25 July 2010

St James the Great

Sermon preached at 11am Mattins at St Mary’s, Lapworth on Sunday 25th July 2010
Festival of St James the Great

Readings: Ps 126 Jeremiah 45: 1-5 Acts: 11: 27 – 12: 2 (Matthew 20: 20-28)



So today we celebrate the festival of St James the Great. It is only one year in seven on average that 25th July falls on a Sunday, so today is a good opportunity to reflect on St James and to get to know him a bit better.
First of all, let’s get straight who we are talking about. We are talking about James, as in James and John, the sons of Zebedee. James and John were among the first disciples to be called by Jesus. I am sure you remember the story. They were sitting in their father’s fishing boat mending their nets when Jesus came and said: “Follow me”. And they left their father in the boat with the hired men and followed Jesus. At the same time Jesus also called Simon and Andrew and said that they would become fishers of men. And in fact Peter, James and John became like Jesus’ inner cabinet. They were the ones he took with him up Mount Tabor for the Transfiguration. They were the ones who went into the room with him when he brought the young girl back from the dead. They were the ones who he took to one side with him as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane. And perhaps it is because of this very privileged position that James, son of Zebedee, held that he is often called James the Great.
Because we have to acknowledge that there were a lot of other Jameses around in the New Testament. There is James, Son of Alphaeus, who was also one of the 12. There is James, called Brother of the Lord, James the younger and James, writer of the New Testament book. It’s not completely clear to the scholars if those James are all the same person, or two people or three or perhaps even four different people. But anyway we are not talking about them, we are talking about James, brother of John, son of Zebedee, one of the Lord’s three closest companions.
I have already mentioned some of the New Testament stories about James but I have not mentioned the most famous story. This is the story where the mother of James and John asks Jesus if her two sons, James and John might sit at his right and his left in his glory. Jesus says, “You don’t know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I will drink, or be baptised with my baptism?” “We can” they boldly responded. “Very well,” said Jesus, “The cup that I drink, you shall drink, and my baptism will be your baptism, but to sit at my right and my left is not mine to grant, it is for those to whom it has already been given.”
It was perhaps rather brave or perhaps foolhardy to say to Jesus, “Yes, we can drink your cup, yes, we can be baptised with your baptism.” By his “cup” Jesus probably meant his passion and death, as he did in Gethsemane when he prayed “Father, take this cup away from me! Yet not my will but your will be done.” After James and John had been so enthusiastic about Jesus’ cup, a martyrdom always seemed possible. As we heard in our reading from Acts, James was indeed martyred, probably about 44AD, by the sword. There is a tradition that he was beheaded by King Herod in person.
But the interchange with Jesus was very important because it lead to Jesus’ explanation of what leadership must be like in the church. Jesus explained that in worldly circles masters lord it over their servants, but it must not be like this in the church. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave, for the Son of Man came to serve, not to be served and to give his life as a ransom for many.
And this model of servant leadership has been crucial in the church and in Christian society ever since. Of course we often fail to live up to it, and certainly our leadership in our society today seems to be completely tied up with money and power and have very little to do with service. However there have been powerful moments of witness.
For example, in the sixth century there was an uncomfortable power struggle between the Patriarch of Constantinople (traditionally seen as the second most important bishop in the church) and the Bishop of Rome, traditionally seen as the first. The Patriach gave himself a new title: Ecumenical Patriarch – Patriarch of the whole church. Pope Gregory the Great was under pressure to respond, and he adopted the title Servant of the Servants of God. What is more, is he managed to live his papacy in that reality. A crucially important point was made.
So what does servant leadership mean? It doesn’t usually mean that we expect our archbishops and popes to do the washing up and to wait at table. It is very symbolically important when they do these things, but if they were to do them all the time then they would not be doing their jobs. What we do hope for and expect, and what we should certainly try to live out when we are in positions of leadership ourselves, is that the office is to be used and powers exercised for the benefit of all the people, not for the benefit of the leader in question. The bishop must act for the benefit of all the people of the diocese. The headmaster must work for the benefit of all the people in the school; the Chief Executive for the benefit of the whole company. And, just as a waiter must be attentive to the needs of the person he serves, and a good waiter will even anticipate these needs, so a good leader must be attentive to the needs of those that are led.
Personally I think we need to have a special sensitivity to St James and to servant leadership in this church. We know that before the reformation there was an altar in the south aisle dedicated to St James. So the saint was important in this place, but the link has been lost. And in fact the situation is even more dramatic at Baddesley Clinton. That whole church was originally dedicate to St James, but at some time that was changed to St Michael. So once again an important link to the saint has somehow been lost. Now I am not suggesting that we should rush to reinstall an altar to St James, but I do think we need to recognise and honour aspects of this saint, with whom we have had these links. So servant leadership would be one aspect of that, which of course applies especially to Rectors, wardens and PCC members. Another aspect is being willing, perhaps even in a foolhardy way, to drink the cup that Jesus drinks and to share his baptism. Most of us are not called to full martyrdom, but a willingness to share sufferings with Jesus is important, as we were discussing last week. And a third aspect would be to be a good disciple of Jesus, responding to his “follow me” and seeking to be especially close to him as James was. I think if we can live well these three aspects we will honour St James well, and altars that we have lost, or dedications we have changed will matter far less. Amen.




Prayer for St James' Day

Almighty God, remember your church, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. We pray for all bishops and all leaders in your church. By their example may we follow close to Jesus. May we continue always in the apostles' teaching and in the fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer. We make our prayer through the same Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

18 July 2010

Jesus our Friend

Sermon preached at St Mary the Virgin, Lapworth at 11am Parish Eucharist
Sunday 18th July 2010 – Trinity 7, Proper 11
Other versions of this sermon were preached at St Mary’s 8.30am Eucharist and at the 9.45am Eucharist at St Michael’s Baddesley Clinton.

Readings: Col 1: 15-28 Luke 10: 38-42


In our gospel reading today we hear about Jesus staying with his friends Martha and Mary. Martha and Mary, together with their brother Lazarus get mentioned several times in the gospels. They lived at Bethany, which is just outside Jerusalem. It seems that they were very particular friends to Jesus and Jesus visited them a lot. Especially Jesus was there during the week leading up to his passion. That week Jesus would spend the daytime in the temple preaching to the crowds. Nobody could try to arrest him while there were crowds of people were listening to him. But at night Jesus would retreat to the safety of Bethany, well away from the chief priests and religious authorities.
And when we look at our gospel story, we do get the impression that Martha and Mary were very comfortable around Jesus. We are told that Mary sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. Sitting at the teacher’s feet and listening; this is the typical behaviour of a “disciple” in the first century. It is not how a woman would normally behave, or how a host would normally behave. It seems that Mary was very comfortable around Jesus and felt able to behave very freely. Martha, whose behaviour was much more conventional, also felt comfortable enough around Jesus to raise a rather awkward point with him: “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself.” And Jesus’ response is full of love for both Martha and Mary. He acknowledges that Martha is worried and distracted by many things, when only one thing is needed. But he also commends Mary for choosing the better part and affirms that she should be allowed to keep it.
Let’s think about our friends for a moment. Who are our friends? What is it about those particular people that make them our friends? Well I think different people might have different answers, but I think friends are people who you are really comfortable spending time with. Probably they are people who you already know very well, and you don’t have to take a lot of trouble getting to know them. Probably they are people who you can say things to, without fearing that they might judge you, or misunderstand you, or get upset or angry.
And of course we are all invited to have Jesus as a friend. Jesus, the friend of tax collectors and sinners can be our friend too. Jesus is someone who walks alongside us through thick and thin, someone to show us the way, someone with whom we share the joys and sorrows of this earthly life, someone in whom we can confide our deepest hopes and our fears. Jesus is the ultimate friend, ever present, ever faithful, ever true. Jesus our friend shares with us encouragement, understanding and joy. He is with us always, until the end of the age (Matt 28: 20)
But what do we need to do, to develop our friendship with Jesus? Well, in John 15 Jesus speaks about the new commandment which he gives his followers, to love one another, and then he says, “You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15: 14). So loving one another is certainly important if we want to be a friend of Jesus. Similarly in Matt 25 Jesus says, “What ever you do to the least, you do to me.” So being good to other people is the key to being good to Jesus. But it seems to me that prayer is also terribly important here. Just as we must talk to our friends, if they are really to be friends, so we must prayer to Jesus if we want to know his friendship and rejoice in it. And through these prayers we can stay in the company of Jesus all day. We might pray, “Lord, help me through this situation, which is a bit awkward,” or “Lord, give me grace to deal with this person, who can be so difficult,” or “Lord, help me to do this task well, for you, even though it’s so boring.”
Sharing our day with Jesus can certain help us to become more aware of our friendship with Jesus, but it seems to me that there is one thing, above all others, that really makes friendships grow, and that is sufferings shared. The people with whom we have shared difficult situations, people who have supported us in our troubles, or who we have supported. These tend to be our best friends. Remember the friends you were thinking of earlier. My guess is that, with many of them, there will have been some suffering shared, or a falling out and later reconciliation. Experiences like these give confidence that your relationship can withstand future difficulties. Often, it is the sharing of sufferings that really draws people together.
And the same is true in our experience with Jesus. From Colossians today we heard St Paul say that he rejoices in his sufferings because he sees them as his contribution, added to Christ’s great contribution, for the sake of the church. Sharing sufferings with Jesus really draws us close to Jesus. And of course the passion and death of Jesus brought about reconciliation and renewal and new resurrection life. So too, when we share our sufferings with the sufferings of Jesus they too can start to have these effects, for us and for the people around us.
And we have a particular opportunity to do this today in the Eucharist. Jesus said of the Eucharist, “Do this in remembrance of me” (e.g. 1 Cor 11: 24-25) and that act of remembrance makes present in our consciousness today the passion and death of Jesus which happened 2000 years ago. So as we come to receive communion today, let’s bring to Jesus our sufferings, small all large, caused by us or by others, and let’s share our sufferings with the suffering of Jesus in the passion. This will draw us closer to Jesus and draw our sufferings closer to his love which heals and reconciles and renews.
And so may we always be good friends with Jesus, the ultimate friend. Amen.

11 July 2010

The commandments of God

Sermon preached at 11am Mattins at St Mary the Virgin, Lapworth
Sunday 11th July 2010 – Trinity 6, Proper 10 Year C
Other versions of this sermon were preached at St Mary’s at 8.30am Eucharist and at St Michael’s Baddesley Clinton at 3pm Evensong.

Readings: Deuteronomy 30: 9-14 Luke 10: 25-37


Recently my wife bought a new mobile phone. She had been without a phone for a couple of days, so when it arrived she was very excited to see it. It arrived at a very busy moment, but Elaine was very keen to get it going, so we rushed rather to assemble it. In the rush we gave only the scantiest attention to the manufacturing instructions, and misunderstood the one thing that we did read. This meant that we put the SIM card in upside down, and in so doing managed to damage it. The result was a further two days with no phone, while we got hold of a new SIM card from the service provider.
The incident reminded me that it is important to use equipment in line with the way it has been designed. Seeking to use it in other ways results in poor performance and could even result in accident or injury. I was reminded of one of my friend at school who was trying to lever the top of a can of paint, using not a screwdriver, but a chisel! The result was quite a nasty injury.
And of course we human beings have been made and designed for a particular purpose, a particular destiny. And it is a very high purpose and destiny, higher than we can possibly imagine. We are made in the image of God, to share in the eternal life that God himself lives out in within the Trinity. This is a great and wonderful thing. I am not sure whether we will ever comprehend how wonderful it is.
But to realise this purpose, this destiny, we have to live our lives in accordance with the maker’s instructions. We have to live according to the purposes for which we were designed. And this is all about following the commandments of God; walking in God’s ways; living according to God’s word; following God’s will for our lives. The importance of this can hardly be overstated, but it was really powerfully stressed in our Old Testament lesson today. Moses was speaking to the Israelites as they come to the end of their forty years in the wilderness and as they are about to enter the Promised Land; the land flowing with milk and honey. Actually Moses makes a great long speech; we only caught a very small part of it in our Old Testament lesson, but the deal is this, the covenant is this. God says to the Israelites, “Be my people, obey my laws, keep my commandments and I will make you prosper in the Promised Land. But you have a clear choice. If you don’t obey my laws and follow in my ways you will not last long in the Promised Land.” So it is obey God and prosper, or ignore God and perish.
And the importance of obeying God and keeping his commandments comes up time and time again in scripture. Jesus says, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” (John 14: 15) and he says, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt 19: 17) and he says, “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matt 7: 21).
And what are the commandments of God? Well we heard the summary of all the commandments in New Testament lesson today; “Love God and love your neighbour” and then, in the story of the good Samaritan, we heard a beautiful illustration of what it means to love our neighbour; how it means helping them in practical ways, and looking out for their good.
So to realise God’s great plan for us, to fulfil all the good things that God wants for us, we need to follow God’s will for our lives, we need to live by the commandments of God and by the teaching of Jesus. And these commandments and teachings are all about love. The commandments are about educating us in what love means or requires of us in different situations.
And I want to put in an aside about “obedience”. In our contemporary western society the word “obedience” is often presented with rather negative connotations, as though it is about allowing ourselves to be dominated by other people, or about being fitted as a round peg into a square hole, or about failing to be true to our innermost instincts and desires. Well we need to re-educate ourselves to remember that obedience to God is always a thoroughly good thing; it is the good thing. It is precisely the way that we walk the walk towards heaven. It is the way we realise God’s creation in us. It’s the way that we allow God to form us and develop us so that we become what he has created us to be. So obedience to God is always a good thing, and obedience to God often (not always, but often!) requires obedience to other human being or human institutions; to a spouse, to a boss, to the law of the land, to a bishop or priest even. It is often through these people that we understand what God wants from us. And let’s remember that obedience to God is always about love, not wishing washing feelings, but the profound and mysterious love of God, which always seeks the good of the other.
I want to finish by re-reading the Collect for today, the sixth Sunday after Trinity because it does seem to summarise so much of this, so beautifully:

O God, who hast prepared for them that love thee
such good things as pass man’s understanding:
Pour into our hearts such love toward thee
that we, loving thee above all things,
may obtain thy promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (Book of Common Prayer)

04 July 2010

Ministries and Grace

Sermon preached at 9.45 am at St Michael’s, Baddesley Clinton
Sunday 4th July 2010, Trinity V, Proper 9 – Year C
Other versions of this sermon were preached at 8.30am and 11am at St Mary's Lapworth.

Readings: (Gal 6: 7-16) Luke 10: 1-11 & 16-20


My daughter, Caroline, has just returned from a school trip to Snowdonia. It was a week of outdoor pursuits, including gorge walking and climbing Snowdon. In preparation for the trip both our family and the school worked quite hard to ensure that Caroline had all the appropriate kit. As she set off on the trip, with her hiking boots and carefully packed backpack we were confident that she had the things she needed for the different outdoor activities. And just to confirm that all the preparations had paid off, she sent us a text message from the top of Snowdon.
But what a contrast there is between our attitude in kitting Caroline out, the attitude that Jesus had when sending out disciples ahead of him to prepare the ground in the towns and villages that Jesus himself expected to visit. Far from kitting the disciples out, Jesus seems to tell them not to take things with them. Jesus tells them to “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.” If we had read Matthew’s account (Matt 10) we would also have heard Jesus tells the disciples to take no money (not even coppers), no spare tunic and no staff.
Why would Jesus give such instructions? Surely it would be better if the disciples were properly kitted out for their missionary journey?
Well we can only speculate. It seems to me that Jesus wanted to make sure that the disciples were trusting completely in God, rather than trusting in their own skills, talents and resources. This attitude of complete trust and dependence on God is very healthy especially for people who are engaged in God’s work. If you have no resources of your own, but depend completely on what God gives you, then you have no choice but to stay focused on doing God’s work.
And it worked! The seventy returned with joy saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.” Clearly the seventy had worked many miracles of healing. Jesus said, “See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you.” So it seems that the disciples extraordinary trust in God, going out on their mission with no more than the clothes they were wearing, resulted in extraordinary graces and powers to work great miracles. And this was a cause of great rejoicing. But notice the comment of Jesus: “do not rejoice at this…but that your names are written in heaven.” The significant thing is not that the disciples have extraordinary powers, like comic book superheroes, but rather that this is evidence that they share in the life of heaven, the eternal life in the presence of God.
And this pattern of extraordinary dependence on God, and extraordinary earthly powers is by no means unique to this story about the 70 disciples. At the very end of Mark’s gospel (Mark 16: 17) Jesus says, “These are the signs that will be associated with believers; in my name they will cast out devils, they will have the gift of tongues, they will pick up snakes in their hands, and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick who will recover.” And in the Acts of the Apostles there are lots of stories of the disciples performing healing miracles and of Paul, being unharmed by the bite of a deadly snake.
And in the history of the Church, this story has many resonances. St Francis was deeply struck by precisely this very story, which we heard from the gospel today. He felt called by God to live it out for himself in a very literal way. Francis went on to live in radical poverty, in complete dependence on God and on the gifts of other people. And as we know Francis developed an extraordinary ministry and demonstrated all kinds of miraculous powers, including healing and exorcism.
But what about us? We are ordinary Christians of the 21st century; ordinary believers. Are we too called to this life of radical dependence on God; this life where we go about with no more than the clothes we wear? Are we, too, to receive powers to heal diseases and tread on scorpions and snakes? Well some of us are called by God in a radical way, for example by giving up everything, and going to live in a monasteries or a convent. But probably, for most of us, God does not call most of us to a ministry like that. For most of us our ministries will be much smaller and simpler things; caring for our families, talking to our neighbours, visiting or offering a lift to an elderly person. We might also be called to specific ministries to help in the church, perhaps through a role on the PCC. Or perhaps we are called to a ministries to the wider community. Sometimes we are called to support particular communities groups, or to serve on their committees and help them to play their part in serving the whole community.
The important thing is to be very attentive to what God wants from us; by what ministry he wants us to serve other people. God always supplies the grace needed for the ministries to which he calls us. If the ministries are small then perhaps the grace need not be so big, but if we live our ministries well then perhaps God will call us to bigger things, and give us bigger graces. But we must be attentive to what God wants from us, because it all starts with what God calls us to do.
But we must not deceive ourselves into thinking that we can escape from our radical dependence on God. We all need to build and develop out trust in God, who created us and loves us. Sooner or later any earthly thing that we put our trust in must fail us. Eventually we must all face death. In death we lose all our earthly processions, even our clothes, even our body. In death our utter dependence on God is revealed. Let us pray that by that time we will have learnt to trust completely in God, and let us pray that, like the 70 disciples, we may rejoice to discover that our names are written in heaven. Amen.