Sermon preached at 11am Parish Eucharist at St Mary’s Lapworth on Sunday 29th August 2010. Other versions of this sermon were preached at the 8.30am Said Eucharist and at St Michael’s Baddesley Clinton, 9.45am.
Trinity 13, Proper 17, Year C.
Readings: Hebrews 13: 1-8 & 15-16 Luke 14: 1 & 7-14
In the early 1950s the Ford Motor Company was brimming with confidence and flush with cash, following the success of the Ford Thunderbird. The management set about developing a whole new car with a whole new network of marketing dealerships. They hired all the best people to work on the design. They created a huge and elaborate marketing campaign. They named the car “Edsel” after the son the company’s founder and they invested millions in the launch. But after all the hype had died down, it became clear that American public didn’t really like the Edsel, and would not buy it. The car was a terrible commercial failure and was withdrawn in its third year. The company lost millions of pounds on the project. The name Edsel became associated with failures in marketing, and a famous “how not to do it” case study for MBA (Master of Business Studies) students. The old maxim, “Pride comes before a fall” comes to mind.
And in more recent times there has been another extraordinary example of “Pride comes before a fall” in the business world. In 2007 big banking appeared to a business of extraordinary power and wealth, and the banks were ever bigger and braver in what they took on. Yet by October 2008 many of the world’s biggest banks appeared insolvent, and there is no doubt that without a massive government intervention, most if not all of them would have failed.
The parable that Jesus told in our gospel reading today also has a “pride comes before a fall element”. At that time the custom at wedding banquets was to have the places graded from the places of highest honour, up high and near the host and bride and groom, down to the places of least honour, lower down and further away. Jesus pointed out that choosing to sit in a seat of high honour was inviting a fall. Someone more honourable that you might arrive later, and you would have to give up your seat. And because all the seats were no occupied you would find yourself moving to the lowest seat, while everyone is watching. Instead Jesus recommends a more humble strategy; choose for yourself the lowest seat so that the host might call you up higher.
Well we live in a much less hierarchical society today, but issues about the highest places have not gone away. We hear of film studios in terrible fights with film stars about the order in which names appear in the credits. I regret to say that I have heard even of clergy processions, where none of the clergy are willing to lead the procession out, because by tradition it is always the most senior clergy who occupy the back of the procession.
It is people’s pride that causes difficulty in these situations. Pride is the vice of self-importance; thinking of ourselves as above other people or above God. We often associate it with arrogance and self-sufficiency. Of course the word pride can denote good things. We encourage people to take pride in their work, in their appearance, their neighbourhood, in their nation. These attitudes are important and contribute to our self esteem. They show that we value the good gifts that God has given us, and want to fully play our part in realising their full potential. Pride only kicks in as a problem when we start to value to ourselves higher than other people, or our own nation more than other nations.
The antidote to pride is the virtue of humility. Virtues are attitudes and habits that are good. Vices are attitudes and habits that are bad. We all need to practice good attitudes and behaviours so that they become habitual, they become virtues. Virtues grow by practice, and by the grace of God, which we should ask for. So humility is a virtue, but what is humility all about?
Well I think that humility is ultimately about being completely and utterly realistic about who we are, and who other people are. It is not humble for a student who has just got a string of A stars at GCSE to say, “Oh I’m not that clever really.”; that’s just unrealistic. It is humble for that student to thank God that they have been blessed with certain talents, to recognise the support they have received from their school and from their family, and recognising that these good gifts are given by God not just for our good, but for the good of others too. Being humble means seeing ourselves as God sees us and of course, God sees us through the eyes of love; God loves us immensely. We must remember that we were created and are sustained by God, we owe everything to him. God sent is own son to die for us and to redeem us. For God we are most definitely “worth it”! And of course God also sees our many frailties and sins and vices, but God sees beyond them, knowing that when we turn to him he forgives us, and heals us and make us whole. So seeing ourselves as God sees us, and loving ourselves as God loves us, means having a very high opinion of ourselves, but it also means having a very high opinion about other people, because we know that God loves them, just as he loves us.
Now prayer is very good discipline for growing in humility. When we pray we place ourselves before God and hold ourselves in our relationship with God, and this really does help us to know who we are and to have the right attitudes. First of all pray is a humbling experience because it is difficult, and we don’t really know what we are doing. As St Paul says (Romans 8: 26) we do not know how to pray as we should, but we depend on the Holy Spirit to pray for us.
And then the things that we do in prayer help us with humility. We say prayers of adoration, praising God for his greatness. This reminds us how very great God is and what a very small cog we are in the mighty universe of God’s creation. In our prayers we make prayers of confession. We hold before God our sins and failures, and this is necessarily very humbling. It reminds us that we are completely dependent on the mercy of God. Also in our prayers we give thanks to God for the good things he gives us. This too reminds us that all the good things we have are gifts from God and not products of our own hard work or cleverness. In prayer we also learn to thank God for the difficult things that come our way, the things we would not choose for ourselves, but by thanking God for them we come to see them as part of God’s love for us, part of his plan for our lives.
So today I would like to commend to you humility as a virtue, a good habit and attitude; humility as the utterly and totally realistic assessment of ourselves, as we are seen by God. I would also like to commend to you prayer, as a way of growing in humility. Amen.
31 August 2010
22 August 2010
Deliverance on the Sabbeth
Sermon preached at 11am Coral Mattins at St Mary the Virgin, Lapworth on Sunday 22nd August 2010. The sermon was also preached at the 8.30am Eucharist (shortened) and at 3pm evensong at St Michael’s Baddesley Clinton.
Trinity 12, Proper 16, Year C
Readings: Ps 103: 1-8 Is 58: 9b-14 Luke 13: 10-17
Our family have just come back from a holiday on the west coast of France, and very nice it was too; a real opportunity to rest and relax and catch up with ourselves. And the holiday was particularly welcome because it came at the end of a very intense six month period which has involved a house move and a very steep learning curve on being responsible for two parishes. So it was very lovely to go away with the family and to enjoy the food and the wine and countryside and sunshine and the beaches. It was also lovely to catch up properly with the Dawson family, who we traditionally go on holiday with.
And one of the things that I love about holiday is having the time and energy to get involved in things that I normally would not get involved in at all. For example, at one point we found that all the adults joined in one of the children’s games, a game called “guard”, which is a rather sophisticated version of hide and seek. In the car we listened to an audio book called “the book thief”. One of the Dawson teenagers was reading Dante’s Divine Comedy (in English!), and I became very interested in this. And I found these new experiences very refreshing, renewing and enlivening. It reminded me of the importance of rest in our daily lives and especially of the importance of the Sabbath, the day of rest. And we got two rather contrasting takes on the Sabbath in our scripture readings today.
The Jewish-Christian tradition tells us that from the very creation of the world, God set aside one day of the week to be holy, and to be a day of rest. In the Genesis account of creation God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. In the Ten Commandments he similarly asked his people to observe the seventh day, Saturday, as the Sabbath Day, a day of rest, holy to the Lord. It was a day especially when the Jewish people were asked to remember the Passover, when Moses lead them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and delivered them from Pharaoh’s army. The keeping of the Sabbath on a Saturday was always an important part of the covenant, the deal between God and his people, and of the Jewish Law, but in the sixth century BC, when the Jewish nation was in exile in Babylon is became a crucially important part of the Jewish identity. Observing the Sabbath became and important part of what it meant to be a Jew. The reading that we heard today from Isaiah was probably written just after this period, as the nation was seeking to re-establish itself in Jerusalem following release from exile. In the reading it is clear that keeping of the Sabbath is central to the covenant. Through Isaiah, God gives various teachings on how the Sabbath should be observed. As is typical of Isaiah, the great wisdom of these commands from God are presented in a most beautiful and poetic way. The two final verses of this passage are worthy of much reflection and meditation in their own right. I have been reading these teachings of v13 in different translations of the bible, and it is quite striking how different the different translations are. Brief translations of the Hebrew seem to struggle to pin down what God is saying here. The gist of it seems to be that the Sabbath a day when you should:
- not pursue your own pleasure, but rather the pleasure of God
- not pursue your own interests, but rather the interests of God
- not pursue you won affairs, but rather the business of God
- not focus on human words and tittle-tattle, but rather on the word of God
And this is surely very good guidance, not just for the Jewish observance of the Sabbath on a Saturday, but also the Christian observance our holy day on a Sunday.
By the time of Jesus, observance of the Sabbath had become very central to Jewish identity. It had become bound up with lot of very detailed rules and regulations about what Jews could and could not do on the Sabbath, how far they could walk, what tasks were allowed and what were forbidden. The notion of a day for God’s purposes rather than human purposes had become somewhat obscured by all these rules, and Jesus kicked out against them. The story we heard today is one of three stories in Luke’s gospel where Jesus performed healing miracles on the Sabbath (also 6: 6-11 and 14: 1-6). On all three occasions this was controversial; healing was a task not allowed on the Sabbath. And what does Jesus say? How does he justify himself? Well in today’s story he says, “It is legitimate on the Sabbath to take an ox or an ass to water, how much more appropriate is it to deliver a woman from the power of Satan?” It seems that the Sabbath is a particularly appropriate day for good to triumph over evil, for healing to triumph over decay, for life to triumph over death.
And perhaps this is why, in the life of the early church, Sunday, rather than Saturday came to be observed as the holy day of God. Sunday is the day of our Lord’s resurrection. It is the day when Jesus conquered death and hell. It is the first day of the week, which is the start of creation, but it is also the eighth day, the beginning of a new creation, of the restoration and renewal that comes about through Christ’s death and resurrection, through Christianity and the Church. So it is very appropriate that in the Church we observe Sunday as God’s holy day. Sunday is a particularly appropriate day for Christians to celebrate the Eucharist, in which we remember the great Passover of Jesus in his death and resurrection, just as the Jews remember the Passover of their deliverance on a Saturday. It is a good day to live out the teachings of Isaiah:
- not pursue your own pleasure, but rather the pleasure of God
- not pursue your own interests, but rather the interests of God
- not pursue you won affairs, but rather the business of God
- not focus on human words or title-tattle, but rather on the word of God
And perhaps this pricks our conscience a bit? Perhaps we are guilty of treating Sunday like any other day? Perhaps on Sundays we should be doing less, resting more, worshiping more and devoting our attention more to our families and close friends. Well probably this is true, but we must not be too hard on ourselves as individuals because it is the whole of society that is called to live the Sabbath, not just the churchy few. When the 10 commandments were given it was made very clear that the Sabbath meant rest for work for all, including children, servants, animals and even foreigners living among the Israelites. This means we also have to try and help all of society to live the Sabbath well and to enjoy a day of rest. Now in this country we know that with Sunday trading and the like, the tide has rather flowed against this in recent years, but if we all play our own part, faithfully in front of God, who knows, perhaps the tide will change again, perhaps sooner than we think. Amen, let it be.
Trinity 12, Proper 16, Year C
Readings: Ps 103: 1-8 Is 58: 9b-14 Luke 13: 10-17
Our family have just come back from a holiday on the west coast of France, and very nice it was too; a real opportunity to rest and relax and catch up with ourselves. And the holiday was particularly welcome because it came at the end of a very intense six month period which has involved a house move and a very steep learning curve on being responsible for two parishes. So it was very lovely to go away with the family and to enjoy the food and the wine and countryside and sunshine and the beaches. It was also lovely to catch up properly with the Dawson family, who we traditionally go on holiday with.
And one of the things that I love about holiday is having the time and energy to get involved in things that I normally would not get involved in at all. For example, at one point we found that all the adults joined in one of the children’s games, a game called “guard”, which is a rather sophisticated version of hide and seek. In the car we listened to an audio book called “the book thief”. One of the Dawson teenagers was reading Dante’s Divine Comedy (in English!), and I became very interested in this. And I found these new experiences very refreshing, renewing and enlivening. It reminded me of the importance of rest in our daily lives and especially of the importance of the Sabbath, the day of rest. And we got two rather contrasting takes on the Sabbath in our scripture readings today.
The Jewish-Christian tradition tells us that from the very creation of the world, God set aside one day of the week to be holy, and to be a day of rest. In the Genesis account of creation God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he rested. In the Ten Commandments he similarly asked his people to observe the seventh day, Saturday, as the Sabbath Day, a day of rest, holy to the Lord. It was a day especially when the Jewish people were asked to remember the Passover, when Moses lead them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea and delivered them from Pharaoh’s army. The keeping of the Sabbath on a Saturday was always an important part of the covenant, the deal between God and his people, and of the Jewish Law, but in the sixth century BC, when the Jewish nation was in exile in Babylon is became a crucially important part of the Jewish identity. Observing the Sabbath became and important part of what it meant to be a Jew. The reading that we heard today from Isaiah was probably written just after this period, as the nation was seeking to re-establish itself in Jerusalem following release from exile. In the reading it is clear that keeping of the Sabbath is central to the covenant. Through Isaiah, God gives various teachings on how the Sabbath should be observed. As is typical of Isaiah, the great wisdom of these commands from God are presented in a most beautiful and poetic way. The two final verses of this passage are worthy of much reflection and meditation in their own right. I have been reading these teachings of v13 in different translations of the bible, and it is quite striking how different the different translations are. Brief translations of the Hebrew seem to struggle to pin down what God is saying here. The gist of it seems to be that the Sabbath a day when you should:
- not pursue your own pleasure, but rather the pleasure of God
- not pursue your own interests, but rather the interests of God
- not pursue you won affairs, but rather the business of God
- not focus on human words and tittle-tattle, but rather on the word of God
And this is surely very good guidance, not just for the Jewish observance of the Sabbath on a Saturday, but also the Christian observance our holy day on a Sunday.
By the time of Jesus, observance of the Sabbath had become very central to Jewish identity. It had become bound up with lot of very detailed rules and regulations about what Jews could and could not do on the Sabbath, how far they could walk, what tasks were allowed and what were forbidden. The notion of a day for God’s purposes rather than human purposes had become somewhat obscured by all these rules, and Jesus kicked out against them. The story we heard today is one of three stories in Luke’s gospel where Jesus performed healing miracles on the Sabbath (also 6: 6-11 and 14: 1-6). On all three occasions this was controversial; healing was a task not allowed on the Sabbath. And what does Jesus say? How does he justify himself? Well in today’s story he says, “It is legitimate on the Sabbath to take an ox or an ass to water, how much more appropriate is it to deliver a woman from the power of Satan?” It seems that the Sabbath is a particularly appropriate day for good to triumph over evil, for healing to triumph over decay, for life to triumph over death.
And perhaps this is why, in the life of the early church, Sunday, rather than Saturday came to be observed as the holy day of God. Sunday is the day of our Lord’s resurrection. It is the day when Jesus conquered death and hell. It is the first day of the week, which is the start of creation, but it is also the eighth day, the beginning of a new creation, of the restoration and renewal that comes about through Christ’s death and resurrection, through Christianity and the Church. So it is very appropriate that in the Church we observe Sunday as God’s holy day. Sunday is a particularly appropriate day for Christians to celebrate the Eucharist, in which we remember the great Passover of Jesus in his death and resurrection, just as the Jews remember the Passover of their deliverance on a Saturday. It is a good day to live out the teachings of Isaiah:
- not pursue your own pleasure, but rather the pleasure of God
- not pursue your own interests, but rather the interests of God
- not pursue you won affairs, but rather the business of God
- not focus on human words or title-tattle, but rather on the word of God
And perhaps this pricks our conscience a bit? Perhaps we are guilty of treating Sunday like any other day? Perhaps on Sundays we should be doing less, resting more, worshiping more and devoting our attention more to our families and close friends. Well probably this is true, but we must not be too hard on ourselves as individuals because it is the whole of society that is called to live the Sabbath, not just the churchy few. When the 10 commandments were given it was made very clear that the Sabbath meant rest for work for all, including children, servants, animals and even foreigners living among the Israelites. This means we also have to try and help all of society to live the Sabbath well and to enjoy a day of rest. Now in this country we know that with Sunday trading and the like, the tide has rather flowed against this in recent years, but if we all play our own part, faithfully in front of God, who knows, perhaps the tide will change again, perhaps sooner than we think. Amen, let it be.
01 August 2010
Being Rich towards God
Sermon preached at St Michael’s, Baddesley Clinton at 9.45am Holy Communion (BCP).
Sunday 1st August 2010 – Trinity 9 – Proper 13
Adapted versions of this sermon were preached at St Mary's, Lapworth at 8.30am and 11am.
Readings: Col 3: 1-11 Luke 12: 13-21
If we wanted to retell the parable of today’s gospel in a more contemporary setting and with a sharper cutting edge we might say something like this.
There was once a man who owned a business in the city. And the business did well and generated plenty of cash. And the man said to himself, “What should I do, I have got more money than I can spend,” then he said, “I’ll do this, I’ll sell my house in the city and buy a bigger one just outside the city. I’ll store up my money in my house, because house prices always rise, and quite soon I shall be able to retire. I’ll be able to relax, eat drink and take lots of holidays. But they day before he retired God said to him, “You fool! This very night you life is being demanded of you, and all this wealth you have accumulated, what good will that do you?
We are all familiar with that great tragedy of people who die either just before or just after they retire. We often think, they have worked so hard, and really deserve a good retirement, and yet it seems that God has other plans for them. And I have to say that very often this particular tragedy does seem to affect people with a particular role in serving the community; clergy. school teachers, politicians. But hopefully, if they have served the community well, if they have managed to focus their lives on the benefit of others, then they will be well prepared for the kingdom of heaven, well prepared to serve and be served in the heavenly realm. And if this is the case, who are we to think that an earthly retirement might be better for them than the heavenly blessings.
But what about the man in our story, who has not thought about serving other people? In fact the story does not even mention a wife and family so it does seem that he thinks only of himself, of his own wealth, or his own desire to relax, eat drink and be merry as the parable says. Well God’s words to him are, “You fool!” – “You have invested all your energy in earthly wealth, and tonight I am transferring you to the heavenly realm where you have invested nothing.” – “You fool”.
The man in our story is a bit like the arrogant management consultant who transferred all his personal wealth into Railtrack shares, just before they spectacularly lost all their value in 2001. He put all his eggs in one basket, and the basket collapsed. The man in our story put all his resources into earthly wealth and then died. But, as Jesus said, “a man’s life does not consist of the abundance of his processions.” Jesus ends the parable by saying, “so it is for those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich towards God.” Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steel, but store up for yourselves treasurers in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steel, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6: 19-21).
We got exactly the same message from St Paul in our epistle reading today, “…seek the things that are above…set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things of that are on earth…”
So how do we, “seek the things that are above?” How do we make sure that we are rich towards God? How do we build up treasure in heaven? How do we invest in our eternal future, remembering that our 70 or 80 years on earth is quite short compared to the eternity for which we are created? How do we invest in assets that will pass the ultimate “stress test” of death?
Well, paradoxically, we do it by thinking not of ourselves, but of others. We do it by following the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbour. We try to live each moment, each day, attentive to what God wants from us in the moment and that day. And typically, what God wants from us, becomes clear from the people around us. He wants us to be attentive to them, to help them, to serve them, to take them forward on their journey towards God. It is as though the wealth that we create in other people is the wealth that endures to eternity. The dynamic of heavenly wealth is a dynamic of giving, not a dynamic of accumulating.
So what about our worldly wealth? How should we think about that? Well first of all, let’s give thanks to God for it, because any wealth that we have has come to us through God’s good gift. We may have worked hard for it, but without the grace of God we would have nothing. Secondly, let’s remember that we can’t take it with us. When we die we lose it all, so the protection and security that it affords us is limited; we must enter the kingdom of heaven without it. So this means that we should use our wealth wisely and prudently, while we are on earth, in order to build up treasurers in heaven. We should be generous in giving and investing; generous, not reckless. We should seek to use our giving and investing to build relationships of trust. We want to build up other people, build up other organisations in a sustainable way. Now it has to be said that in the current environment this is very hard. Even the banks appear hardly worthy of our trust. But let’s hold the resources that we have before God, and pray for the grace to use them well. Let’s be good stewards of the gifts that God has given us, seeking to invest in others wherever we can; build relationships, build trust, find prudent ways of giving, live for God, live for others. These are the ways to build up treasure in heaven. Amen.
Sunday 1st August 2010 – Trinity 9 – Proper 13
Adapted versions of this sermon were preached at St Mary's, Lapworth at 8.30am and 11am.
Readings: Col 3: 1-11 Luke 12: 13-21
If we wanted to retell the parable of today’s gospel in a more contemporary setting and with a sharper cutting edge we might say something like this.
There was once a man who owned a business in the city. And the business did well and generated plenty of cash. And the man said to himself, “What should I do, I have got more money than I can spend,” then he said, “I’ll do this, I’ll sell my house in the city and buy a bigger one just outside the city. I’ll store up my money in my house, because house prices always rise, and quite soon I shall be able to retire. I’ll be able to relax, eat drink and take lots of holidays. But they day before he retired God said to him, “You fool! This very night you life is being demanded of you, and all this wealth you have accumulated, what good will that do you?
We are all familiar with that great tragedy of people who die either just before or just after they retire. We often think, they have worked so hard, and really deserve a good retirement, and yet it seems that God has other plans for them. And I have to say that very often this particular tragedy does seem to affect people with a particular role in serving the community; clergy. school teachers, politicians. But hopefully, if they have served the community well, if they have managed to focus their lives on the benefit of others, then they will be well prepared for the kingdom of heaven, well prepared to serve and be served in the heavenly realm. And if this is the case, who are we to think that an earthly retirement might be better for them than the heavenly blessings.
But what about the man in our story, who has not thought about serving other people? In fact the story does not even mention a wife and family so it does seem that he thinks only of himself, of his own wealth, or his own desire to relax, eat drink and be merry as the parable says. Well God’s words to him are, “You fool!” – “You have invested all your energy in earthly wealth, and tonight I am transferring you to the heavenly realm where you have invested nothing.” – “You fool”.
The man in our story is a bit like the arrogant management consultant who transferred all his personal wealth into Railtrack shares, just before they spectacularly lost all their value in 2001. He put all his eggs in one basket, and the basket collapsed. The man in our story put all his resources into earthly wealth and then died. But, as Jesus said, “a man’s life does not consist of the abundance of his processions.” Jesus ends the parable by saying, “so it is for those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich towards God.” Elsewhere in the gospels Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steel, but store up for yourselves treasurers in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steel, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6: 19-21).
We got exactly the same message from St Paul in our epistle reading today, “…seek the things that are above…set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things of that are on earth…”
So how do we, “seek the things that are above?” How do we make sure that we are rich towards God? How do we build up treasure in heaven? How do we invest in our eternal future, remembering that our 70 or 80 years on earth is quite short compared to the eternity for which we are created? How do we invest in assets that will pass the ultimate “stress test” of death?
Well, paradoxically, we do it by thinking not of ourselves, but of others. We do it by following the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbour. We try to live each moment, each day, attentive to what God wants from us in the moment and that day. And typically, what God wants from us, becomes clear from the people around us. He wants us to be attentive to them, to help them, to serve them, to take them forward on their journey towards God. It is as though the wealth that we create in other people is the wealth that endures to eternity. The dynamic of heavenly wealth is a dynamic of giving, not a dynamic of accumulating.
So what about our worldly wealth? How should we think about that? Well first of all, let’s give thanks to God for it, because any wealth that we have has come to us through God’s good gift. We may have worked hard for it, but without the grace of God we would have nothing. Secondly, let’s remember that we can’t take it with us. When we die we lose it all, so the protection and security that it affords us is limited; we must enter the kingdom of heaven without it. So this means that we should use our wealth wisely and prudently, while we are on earth, in order to build up treasurers in heaven. We should be generous in giving and investing; generous, not reckless. We should seek to use our giving and investing to build relationships of trust. We want to build up other people, build up other organisations in a sustainable way. Now it has to be said that in the current environment this is very hard. Even the banks appear hardly worthy of our trust. But let’s hold the resources that we have before God, and pray for the grace to use them well. Let’s be good stewards of the gifts that God has given us, seeking to invest in others wherever we can; build relationships, build trust, find prudent ways of giving, live for God, live for others. These are the ways to build up treasure in heaven. Amen.
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