Sermon - Trinity 19

Last week we heard of Matthew being called by Jesus and following, the action moved swiftly from the street to a party where we are told there were many “tax collectors and sinners”. I mentioned that I’ve been to parties like that. This week, even though we took a detour out of the usual readings, we are back with Our Lord telling us how it is. We are bowling towards the kingdom season and we have to truly understand what that means. We all fall short...

Three vicars went to the diocesan retreat and were all sharing one room.

The first pastor said, "Let's confess our secret vices one to another. I'll start - my secret vice is I just love to gamble. When I am away from home, I gamble all my money away."

The second vicar said, "My secret vice is that I just love to drink. When I am outside the parish, I like to have a good drink”.

The third vicar said, "My secret vice is gossiping and I can't wait to get out of this room!"

We all fall short of God’s plan for us, and although some of the time we think we are doing well, it is usually those times when we are actually doing worst.
In the Gospel reading, the Chief Priest and the scribes have been questioning Jesus about the Authority of John the Baptist. It is not surprising that Jesus confronts them with the question of John's authority because he had been baptising people for the forgiveness of sins. Rituals for the forgiveness of sins were largely in the hands of the priests and the temple. That was one of its main functions. While there was technically nothing wrong with John's rather novel rite, in the eyes of those properly ordained to priestly tasks it amounted to something of a maverick enterprise. Very closely related is the controversy about Jesus' declaring God's forgiveness.
Their response, however well meaning is the fact that they are somehow trying to ‘protect’ God, who (we know) is fully capable of protecting himself.
The second they are doing their best to ignore the fact that Jesus seems to be mixing with the wrong people (just like John) - How dare this Rabbi DECIDE to sit alongside the people considered to be OUTCAST by society.
We miss the point too sometimes…
I hear some stories of clergy who dress up as homeless people and visit their church, sitting at the back and wait to see who comes to sit next to them…my Dad told me about seeing it on the telly – I have always been uplifted by this, until now!
I started to wonder if we weren’t being taken for fools, by bad theology and some strange social experiment – not to judge the response of the congregation, but to make us all feel better.
Let me explain;
• It is playing to the fears of people –Erin reminded recently that when we were in theological college we lived in a huge house that was close to the Cathedral in Llandaff. A homeless man lived under a hedge in the front garden – he was usually drunk, very smelly and had lots of problems. I used to make him sandwiches, roll him cigarettes and give him coffee, when I had time. I had sorted him out with a place at a hostel, but he only went there when it was frosty because he didn’t like being indoors. The college kept telling me to ring the police to move him on – he was a huge problem for them. My problem was that he never gave me the mugs back that I put the coffee in. He was their demon, not mine... I have my own.
• I suppose we could all write a list of people who you definitely wouldn’t want to be sat next to at a party. We all have our limits – the homeless don’t present a problem to some people.
• If I told you that I was an investment banker who short sold HBOS shares sending the company spiralling out of control – or - Someone who had informed to the police against a member of their family –or - someone who had stolen off a frail senior citizen using violence- or -someone who had introduced children to drugs… AND they are sat next to you at a party …I think you might be getting the idea…we all have our limits.
This is all too complex for us to judge – some of those things are intolerable to us, some are passable, and some we might not see too much of a problem.
Jesus tells us that people are complex – we are all failing in some way, and we are all damaged in some way.
In the parable Jesus tells in about the man with two sons, I used to think that it was pointless. It was obvious that when the Father asked the sons to go to the vineyard, and one goes and the other doesn’t bother, when Jesus asks “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” I thought like the Chief Priests and Elders and said the first. But when you read it again, you can see that neither actually did what the father asked. The first son eventually changed his mind and went.
Jesus says to them “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. “

The story isn’t important, the important thing is that ALL are welcomed – and those who seem to be OUTCAST, JUDGED and PERSECUTED are closer than us to JESUS – because he was OUTCAST, JUDGED and PERSECUTED too.
When we judge the lifestyle of others, when we fail to treat others with respect, when we impose rules that make others unwelcome, we push them closer to JESUS and by the same action we PUSH OURSELVES AWAY. Revd Peter would tell you that is Newton’s third law “"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."
It’s a long way from the old man with a beard, who has dirty clothes, smells and has a dog on a string.
The liberation theologians of South America, who witnessed the ‘disappearing’ of thousands of their people, and the ones remaining living in tin shacks on the side of mountains talk of a ‘preferential option for the poor’ I believe this means that through their suffering they can more easily take to heart the suffering of others, and sit alongside them with an authenticity we can lack.
Matthew has a way of cutting through the red tape and of by-passing the religious bureaucracy. There is no room for pretence or pretentiousness. The prostitutes and tax-collectors, the lousy rich and the women they exploited, got the point, at least some of them.
Is it because they allowed themselves to be vulnerable, to be moved, to let the word of compelling compassion address their deeper needs? Were the religious leaders so defensive in protecting their system - in the name of the people of God and the Scripture they suppressed their inner cries, stopped their ears?
It is odd that we still find so many people inside the church who have a greater problem calling for change in society than many outside the church. They seem determined to protect God.
Let us pray…
May we, in our time bless God with our openness to others, and our tireless efforts to right wrongs in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN

Thursday Sermon on Green book Trinity 18 readings

Mark 12:28-34
In the Gospel this morning we find Jesus in controversy with the Sadducees, he has just stated that the biblical God “Is not the God of the dead but of the living”. A scribe, no doubt a pharisee asks him a question debated among the learned “Which commandment is the first of all?”. As usual, Jesus’ answer becomes a challenge.
There is not one major commandment, but two of them: Love of God and love of neighbour. In Mark’s Gospel, it is preceded by another statement which is taken from far back in Deuteronomy. “The Lord God is one”. It means that although there appear to be TWO loves; God and neighbour, they are in fact from the same source and cannot be separated.
Our biblical faith is a process through which we acknowledge God as the immovable force in our lives. God is not something imagined or part of a theory, God is a ‘someone’ we must love “With all our heart and mind and with all our strength” as it says.
As we know, there is a danger in putting our trust in others – we are being told in this reading to trust in God.
There are times when I think we all would like to be able to separate the commandment into easy parts. Love of God, and love of neighbour – Can’t we just love God, because our neighbours are more difficult to love. We have all thought that, however it can’t be done – we must love both God and neighbour – because if we fail in loving our neighbour we fail to love God.
There is another problem – when I went to Bible Club and Sunday school in the chapel as a child, I learned verses of the Bible by rote, and they have stayed with me all my adult life. It wasn’t until it became my duty as a priest to explain the Gospels did I see the true and complicated challenge.
We can all say “love the Lord your God and your neighbour as yourself” but that actually means living in a different way – It means having the ability to forgive readily, to listen to others, to join in Christian community and the wider community, it is thinking about others over our own needs and wants, and finally it is about forbearance (one of my favourite words). Without honestly doing our best at these things, we cannot say we really love God.
The scribe in the gospel reading understands this. He even senses that this is what gives meaning to worship, which would otherwise be empty. Jesus approves of his opinion and says so. The scribe agrees with us too, it is easier to talk than do.
May God give us strength to live for Him, in our love for others.

St. Matthew

The Call of Matthew
Matthew 9:9-13
I sometimes wonder if Matthew ever looked back to the day when Jesus called him to leave his tax-collectors booth and follow. The gospel doesn’t make it clear whether he managed to make an informed choice; it doesn’t even tell us if he thought about the decision at all. We are merely told that he “got up and followed”. Matthew was standing at the crossroads of living an ordinary or extraordinary life; the certainties of what he knew versus the risks of a great leap into the unknown.
The next we hear of Matthew is when he is hosting a dinner party for tax-collectors and “sinners”, I think we have all been to parties like that. Jesus defends his choice of company by declaring that he came to heal the sick not the healthy, to call sinners not the righteous. The transformation is progressing, Matthew’s old life is disappearing and the new adventure has begun.
The calling of Matthew, his following Christ, the meal and the guests are all a sign and a foretaste of things to come, when the logic of this world will be overturned by the perfect justice of God. Jesus is revealing his identity as the son of the true God, so he responds to his critics by using the text the prophet Hosea applied to God seven hundred years before “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”. By calling and welcoming sinners, the outcast and the unworthy, Jesus brings the offer of universal salvation to all people, for all time. There are no surprises in this reading, it is clear and direct. It is wonderful to think that we are a fly on the wall when Jesus reveals his mission – this is his mission statement, and it should be ours too.
We may not be blessed with a personal invitation from Christ as he walks through our town; however when we witness the daily struggle people have to obtain justice, peace, food and medicines, when we think of the global market turmoil, where billions of pounds are being wiped off the values of shares and banks are struggling to survive, we need to watch for the real cost of the downturn as it reaches those who have least, at home and abroad. Christ is calling once again, using the same words to invite new disciples to the same mission. If we listen, we will hear.
There is an old Welsh saying “Bad news goes about in clogs, Good news in stockinged feet”. We should, like Matthew, put clogs on the Good News, taking it to those who haven’t been invited to a party for a long time. It’s all part of the wonder of faith, the joy of believing, and the certainty God’s love. It is your mission and mine. God always appears in disconcerting ways. He seems to delight in relying on what is the least adequate according to human judgement. He calls sinners like Matthew to be disciples, and God counts on us, weak as we are, to make the kingdom present.
“I desire mercy not sacrifice” – this is not an opportunity for us to shower God with great acts of self-righteousness, but to be willing to seek him in the corners of the world where the best parties happen, where all the unworthy are invited, even us.