SERMON 136 - SUNDAY 11 AUGUST 2019

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Parish Church, Winterslow  – Sunday 11^th August 2019 – Morning Worship

Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16; Luke 12:32-40

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and may my words be a blessing to all who hear them. Amen

“So where your treasure is, then there is your heart also”  

    

so says Jesus, in our Gospel reading from Luke this morning and it continues from our gospel reading last week when we looked at the parable of the rich fool who having amassed an immense wealth of goods and grain decided to store them up for his future comfort and security only to find that he did not, in fact, have any future at all.  Death ultimately makes fools of us all for we cannot avoid it however much wealth and financial security we have – or as my wonderfully lovely yet simple grandfather often said in his almost incomprehensible East Anglian accent (he was an undertaker’s assistant in a Norfolk village) in this more direct way – “all the time I’ve been doing this job I’ve never seen pockets in a shroud”; simple wisdom from a wise simple man who lived a simple life – and a happy one too at that, for he loved his countryside and saw God’s beauty and wealth in creation all around him and not in bank balances.

Collecting and hoarding is something that we often do to feel good about ourselves and to provide comfort in having things around us.  It makes us feel that we have achieved something and that we matter in society. In my case my hoarding comes largely, I think, because I procrastinate in getting down to the de-cluttering that I need to do.

Jesus is telling us that there is much more to life than materialistic things.  Our passage comes immediately after the section in my bible labelled “Do not worry” where, you will no doubt remember, Jesus tells his disciples that they should not worry about their life – what they will eat, where they will sleep, or what they will wear – God provides for all feeding the birds who neither sow nor reap and so if God provides for the smallest of creatures he will certainly provide for the disciples.

That may be a simplistic message you may say – try saying that to the homeless man on the street or the woman hurrying on her way to the foodbank – but the true meaning of Jesus’s words is that we spend far too much time worrying about our own physical and material comfort and not enough of it on our spiritual well-being and the well-being of others.  We become distracted by those things which take us away from the important things – loving God and ourselves - for those are the things which Jesus tells us are the most important ones – the things from which everything else stems and flourishes; and that love of God from which all things flow is based on a strong Faith as the writer of Hebrews tells his audience in the reading which Dawn gave us earlier.  

Our scripture reading from Hebrews was written to remind the Christian Jews of their ancestry and of the many miracles and covenants or promises which God has made with his people and the fulfilment of the prophesies.  In particular he reminds us of the covenant with Abram, which Bill read out for us in the First Reading, that Abram’s descendants from his aged wife Sarah will be more numerous than the stars.

Many of you will know of my passion for astronomy and many people have often asked me how I can reconcile that scientific interest with my Christian Faith. Well the answer is easy – as we enter late summer, just look up at the night sky and in particular the billions of stars which make up the Milky Way through a pair of modest binoculars. The awesome spectacle of all those stars, so many incomprehensible light years away, just reinforces the vastness and the greatness of God’s universe and the importance and love he places upon us here on this tiny world. My Faith in such a context is not diminished but enlarged. So must Abram have been overwhelmed with the message he received; certainly Sarah found it all incomprehensible but the impossible became possible through Abram’s Faith.

As I was writing this sermon on Friday morning I received a phone call from one of the service users of Alabare Place where I am the chaplain.  Normally I would be on duty there but this Friday I was working at home.  He had recently returned to Salisbury to visit his ailing father but had gone through a dark period of his life which I described as his “dark night of the soul”. Without going into any details he had suffered many blows in his 35 years of life but he was at great pains to tell me that through all these difficulties he had kept his Faith and was now anxious to find a church where he could give thanks and grow it further and volunteer his services. For him, and he described this in these words himself, the important thing in life “was to steer his way through life using a good steady moral compass and by loving and helping others in the process.”

Jesus was very much an advocate for the poor.  If ever he had a bad word to say about anyone you will find that it was more often about those who thought they were in a comfortable position both spiritually and financially; those for whom status and wealth were more important.  People like the rich young ruler which provoked the phrase about the camel and the eye of the needle. The people that Jesus ministered to the most tended to be the poor and humble.

Being unwise with our money and wealth can lead to stresses and untold unhappiness.  Our man in the parable thought that by hoarding it for the future  he would be happy and secure – but no, his life came to a sudden end.  Christ repeats to his disciples in our Gospel Reading this morning that “where your treasure is, there is your heart also.”

I was recently listening to a sermon by a minister outside of the Clarendon Team who suggested that one of the best ways to know and serve God is through our hobbies or passions.  What is it that we are individually passionate about?  God created us, each and every one of us unique and individual and instilled into our heart interests and passions which he wants us to use for his greater praise and glory – not hoard or keep to ourselves.

In a moment Anita will be leading us in our Prayers of Intercession and afterwards I am going to invite you to come up and give away some of your treasure to God.

When you came in this morning you may have been surprised that the church gave you some money – normally we are taking it from you!  I want you to look carefully at the coin you were given and think of it as a bit of that treasure which you might be tempted to hoard – as representing something which you might find it hard to give away.

At the front here is a small treasure box, courtesy of Bill, and at the end of the Intercessions before we say the Lord’s Prayer together I invite you to come up and place your coin in the box to represent your own prayer or thought or promise to God to let go of something which is getting in the way of having a full relationship with him through Jesus Christ – a treasure which you might be keeping for yourself and not sharing with others or a talent or passion which you have which you are not using fully for God’s greater glory.  As Jesus puts it – “make purses for yourself that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” If we place our trust entirely in the hands of God, we will indeed enrich our Faith.

Amen                                                                                                    MFB/02082019