Living by trust in God

Short Sermon preached at St Alphege, Solihull 8am Eucharist.
Sunday 11th October 2009 – Year B - Harvest Thanksgiving

Readings: [Joel 2: 21-27] 1 Timothy 6: 6-10 Matthew 6: 25-33


I wonder if you noticed that this week’s gospel reading was almost identical to last week’s? Perhaps you thought, I have heard this before recently? Perhaps you thought that some mistake had been made? But no, we are in year B of the Lectionary, and it just so happens that, in year B, the Harvest Thanksgiving gospel is the same teaching of Jesus as we read on the St Francis’ day, which we observed last Sunday. The only difference is that this week we read Matthew’s account, last week we read Luke’s. In fact the two accounts are very, very similar.
And this coincidence (although it isn’t really a coincidence) serves to highlight how the Franciscan attitude to food and clothing exemplifies the attitude that we ourselves should have as we come to God in thanksgiving for the harvest, and indeed in thanksgiving for all our worldly wealth.
St Francis, as we know, was in love with “Lady Poverty”. He and his companions would live from day to day on the gifts they were given. Francis would never allow his brothers to have any money or property. Initially they were more or less beggars, but over time a pattern built up whereby they did work for people and were given food and shelter. And in large part the work they did was the proclamation of the gospel. They were therefore lived out a very good example of the teaching in our gospel reading today. They did not worry about their food or their clothing. They strived first for the kingdom of God, and his righteousness and God gave them the food and clothing that they needed. And far from starving to death, or dying from hypothermia, they grew to become a huge religious family, with many branches spread throughout the whole world to this day.
Now most of us gathered here today are not called by God to be Franciscans, but we are all called to live these same words of Jesus, “Strive first for the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” However secure we are in our food and our clothing there are many other areas of our life where we have to live by faith in God. How can we save ourselves from terrorism, or global warming or financial collapse? How can we deal with that situation in our marriage or in our family that weighs heavily upon us? How can we prevent the deterioration of community values, the alienation of the young people, the loss of national identity? How can we cope with illness, old age, and death? In respect of all these things we have to live by faith. We can never resolve these issues; we have to entrust them to God. And how do we do that? We do it by focusing first and foremost of the kingdom of God, on seeking to do God’s will in each present moment of our lives, on seeking to love others as God loves them. In this way we make our own small contribution to the solving of problems, in accordance with what God asks from us, but for the most part we have to entrust the problems to God. And if we strive, first and foremost, for the kingdom of God, we will slowly come to see will that all these problems are part of God’s love for us, they are part of our journey, they help us to walk towards him. And if we truly entrust them to God we will see how, in the fullness of time, God brings them to resolution.
As we make our harvest thanksgiving, let’s pray for the grace to strive first and foremost for the kingdom of God. Let’s then trust God, not just for our food and our clothing, but that all these other issues too will be sorted out by God, as we live in faith. Amen.