MY NEXT SERMON

I AM TAKING A TWO-MONTH "SABBATICAL" AND I AM NOT CURRENTLY SCHEDULED TO PREACH UNTIL APRIL. DETAILS OF MY NEXT PREACHING ASSIGNMENT WILL APPEAR HERE WHEN KNOWN. 

MAY THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU SAFE AND HEALTHY.

SERMON 212 - SUNDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2025 - FOURTH SUNDAY BEFORE LENT

Sermon at St. Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean and All Saints’ Church, Farley - 4^th Sunday before Lent  –  Sunday 9^th February 2025

Isaiah 6:1-8(9-13); 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

May I start with a confession; I preached much of this sermon three years ago in Whiteparish, and when I came to reflect upon what I would preach to you today found that it contained much of what I wanted to say to you three years later.  If anything, this emphasises the unchanging message of God throughout the ages and the relevance of Holy Scripture today as well as in the past.  

Each of the three readings this morning has, essentially the same theme. Can you identify what it is?  Yes, it is the call of God to ordinary people to be his messengers – to be disciples and apostles, to bring the God News to ordinary people through ordinary people and it never ceases to amaze me, and bring me hope, that throughout the Bible, God chooses the most unlikely and seemingly inappropriate people to be his spokesmen and women. In addition to those in our scripture readings today we can think of others such as Moses, Rahab, Job and David to name but four.

I have always liked the gospel reading in particular.  Many of you will know that I was brought up in a tough northern town – Grimsby on the southern bank of the Humber Estuary famed for its fishing and food processing. Indeed, when I was growing up it boasted of being the largest deep sea fishing port in the world with literally hundreds of trawlers sailing daily out of the port and spending several weeks at sea before returning with their catch – mainly haddock and cod. My grandfather was a trawler skipper captaining one of these vessels.  On their return to Grimsby, he and his crew would be well rewarded with a percentage of the money from the sale of the fish, but if either there was a glut which kept the price low or a poor catch they would receive little if anything.  It was literally feast or famine.  For the most part they did well, as attested by the plethora of smart shops in the town at that time, but if not, their only hope was to go back to sea and hope for a better catch and, indeed, hopefully return with their lives too!  Having recently returned myself from two weeks at sea to the frozen northern coast of Norway, I can even better than before understand the hardships which my grandfather, and men like him, had to endure.

These fishermen were tough and sometimes quite rough characters and I have no reason to suppose that Simon Peter and his brethren were any different.  We know from the direct way Simon Peter often spoke that he, like his counterparts in Grimsby, would get straight to the point.  I would see all the fishing nets strung out on the dockside for repair or for returning to their ships and every time I read or hear this passage the sights, sounds and smells of my home town come flooding back to me. Unfortunately, it is pure nostalgia now as there are only a handful of vessels still sailing out of Grimsby and then only for a few days at a time into the shallower waters of the North Sea.  Most of the fish processing which still occurs is mainly using fish imported from overseas and not directly landed in the port. The town itself has lost its main reason for existence and can be described as a deprived area of the country.

I am using this example, not to make any political statements, but as a reminder that when Jesus chose his first disciples, his first followers, he was not choosing theologically learned people as most “rabbis” would have chosen, but ordinary hard-working men just as he might have found in one of the pubs along Freeman Street in Grimsby. These were men who probably drank hard, partied hard and swore frequently – they were as far from the Pharisees and Elders of the Temple as you could get.  They probably laughed at this “preacher-type” who had used one of their boats (probably at a price) to preach to the crowd. When he told them to go out and fish on the lake, Simon responded that they had had no luck despite their superior knowledge of where the fish might be. However they did humour him, (or did they find something special in the way he had preached?} and put out to sea and were astounded by the catch they had – so many fish that other boats had to come to their assistance. If they had been sceptical about Jesus and his ministry, they were no longer because he had, effectively spoken their language – the language of fishermen – the catching of fish.  Jesus then went on, in inviting them to join him, to use “fishing” as a metaphor – “From now on you will be catching people” or as some translations have it “You will become fishers of men”.  And so, here we have a most unlikely scenario – rough and ready fishermen becoming disciples – ministers of religion if you like.  But, as we saw, this had happened before.

Our reading in Isaiah is one of those pieces of scripture which is most often read at services of ordination and licensing – especially the phrase “Whom shall I send?”. There is a hymn – “I the Lord of Sea and Sky” which is being sung in our service today. Once again we have a situation where the writer feels totally unprepared and unqualified to take on the role of prophet.  He says, perhaps pre-empting the thoughts of the fishermen several hundred years later - after hearing and listening to Jesus – “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet I have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts!”  We read that Isaiah’s lips were touched with a hot coal from the Altar of the Lord and his guilt departed him such that he then felt ready to offer his services in ministry.

Our epistle reading again touches on this theme.  Paul was always conscious that he had never been an actual disciple of Jesus – living and working with him – but only met him after Jesus’s death and resurrection on the road to Damascus where he was going to persecute Jesus’s followers. Accordingly, we find throughout his writings his need to justify his authority – especially on those occasions when he comes into conflict with Peter, Andrew and James (those self-same fishermen).  In this passage though, he humbles himself for once and describes himself as “the least amongst the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted Jesus’s church.  But he recognises that, in spite of this, he has a story to tell which makes his testimony all that stronger because he was chosen by Jesus despite his appalling antecedents.

What I really love about all three of these readings is that in their individual and collective way, they remind us that whatever we might have done in the past, however educated or uneducated we are, we are all qualified to be disciples.  Indeed, Paul went even further in reminding us of the concept of the priesthood of all people. It shows us that to know Jesus is not necessarily about knowing about him intellectually, it’s about having a personal relationship with him. It also reminds us that God will meet us where we are.  He met Isaiah in a Vision of Heaven whilst Isaiah was contemplating the destruction of the Temple and the Exile; He met Paul through Jesus on the road to Damascus on his way to officially persecute Jesus’s followers, and he met the fishermen in their workplace – on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  So, not only does he seek out unexpected people, he also meets them in unexpected ways and places.

And today he continues to meet people in their everyday lives.  We hear reports that thousands of Muslims have been converted to Christianity after seeing visions of Jesus. In the Bible too there are many instances of people being called to service from where they are.

As Jesus’s modern day “fishermen and fisherwomen”, I guess I should now say “fisherpersons” we should recall the instructions he gave to his first disciples in the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel :

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age”.

 

Let us pray

Father God, we remember your call to those first disciples

by the Sea of Galilee

who left their occupation and followed you without question.

Grant that when so called, we too may have the courage to answer

with the words of Isaiah :“Here I am, send me”

so that the Good News so much needed at this time

may be spread throughout the world.

We ask this through your Son and our Saviour, Jesus Christ our Lord

 

 

Amen                                                                                           MFB/212/06022025

 

(This Sermon is an updated version of Sermon 169 preached at Whiteparish in February 2022).

SERMON 211 - SUNDAY 12 JANUARY 2025 - BAPTISM OF CHRIST

Sermon at Farley All Saints’ Parish Church, - Baptism of Christ  –  Sunday 12th January 2025

Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17,21-22

Today we celebrate the Baptism of Christ by John the Baptist in the River Jordan; but as well as being such a celebration we are still in the Season of Epiphany – that time when we remember the coming of the wise men or “kings” bearing three prophetic gifts to the infant Jesus – gold to represent his kingship, frankincense to represent his holiness or divinity and myrrh, that perfume with which the dead are anointed to represent the great sacrifice he would later make for all.

However, in these readings we are reminded that not all kings come bearing such gifts.  It has been suggested that John the Baptist’s reference to Jesus, the one who is to come, the Messiah, with a winnowing folk in his hand, to clear the threshing-floor and burning the chaff is a veiled reference to Herod Antipas, who although probably a shadow of his tyrannical father, the old King Herod, is nevertheless probably a danger to modern prophets as John himself would soon find out.

The two New Testament readings, one from Acts and one from Luke’s Gospel, are rich in lessons for us today. In our epistle reading from Acts we read, straight away, that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God.  Historically, the Samaritans and the Jews had been at logger-heads – distrusting each other. Just like many divided communities today, they had each built up over many generations a hatred for each other.  In very simple terms, it arose because of fundamental religious differences – like so many conflicts we see in the world now.  Samaritans believed that their form of worship was the “true Jewish religion” because Samaritans had remained in the land of Israel during the period of the Babylonian Exile whereas those who went into exile and returned had had their religion tainted by leaving the Holy Land. It is true to say, therefore, that both Jew and Samaritan believed in God but not necessarily where the Word came from.  Now we read that following on from Jesus’s ministry they truly believed the same as those early Christians.  Christianity as a global phenomenon was being established.

This is why the words of John are so important. Up until the time Jesus began his ministry – which was on the day that he was baptised by John, those who wished to accept the New Testament of God acknowledged and accepted this by being baptised in the Jordan – baptism of water.  A symbolic act to wash away the old life and begin the new – what John called “metanoia” or repentance; an acceptance of the new way.  We do this today.  However, with Jesus would come the Holy Spirit to all who wanted it – “He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and Fire” – in other words not only will you be changed through the cleansing of your body as a symbol of washing away the old tainted ways, but you will also have something brand new bestowed upon you.

We read towards the end of the passage in Luke how this was revealed to the people. After Jesus had been through the ritualistic baptism with water, Heaven, we read, was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form like a dove.  You will all recall that it was also the dove which came back to Noah’s Ark with an olive branch in its beak to indicate that the cleansing of the world, by the Great Flood, was now over and a new world can begin; it is also the dove which for generations has been the symbol for peace and the messenger of peace throughout the world; a symbol of new beginnings and of understanding between all peoples.

With the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus, he was able to share that spirit with all who came to him and sought and followed his ministry and, as we know following his death, resurrection and ascension, at Pentecost the Spirit descended upon all who sought it.  That is precisely where we find ourselves today.  The Wise Men came bearing gifts to the infant Jesus, Jesus himself, through his ministry, death and resurrection has bestowed the greatest gift of all, the Holy Spirit, free and unconditionally to all who seek it.  Actually, there is one condition, and that is that having received it you do not grieve it – that is do not renounce it or denigrate.

I believe the world is, today, hungrier for the Holy Spirit than at any other time.  Sometimes we get so caught up with our own little worlds that we forget that we all live in one greater world; but it is not all that great.  We are all living on a planet, a spaceship which is less than 8,000 miles in diameter in the vastness of a cold and hostile universe, billions and billions of light years across – if it has any boundaries.  It is the only home we have and really one which we can only ever have this side of the grave.  Jesus, we are told by John, came into the world to save the world not to condemn it.

We read this morning and we have just discussed how he brought with him that greatest of extra-terrestrial gifts – the Holy Spirit; that is the presence of God here on Earth. These last few words I have spoken remind me of the words of the 1930s and 1940s film comedian Will Hay – star of “Oh Mr Porter” – who, as William T. Hay, was an accomplished amateur astronomer – when he said “If we were all astronomers there would be no more wars”.

Similarly, a few years ago I watched the movie “Don’t Look Up” starring Jennifer Lawrence, Mark Rylance and Leo DiCaprio.  It is a little wacky but the essence of it is that in today’s modern age we spend a lot of time looking down at our devices and accepting what social media is saying, or not saying, and not enough time looking up and around us and discovering reality for ourselves. In the case of this film there is a large comet heading straight for Earth which will destroy the planet in six months’ time. The politicians and media people don’t seem to care, worrying more about mid-term elections and the love lives of celebrities.  In fact, social media and politicians start a campaign doubting the existence of the comet despite the scientists’ assurances.  Does that ring any bells? 

In fact since I watched that film in 2021, it seems that its relevance to what we see going on in 2025 is greater than ever!  I heard a lawyer remark, on the radio on Friday, with regard to the news stories surrounding our Prime Minister and the “grooming gangs” debacle, that people are listening and relying more and more on the “15 – minutes on social media experts”, rather than the true experts in the field who have been studying these cases over 15 years. In fact, the result of repeating lies and disinformation is leading to the re-traumatising of some of the historic victims.

Sometimes, I think that those of us who know the true nature of God’s love and compassion for Humankind are crying in the wilderness just like John, but cry we must otherwise we have no chance of being heard at all if we totally give in or give up.

I am reminded of a notice displayed at Auschwitz I Concentration camp in Poland written by Pastor Martin Niemoller which reads

“First they came for the Communists

 And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

 Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew

 Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

John the Baptist spoke out and encouraged those around him to repent – metanoia; to look at things afresh. To wash away the old and tainted and to step out clean, refreshed and into a new world with Jesus Christ as our king and saviour. As true Christians we should honour the pledges he made on our behalf – to move forward with the aid of the Holy Spirit, never grieving it but upholding it, promoting it and its powers and making disciples of others.

God bless you all in your continued fellowship and ministry here in Farley over the next twelve months and may you too have the courage to speak out and proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit here alongst us now..

 

Amen                                                                                           

MFB/211/07012025

(An updated version of Sermon 168 delivered in 2022).

SERMON 210 - SUNDAY 8 JANUARY 2025 - EPIPHANY

 

Sermon delivered at All Saints’ Church, Whiteparish – Sunday 8 January 2025 – Epiphany Sunday

Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

May I speak in the name of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

May I start this morning’s sermon by wishing you all a Very Happy New Year and I look forward to continuing to minister to you in this lovely church and parish for many years to come.  A very special place indeed for Liz and I, being where we got married just over eight years ago. How time races on!

As we enter this New Year let us continue to pray for peace and prosperity not only in our own community and country but throughout the world.  Jesus came into the world to bring light to a dark world and to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God and so, as we enter 2025 let us, as his Christian Family do all we can to make that dream a reality.

Last year, I took this same service with its same readings and chose to concentrate on the gospel passage describing the coming of the Magi – who are more commonly described as wise men, astrologers or even kings.  Last year we looked at where they might have come from, and what celestial object they might have actually observed in the night sky which led them to travel from, possibly, Babylon to Bethlehem.  I am still intrigued by what it was, comet, planetary conjunction or was it simply supernatural.  I am intending to put together an astronomical talk on the subject for a future occasion, but today, as we enter 2025, a year which I think will see some monumental global changes, I would like to concentrate on the passage of scripture from Paul’s letter to the Church in Ephesus which we heard read out this morning.

I think it would be helpful and interesting if I read out that passage again, but this time from Eugene Petersen’s paraphrased translation of the Bible known as “The Message”:

^1-3 This is why I, Paul, am in jail for Christ, having taken up the cause of you outsiders, so-called. I take it that you’re familiar with the part I was given in God’s plan for including everybody. I got the inside story on this from God himself, as I just wrote you in brief.

^4-6 As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board.

^7-8 This is my life’s work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.

^8-10 And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels!

^11-13 All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!

The essence of Paul’s message is that he finds himself in prison for preaching a new message, one seeming to be at variance to ancient Hebrew teaching and he refers to those who have changed their theology into understanding and following Christ, as well as those who have not yet even heard of Jesus as “outsiders”. Paul is reminding his readers, and thereby through the study of the biblical scripture to us, that Christ came into the world for everyone, not just those who felt chosen by following the law, but very much those who appeared to be outsiders – the poor, the sinners, the sick and so on.  Those who seemed to be on the outside of society just as the early followers had been placed on the outside through their following Christ instead of simply following Hebrew law and tradition.

This is emphasised, I believe, by those who were given special notice of Christ’s coming into the world – the shepherds out in the fields – shepherds were especially despised and looked upon as the lowest of the low and the Magi who werer foreigners – outsiders pure and simple.

It always gives me such comfort that the light – Jesus – came for the poor and outcast of the world.  “The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us” as John puts it at the beginning of his Gospel.  “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overwhelm it; but the darkness does not understand it”

This leads me to say, once again, something about how Paul’s words and the Epiphany story have such a great significance and relevance to us today – some 2,000 years later. Indeed, as we see global politics polarising more and more with the left wing and the right wing seeming to divide further and further apart, we see, through the influence of the media, social and public, people flocking to their own kind - a type of herding instinct often without discernment; something which I have mentioned before and which the journalist James O’Brien has termed “footballing” - taking the example of the tribal nature of football fans for the way in which we stick to our own group come what may.

Everywhere in the world today we see people “footballing” creating cultures of “them and us”.  To some extent that is human nature but is it the true nature of Christianity? Are we not better than that?

Daily I pray for discernment – to be able to see the light of True Christianity from the darkness of so many Fake Doctrines.  The birth of Jesus was meant to break the “Them and Us” culture by abolishing the word “Them” for ever, leaving only with a society of “Us”. 

He came for all – rich and poor, homegrown and foreigner.  We seem, today, to live in a deeply divided and ungodly world.  Once more a very dark world with war and conflict between nations as well as civil wars both over territory and culture/doctrine. Our Western culture seems to be dominated by selfishness and self-centredness. Instead of being in a state of self-awareness we seem to be living in a world of self-righteousness and blame with people using terms like “woke” in a derogatory manner to discredit often genuine concerns for people who are different from ourselves.  Very often people look to blame others because they cannot bring themselves to examine their own lives and sins.

So, in conclusion, in addition to prayer for the world and the darkness of war, conflict, famine, climate change and natural disasters is there an area of pain and darkness in your own life or the life of your family and friends or community?  How can you ask God to bring his light within it to shine away the fear which that darkness brings?  How will you seek out that light – be it bright or dim in your life just now? Finally, what will you do to bring God’s message, the Good News, to those who haven’t heard it or who have rejected it? How will you bring an outsider into the warmth of God’s love?

Let us pause for a moment and reflect upon this – PAUSE –

Let us pray

God of light, we thank you that you are present everywhere, even when we cannot see you. As the Wise Men saw the unusual light in night sky all those years ago and followed it to Jesus please shine your light into the difficult places of the world and our lives, and help us to listen and help those who are different from ourselves to know and love you.

Amen                                                                                  

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