justin
Welby acknowledges that that unifying vision has gone. The archbishop starts to construct a new
vision around community, courage and stability, shared values and belief for a
common good. Sound familiar? Well this in essence is what those three
verses from Acts is saying – that which the early Christians achieved.
Following the service I went across to Sarum College
bookshop and bought a copy of Justin Welby’s book. It is well written if a
little erudite. One of the most startling facts I read in its introduction was
that between 1990 and 2009 the total income share in Britain of the top one
percent of people moved from less than 6% to nearly 9%. Since 2009 that has dropped back but is still
7.9% and income inequality overall remains much higher than before the rapid
increase of the 1980s. Between July 2012 and June 2014 the wealthiest 10
percent of households owned 45% of total aggregated household wealth. Just think, the remaining 90% have to share
just over 50% of the aggregate total household wealth between them.
In his book Justin Welby speaks about the Christian
values needing to be expressed in actions.
Everybody can have good values, except there are many who don’t but
unless they are put into practice through community, courage and stability they
are really quite worthless.
Welby further gives an example of where countries have
thought to help others by lending money.
He quotes the example of Greece where richer countries have lent Greece
money to help the poorer breach the gap with the richer. The result has been the building of the
largest debtor prisons in the world.
What an absurdity when this was precisely the ridiculous situation which
was written in Little Dorrit by Charles
Dickens in the nineteenth century in his depiction of Marshalsea Debtors’
Prison.
Turning back to our scripture reading in Acts. Those three little verses are, I think, so
powerful and a blueprint for how Christians should act out their professed values.
It is isn’t easy – Jesus himself argued that it is harder for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle. Jesus was himself well
acquainted with commercial reality. He
probably helped to keep his carpenter father’s books of account. Many of his parables include money in their
subject – the widow’s mite, the parable of the talents, Lazarus at the gate of
the rich man, the lost coin and so on.
Neither should we dismiss those verses as being in support of “some
lefty vicars’ communist thing” as I have seen it described.
Paul reminds us that it is not just having wealth and
possessions but rather loving those more than the word of God – and in
particular those great two commandments – “Love God” and “Love your Neighbour”
– that keep us away from his Kingdom.
Tom Wright gives us an insight into the significance of
sharing possessions. He says “to sell
ancestral property and share the proceeds was not a matter of some
primitive communism. It was a renunciation
of one of the central Jewish symbols. It went alongside the rejection of the
Temple as the centre, the Torah as the defining charter and Jewish ethnicity as
the necessary qualification of God’s people.
Jesus and the Holy Spirit took all of that away and
created the New Covenant. For the new
Christians it was an outward manifestation of a togetherness, a bond, and
showed those attributes which Justin Welby says are need for a reimagining of
Britain today – community, courage and stability.
Let’s look a little closer. Do open your bible if you have access to one
– Acts 4: 32-35. We read:
“Now the whole group of those who believed
were of one heart and soul and no one claimed private ownership of any
possessions. Everything they owned was
held in common.”
In other
words, they were a community. A community of
like-minded individuals who believed in the power and love of Jesus Christ and
the Holy Spirit. They believed what they believed with one heart and soul – and
we are reminded by Paul in his letter to
the Romans (Chapter 12:5):
“So we who are many are one body in Christ and
individually we are members of one another”.
“Community” means precisely that – holding in common.
Then we read :
“With
great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord
Jesus, and grace was upon them all”.
This required great courage. At this time, when they were such a minority,
surrounded by those of the Jewish Faith and those who worshipped the Roman
gods, it must have taken an immense amount of courage to go out on a limb and
publicly declare themselves for this “new” religion. They were truly acting out the New Covenant
but with the two great old commandments.
And finally:
“There
was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold
them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.
They laid it at the apostles feet and it was distributed to each as any
had need”.
A few points here.
Firstly, it was only those who held land and houses who offered them;
then they laid them at the Apostles feet for distribution. Their feet.
A symbol of stability for it was left for the disciples to establish who
were needy – it was a simple sharing out to all so that those who were rich
might be richer too.
Very often, as Justin Welby points out, politicians use
averages. Consider a company with ten
employees – one chief executive and nine manual workers. The chief executive pays himself £1 million
and each of the manual workers £10,000 per annum. If you take the average each receives it
would give a figure of that company paying an average wage to its employees of
£109,000 per annum! Not bad eh! But that does not give a true and accurate
indication of what is really happening does it.
I think we have much to learn from those early Christians
especially in this era.
I often hear people older than me (yes they do exist!)
tell me about the spirit of the Blitz. It is an interesting fact that it is
during difficult and dangerous times that communities pull together for the
common good. So why can’t it be that when times are good we can’t also pull
together for the common good.
As a church community we can be a great and wonderful
example just as were those early Christians. We can breathe God’s breath into
our broken societies starting here in our villages. The outside world looked at those early
disciples and marvelled at their way of life – such that hundreds and thousands
wanted to join. It was something very
special. We read earlier in Acts that:
“Day
by day as they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous
hearts [they praised] God and [had] the goodwill of all of the people; and day
by day the Lord added to their number”.
We all recognise that we are small in number here in West
Dean but if we emulate those early Christians I am certain that we will have
the goodwill of the people and from that we can grow in number. The time has never been more appropriate.
Amen
MFB/06042018/114
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