Sunday, July 31, 2022

Playing with Salvation

Sermon for the seventh Sunday after Trinity

Is Our Lord playing with us?

From seven loaves 
and some fishes,
he feeds four thousand men
and produces seven baskets
of leftovers.

Why the leftovers?

Is He just showing off?

Is He trying to show us
the superabundance 
of God's love by being wasteful?

Is this an example
for us to follow?

[PAUSE]

Clearly,
our environment shows that 
we have played fast and loose
with the things of this Earth.

We have wasted so much.

There is plastic everywhere.
Seas and rivers are polluted,
and animal species 
are suffering as a result
of our exploitation
of the environment.

But then,
we don't even treat our own selves
any better.

We even see our own bodies
as playthings
to do with as we will.

We seem to think of ourselves
as ghosts
which live in bodies
and have a right to enjoy them
in whatever way we deem fit.

We don't see ourselves
as one unity,
body and soul together.

If we have such
flagrant disregard for
our own selves
how can we care about the environment?

[PAUSE]

Seven baskets of leftovers.

What do you think 
the disciples did?

Ate them up themselves?

Gave them to the poor?

Fed the birds?

We are not told 
what happens to them,
except we know
that everyone had
enough to eat.

So it's unlikely
that these leftovers
we're eaten by someone
present, 
even the disciples,
or even the Lord.

But one thing that 
we can trust
is that they didn't go to waste.

These leftovers fed something
or someone.

Someone got the benefit
of so much leftovers
fish and bread,
from a hungry person
to hungry mould.

What is left is recycled
and reused,
because that is the way
that God has ordered Nature,
in order to be beautiful.

The Lord is generous,
not wasteful.

But we are wasteful,
because we use what we have
in a way that shows God
that we do not have the same
love, care and attention
to His Creation
as He does.

We are the only animal that can sin
because we are the only animal
that can understand
not only what's going on
but also how we can use
everything to our advantage.

We fail to see ourselves
as part of God's Creation
but rather think
that we are beings with our own
God-given rights
while closing our eyes to our
God-given responsibilities.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord's Holy Incarnation
shows that He has so much regard
for what He has created.

Given that we have fallen
into the sickness of sin
we have infected, 
not just each other,
but the whole world
with this sickness.

Our Lord comes to bring Salvation:
health to us
health to the world
in the New Heaven
and the New Earth
which He promises us.

We cannot undo
the damage that we have done
by bringing Sin 
into the world,
but can bring
the Christ's superabundant love
in to relieve the effects of that damage.

If Christ will pour seven extra baskets
of bread into the world
after feeding four thousand,
then we can rest assured 
that it will be no waste
but will bring good nourishment 
where nourishment is lacking.

[PAUSE]

We are creatures of God.
We deserve respect
because we exist,
not as playthings
neither of God,
nor of others
nor of ourselves,
but as beings capable
of bearing into the world
the seven baskets of love
over and above
the love that God has given us.

We do not play with Salvation,
we live it
and bring to those who need it
the One Who brims over
with that Salvation.

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Taking home the pay packet

Sermon for the sixth Sunday after Trinity

Pay day should be 
very satisfying.

After all, 
you work so hard
and to find out
that,
perhaps,
all your labours
have reaped their reward
means you can breathe
a sigh of relief.

Bills can be paid.
Provisions can be bought.

And,
for the lucky ones,
some treat can be afforded.

Pay day comes 
with a sense of relief.

And then St Paul reminds us
the wages of sin is death.

Looking forward to pay day now?

[PAUSE]

We are well aware
of the inevitability
of death.

And, as Christians,
we know that sin and death 
are two sides of the same coin.

We die because we sin
and we sin because we know
we're going to die.

Adam and Eve
brought sin and death 
into Creation
creating a fissure,
a deep crack in our relationship
with God
and in our likeness
to God.

That crack has spread
through all humanity
depriving us 
of the ability to hear God
walking with us in the 
Garden of Creation.

Sin and death are
both separations from God:
they are both sides of the same coin.

How, then, can we possibly die to sin
as St Paul tells us?

[PAUSE]

The beauty of death 
is that it stops sin in its tracks.

The dead man can sin no more.

But to die in sin
means that separation from God
becomes permanent.

How can we both be dead to sin
and remain alive?

You know the answer to that.

Our Baptism is into the death 
of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In Baptism, we are given the grace
to be born again
but, in order to be born again,
we need to be dead first.

The wages of sin
have to be paid first.

And the death of Our Lord
pays those wages
for the whole world.

Who are the wages paid to?

God?

No. 
God does not want 
the death of a sinner
but rather that he turn
from his sin and live.

To the Devil?

No. 
The Devil wants us to think
he has a right to our souls
but he lies
and the truth of God frees us
from his grasp
by death.

To death?

How can death be paid to death?

With life!

Death is the absence of life.

We can pay a debt
by giving what is owed,
and the debt dies.

We can pay a hole in the earth
with earth,
and the hole disappears.

Pay death with life
and there is no more death.

Pay death with eternal life
and death is destroyed.

The death of Christ
is the means of our life.

In being baptized into His death
our wages of sin are paid
and, 
in paying those wages
both sin and death 
are destroyed.

[PAUSE]

Baptism gives us God's grace,
His active presence
by which we are incorporated
into His death
and into His life.

St John Chrysostom says,

"complete freedom 
from sin is not a reality as yet.

 We are told to live for God 
in Jesus Christ our Lord 
and to lay hold of every virtue, 
having Jesus as our ally in the struggle."

We cannot be free from 
the effects of sin in this life,
but, knowing that we have
Eternal Life in Christ,
we can be sure that 
Death will be the end of Sin
but not of us.

[PAUSE]

Sin and death are two sides
of the same coin.

And,
with that coin,
Christ has paid the wages of sin
for us on His cross.

We, too, must take up our cross
that we receive at our Baptism
and we must venerate that cross
because we are crucified with Christ
and will be raised to Eternal Joy
in Him.

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Pushing forward and pulling back

Sermon for the fifth Sunday after Trinity

The Day of Judgement is here!

What do you see?

Perhaps you have the image
of Our Lord sitting on His throne
sending the sheep to Heaven
and the goats to Hell.

Perhaps you see Him
wearing a judge's wig
with a stern expression on His face.

Perhaps you hear Him
pronounce sentence
in a deep, grim voice
while all around 
angels circle 
ushering in the defendants,
escorting the blessed to Heaven
and driving the damned to Hell.

Perhaps, through it all
you hear that phrase repeated,
"Sin cannot stand in the presence of God."

Day of wrath and doom impending!

No wonder St Peter is terrified.

[PAUSE]

We are very used 
to the image of sin and punishment 
as being a legal affair.

And this is certainly
how St Peter sees it.

In recognising God standing
waiting for him on the shore,
he recognises
his own deficiencies
his failings,
his fear that causes him
to deny his God.

He cannot abide this
so He pushes God away,
 not only in fear of his life,
but also of shame for sin
and the fires of Hell.

Notice this! 

He is the one pushing God away.

God is drawing him near.

There is a bizarre tug of war here.

[PAUSE]

The image of God as judge
is perhaps too well established
in our thinking for our own good.

We only have human law-courts
and our experience of them 
and we frame our expectation
of God's judgement of us
in that way.

Some of us will only ever see
law courts on the television
and these will be overdramatic
and focused entirely
on the bad guy getting his comeuppance
and the good guy being acquitted.

But our law is a shadow 
of God's divine law.
What we fail to see
is the face of God
burning with a desire for us
to be whole again.

Look at the Holy Scriptures
from beginning to end.

Time and time again,
God comes to us face to face
but we turn away from Him,
so He approaches in a different direction
and we turn away from Him.

At every stage,
He presents Himself
sits with us
and tells us the truth.

He gives us every opportunity
to find Him,
begs us to turn to Him,
but in our selfish pride
we don't want to find Him
because our sin turns us away.

So we try and turn and turn and turn.

We spin on the spot
trying to cope with the presence 
of God that wills our good,
seeks our health
desires our presence
and rejoices in our being.

Afraid that the image of God as Judge
will cast us away 
into the forgotten wastes.

And what happens 
when God speaks to us
when His very presence
shows us how fallen we are?

"Fear not!"

[PAUSE]

Fear not. 

The Judge is not what you think.

Yes, He discerns Good and Evil
but He does so knowing everything
perfectly.

He does so with the intention
of doing something about it
healing,
restoring,
cleansing,
forgiving.

The Light if His Goodness
burns our sinful souls
but, rather than push Him away,
we have to embrace Him
and let the burning love
rid us of our 
most cherished misery,
our favourite sins,
our greatest faults
that, for whatever reason,
we can't let go.

It's the goats who won't let go
and who run away in fear
that God won't let them be
as they want to be
and who refuse the courage
to step forward into the arms
of their creator.

They have their reward.

But for those who turn
and trust the Lord
when He tells us not to be afraid,
we are given ...

Work.

A job to do.

Fish for men!
Feed the hungry!
Clothe the naked!
Preach the Gospel!

Give opportunities for people
to see Christ,
to fear Him,
and to dispel that fear
by seeing beyond our childish
perception of what it means
to be Judge in purest love!

He gives opportunities
to confront people
with His love.

Invite them to Joy!
Reel them in!
Don't push them away!

[PAUSE]

Our Lord will sit in judgement on us.
He sees our sins 
and He hates our sins.

He hates them because
they stop us from coming to Him.

We should push them 
out of our way to Christ
and let ourselves get drawn in
towards Him
and to Eternal Joy in Him.

Monday, July 11, 2022

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Love's judgement

Sermon for the fourth Sunday after Trinity

Be merciful and receive mercy.
Don't judge and you won't be judged.
Don't condemn and you won't be condemned.
Forgive and receive forgiveness.

Our Lord gives us two things to do
and two things not to do.

We are to be merciful and forgive.

We are neither to judge nor condemn.

But we do judge and we do condemn.

A man is judged guilty of murder 
and condemned to prison 
for ten years.

What's wrong with that?

We need judgement and condemnation
for the good of our society.

We need it in our personal lives, too.

If we make the judgement
that someone is a gossip,
then we don't confide 
our greatest worries 
with them.

If someone says something 
hateful towards another person,
then we condemn their words.

We need that.

Judgement tells us that 
there must be order in our society.

Condemnation tells us that 
there must be
fitting consequences
for our actions.

Our Lord cannot mean 
that we do away 
with the structure of our society
and our responsibility within it.

So what does He mean?

[PAUSE]

St Luke records 
these words of Jesus 
in his account of the Beatitudes.

Jesus pronounces 
who is blessed
and who can expect woe.

He also commands
that we are to love
even our enemies.

This means that
mercy, judgement, 
condemnation and forgiveness
have to be seen
in the context of Love
and to love
means to will 
intensely and actively 
the good of others 
regardless
of who they are.

We are to ensure 
that we only make judgements
in order to see 
what good the other needs to thrive
and be truly happy.

We are to ensure that 
we only condemn the evils
that beset other people.

[PAUSE]

True judgement is about discerning
what is good from what is evil.

But we are fallen 
and cannot always see 
what is good and what is not.

Certainly, 
we cannot make things good.

We cannot repair the damage
because we ourselves
are damaged.

It would be like 
repairing a pothole in the road
with a sponge.

If we discern evil in others
then there is evil within us
that can and must be discerned.

If we stand stoney-hearted
and allow others to be 
destroyed utterly by their sins
then we can expect the same thing.

We might not be able
to do good of ourselves
but we are able to do good
if we have God's grace,
because grace perfects nature.

We, the Church, 
have been given grace
to help,
to heal,
to strengthen,
and lead people
to their perfection
in God Himself.

Mercy and Forgiveness
are manifestations of that grace.

Judgement and Condemnation 
are reserved only for God
in the Last Day
Who knows the secrets of the hearts
of everyone created.

We don't take that upon ourselves.
We seek only to make people
truly whole
and truly happy.

We seek others' good
but we can only find their good
and ours
in Almighty God.

But seeking someone else's good 
without God,
using our own standards
will bring sorrow upon us.

If our judgement and condemnation
prevent another's approach to God
then we cease to be truly whole
we cease to be truly happy
because we fail 
to have reflected
the loving God in our lives.

There is evil to be judged,
and we can make that judgement,
but with God's love.

There is evil to be condemned
and we can make that condemnation
but with God's love.

But, if we lack
the love of God
and the love of neighbour
we all are worse off.

[PAUSE]

Love's judgement never destroys,
but what does love truly 
judge and condemn?

Can we do the same?

Sunday, July 03, 2022

Valuing Joy

Sermon for the third Sunday after Trinity

Why all this fuss over 
finding a single lost sheep?
Sheep go wandering off
every day.

Why call your friends together 
just to say, 
"look! I found my lost silver coin!"
Unless it is a rare silver coin
you might not think
much about it.

Surely there are better things
to rejoice over than 
a single silver coin
and a sheep with wanderlust.

[PAUSE]

Well here's the issue:

A lost sheep might seem
trivial to one person
but it isn't trivial
to this shepherd
who values the sheep highly.

A lost coin, 
even a ha'penny piece,
might have more value to this woman
than the billions in the bank
of a tycoon.

We each have a different idea
of what is valuable.

A thing is valuable to us
if it motivates us to do
or to feel something
to possess it
or keep it safe.

This is why Our Lord tells us
that where our treasure is
our heart will be also.

It's almost so simple
that we pass over it
without giving it a moment's thought.

We will only work 
for the things we value.

This is why the Lord tells this parable.

It's a parable about
the value we place on things.

What is insignificant to one person
is vital to another.

We only search 
for something lost
if it's something we value highly.

The harder we look,
the more valuable it must be.

If Christ is prepared 
to leave the Royal Court
of ninety-nine angels in Heaven
to save one poor human being,
then what does it say
about how much value we have?

This is why the beggar 
is called Lazarus,
and the rich man is not named.

It is the person who is valued,
not earthly riches
and we forget this at our peril.

Why are we so valued?

[PAUSE]

We have been created
to share in God's joy.

We are meant to be people
who rejoice in the Lord alway,
but we don't because
we start caring about things that get lost,
and spend our lives looking for them.

Sometimes, 
the things that we are looking for
don't exist in the first place!

It's something that we are to unlearn.

We need to unlearn 
our value of the world,
in order to value God most.

We worship only what we love the most
and we need to learn to worship God.

Only then can we rejoice 
in what we have
because we rejoice in it
for God's sake
and not for our own.

[PAUSE]

If someone asks us to rejoice
when they find something
that they have been looking for
then it is up to us Christians
to bring our joy with us
so that whatever was lost
and is now found
becomes a reason
 to thank God.

It is our Christian calling
to work at
turning happiness into joy.

That way we can consecrate
what was lost
and is now found
and make it a vehicle
for people to go one further
and find the God
Whom they lost
and is always there to be found
if people will just seek Him out.

[PAUSE]

We Christians can find joy
but it is hard work.

When we find it,
it is our duty to share it
so that others can rejoice 
in the Living God,
the source of all joy and gladness.