“Mustard seed faith”

Pentecost 7 - 27^th July 2014

Revd Andrew Bain 

Readings:

Romans 8: 26-39 - who shall separate us from the love of God?

Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52 – the mustard seed, the tiniest of all seeds…

These readings we’re having from Romans are just bringing us Paul’s wisdom, one life-giving insight after another, so much that you almost want him to slow down so you can take it all in.

This week: The Spirit prays for us in sighs too deep for words; all things work together for good to those who love God; who shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? It’s like sitting through the Messiah – the whole Gospel’s here.

But you could be forgiven for challenging Paul and saying: Ok these are fine poetic words, but what have they got to do with my struggles? I find prayer really difficult, sometimes it’s boring, sometimes I feel like I’m getting nowhere and God’s gone off on holiday somewhere.

The writer CS. Lewis knew that experience, in spite of having written some of the most powerful books on Christian faith of his generation – he knew that experience when his wife, Joy, died. Romance had come late into his life, and they were married as Joy lay in her hospital bed, dying of cancer. How cruel to have her snatched away when they’d only just found each other. In a little volume called “A Grief Observed” Lewis writes of just how prayer felt in those early days of loss: “But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

Most of us know something like that experience at some time in our lives. God seems far away and our troubles and our sadnesses just seem to overwhelm us. So what would Paul know about that? Well, quite a lot in fact. When Paul wants to show his qualifications as an apostle it’s his sufferings he lists as his validation, his authority for saying anything about anything: “Five times forty lashes at the hands of the Jews, three times beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I have been shipwrecked (you really didn’t want to go on your holidays with St Paul), a night and a day adrift at sea, in danger from rivers, in danger from robbers, hungry and thirsty, in cold and exposure”. And quite apart from that, he tells the Corinthians, I had to put up with you lot! Paul has been about as roughed up by life as you could get, and yet still he prays.

And now he writes to the Christians in Rome, knowing that he daren’t make light of what they’re going through. In the very heart of darkness the infant Church is daily in fear of its life. Like the Christians in Mosul last week faced with three terrible choices: convert to Islam, pay protection money, or leave (or a fourth choice – die), the Christians of Rome had choices and dilemmas every bit as tough. Do you make sacrifices to the Emperor and acknowledge him as a God, or face the consequences of persecution, imprisonment and even the arena, and die as entertainment for the mob?

So in no way are Paul’s words just pretty poetry. Paul’s under no illusions that every day and in every way we’re all getting better and better or that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. We fight against principalities and powers, BUT, and this is the fulcrum, the turning point of the whole of human history and every human situation: The Cross of shame, the Roman Cross of shame, is now the Cross of Glory, Christ’s royal throne from which he reigns – so Caesar watch out, and all the powers of darkness, watch out; and all the darkness in me and in you as well because Jesus is risen.

So when Paul is weak, when he’s imprisoned for his faith, he knows that it’s the Spirit of the Risen Jesus, living in his friends whose names we know – it’s the Spirit of Jesus in his friends that strengthens his own faith, carries him when his own faith and his own praying might seem like mission impossible. How can you pray when life is so hard? I think you’re carried by Jesus in your friends and in their praying for you.  Because prayer isn’t so much what we do, but what God does in us, and in our brothers and sisters. It’s that tiny mustard seed of faith of people who pray, people whose hearts are moved towards us, bringing us the moments of resurrection that we need.

           

The writer and priest, Donald Nicholl, records the story of a man who was lying desperately ill in hospital. He writes: “He was almost out of his mind with terror and confusion induced by the drugs administered to him. Nothing of his true self seemed to remain except a tiny particle the size of a grain of mustard seed. Outside that particle all was chaos and darkness. Suddenly he heard a voice from the nearby corridor: “I’m that bloody lonely I could cry”. It was the voice of an old miner who was in hospital for the first time in his life and had been left in a wheelchair in the corridor.

The old miner had cried out because he was overwhelmed by the impersonality of it all. Hearing the terror in the old man’s voice the desperately ill man in the neighbouring ward, from the pit of his own terror, said to himself: “I’ll go out and sit by him if it’s the last thing I do.” And so he did. And from that moment his own terror began to lift. A process of healing had begun in him, so that soon he was more whole than ever before in his life. In the voice of the old man he had heard the voice of God calling him to wholeness and holiness. You can begin anytime, anywhere, even if you are only a tiny grain of mustard seed lying in a pit of terror”.

This is the tiny mustard seed of faith inside all of us because in all these things, we are, together, “more than conquerors, through him who loved us”.

“Of such is the Kingdom of God”

Pentecost 6

20^th July 2014

Revd Andrew Bain

Romans 8: 12-25 – the glorious freedom of the children of God

Matthew: 13: 24-30, 36-43 – the righteous will shine like the sun

“Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children”.

This is one of those weeks when the original sermon, which I’d written earlier in the week, has had to be abandoned because events have overtaken us: The shooting down of that Malaysian airliner and what’s happening in Gaza - terrible events, the results of human wickedness, costing hundreds of lives and most unignorably, the lives of children.

Eighty children in the airline tragedy, scores in Gaza – four boys killed by an Israeli missile, while playing on a beach, many more dying in their own homes or as they flee – hurried along, hand in hand, looking for safety, shepherded by distracted parents who have no idea where safe actually is.

These are the little ones whose angels, Jesus tells us, always appear before the throne of God. These are the children we have to be like if we want to have any hope of seeing the kingdom of God. These are the “mere children” to whom wisdom is given when the wise and powerful are blind to it.

The sight of little rucksacks bought for summer holidays, lying amidst the smoking debris, of maimed and terrified children lying in hospitals in Gaza, should move a whole world to repentance. We need to pray that these horrors will move some hardened adult hearts to turn away from violence, because the adult enemy you have in your sights when you launch a missile, in Gaza or Ukraine or anywhere else, and whichever side you’re on, is someone’s child, and God’s child – always.

This is creation groaning in travail, awaiting the glorious liberation of the children of God. But at the end of all these things, Jesus says, God will sort the evil from the good, sin from righteousness. His own resurrection is God’s seal on that as a promise to all of us: he will raise us up, beyond all our crucifixions, whatever burdens we groan under today, all that evil we don’t want, but we do it anyway. He’ll raise us up; there’ll be an end of it.

But for now, we need a wisdom that enables us to live in this world and still see the sunshine through the clouds. The fact that Israel and Palestine are locked in a one-sided war, that Ukraine, Iraq, Syria are all bent on tearing themselves apart, the fact that family relationships sometimes break down and they don’t heal, none of these – even then - make our world an evil place. Goodness breaks out still – like the story I saw this week of a young American Jewish boy who’s gone to Israel to protest on behalf of Palestinians, and say: “Not in my name!” And there are still childlike stories of joy to give us hope, like in a story I watched on Youtube this week of a Downs Syndrome boy, Tim, who’s opened his own burger restaurant, called Tim’s Place, advertising the best hugs in town. He says to camera: Food is just food, but hugs... Unless you become as a little child. The wisdom of mere children. The foolish wisdom of the Cross.

This is the wisdom Jesus teaches for surviving this world and not despairing, the wheat and the tares.  Yes, we groan; but we laugh too. Yes, we’re sad, but we rejoice as well. God loves this world of his enough not to just see the weeds, those choking sins both of nations and individuals – your sins and mine. Those tares amidst the wheat. God sees all this infestation of unhealthy growth in his world, but he loves the world enough not to do what he did with Noah’s flood or the Tower of Babel and sweep us all away, pull up all us weed infested human beings, which would presumably leave him with a very peaceful but very empty, planet.

It’s not that the weeds don’t matter. Tending the garden of your own soul, striving for goodness and love – he loves us into wanting to do that. Working for justice in our world, the same. Justice matters. We daren’t walk by on the other side. But living in this world for now; living with other people and with myself for now, this needs wisdom. It’s the wisdom of the little child who sees the world with fresh eyes and without either cynicism or  despair.

And so I’ll share what was destined for my original sermon because it still holds true: One of my favourite bits of simple wisdom comes from an American book called: “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten”, by Robert Fulgham. He writes: ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. These are the things I learned:

Share everything; Play fair; Don't hit people; Put things back where you found them; Clean up your own mess; Don't take things that aren't yours; Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody; Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.  Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love, ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are - when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together”.

The weeds matter and there will be a judgement for us all, for our standing aside and not caring enough or even praying enough (we should be praying for our world from the depths of our hearts every day) – but, God’s judgement is always filled with mercy, because we’re children, his children, and he knows our hearts and he sees the good in us always. Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for revealing the mysteries of the kingdom to mere children – which means, to us. 

Pentecost 5

“To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace"

13^th July 2014

Sermon by Peter Davey

Readings:

Romans 8: 18 – 23

Matthew 13: 1 – 9

Do you ever listen to a reading from one of Paul’s letters and think to yourself, “Now what on earth was all that about?” This is particularly true for me, I find, when the reading is taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Did you know that Martin Luther considered the Letter to the Romans to be the most important book in the New Testament. In his well-known Preface to his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Romans he writes, “This letter is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest Gospel. It is well worth a Christian’s while not only to memorise it word for word, but also to occupy himself with it daily as though it were the daily  bread of the soul. It is impossible to read or to meditate on this letter too much or too well. The more one deals with it, the more precious  it becomes and the better it tastes” Now I suspect that if I asked for a show of hands of those of you who have memorised Romans or meditate upon it daily, I somehow doubt there would be many hands raised!

Part of the difficulty of understanding a short extract from Paul’s Letter to the Romans is that without the previous explanation of various terms that Paul uses, it all seems very theological and complex. For example, in today’s reading from Romans 8, Paul uses terms like sin, flesh and law, but he has explained what he means by these terms earlier in the Letter. The fact is that Paul was not writing to fellow theologians, he was writing to ordinary Christians like you and me. For this reason Paul explains the words he uses in simple terms that we can understand. Let us take the word sin for example. Nowadays the word sin is felt to be rather old fashioned and theological, but in Chapter 7 verse 19 Paul explains what sin is in one brilliant sentence. He writes, “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.” This is not a theological statement, but a psychological statement about the human condition which we can all relate to. How often do we do say or think something out of anger, irritation, envy, small-mindedness, greed, lust  or just plain selfishness, and regret it immediately? It is as if something came over us and we couldn’t help ourselves and we just came out with it or thought it. Well what came over us was what Paul calls sin. What Paul is saying in today’s reading is that we are a slave to this sin as however hard we try, we cannot stop ourselves doing, saying or thinking  these so-called evil things. “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do”. 

Every time we say,  do or think  something unpleasant, we resolve not to do it again but only to do, say or think good things. But so often we fail. This is because they are engrained in us in our unconscious mind through habit  and try as we might, we cannot change them. We are slaves to our habits. In other words we are slaves to our own sense of self and we cannot stop ourselves being selfish. So does that mean there is nothing we can do? Well this is the good news that Paul is telling us! There is nothing we can do, but Christ Jesus is the one who can liberate us from ourselves. It is only the Spirit of Christ that can set us free. There is nothing we can do but let go of our sense of self, and the Spirit of Christ will act for us and through us. Only the Spirit of Christ in our hearts can truly love others and allow us to be patient and kind and gentle and good. .

So how can we practically allow the Spirit of Christ to live in us? I would like to share with you a vlittle technique that I find very useful. When you feel yourself getting angry or irritated or envious, just take 3 slow breaths and be aware of your breath in your body and that your breath is the Spirit of Christ dwelling  in you. This has the affect of stopping that unwanted thinking  before any action or speech can take place. You will, of course, not catch yourself every time but over time this technique can help us overcome our unwanted habitual thinking. As Paul puts it in today’s reading, To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace”. By setting our minds on the breath of Christ in us, we can find peace and the true life of freedom from self.

But why is this passage from Paul’s letter to the Romans coupled with our Gospel reading? Well in our Gospel reading this morning Jesus himself put this same insight in the form of the parable of the sower sowing seed. In the parable Jesus tells us that it is not enough to hear the word, to enter the Kingdom of heaven we have to let go of all our selfish desires and ambitions, all our sense of status  and intellect, and allow the seed of Christ’s Spirit to dwell in us and transform us from within. The seed must be sown in our hearts  and we must feed and water these good seeds so that we can bear fruit, some 100 fold, some 60 fold and some 30 fold.

And Paul tells us that it is essential to remember that we cannot bear good fruit at all if we rely on our self. The self must die to allow Christ to bear fruit in us. We must say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me”. As Paul writes to the Christians at Philippi, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,being born in human likeness, and being found in human form. He humbled himself and became obedient the point of death, even death on a Cross”.

So let us meditate on the cross every day, taking up our cross daily as jesus himself directed,  and so remind us that we have died  to self, are dead to sin, and now live in Christ Jesus. Life in the Spirit sets us  free to bear the fruit of the Spirit and so love   everyone we come in contact with in the way that Jesus loved. This is the purest gospel that Martin Luther spoke of. In Paul’s words in our reading, “But if Christ be in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”

Peter and Paul

Sunday 29^th June

I can’t think of anyone who more deserves that term “pillars of the Church” than Peter and Paul. Both of them shared the experience of prison; both paid the price of drinking Christ’s cup of suffering to the dregs. But in other ways they couldn’t be more different: Peter is the big fisherman, a bit rough and ready, often too ready to speak – as when heoffers to build tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah on the Mont of Transfiguration, sometimes too ready to go back to the old rough ways – like when he gets out his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane and cuts off someone’s ear.

But Peter is also the one with the big heart: he’s the first to say: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God; Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”. He’s the first to leap out of the boat when the Risen Jesus appears on the shore with breakfast ready: “It is the Lord!” He’s wonderfully complex. The rock on which the Church is built, but a rock with a crack in it, deep flaws, flaws that Jesus loves. He’s Peter the betrayer, but he’s also on that same seashore, Peter the forgiven, Peter to whom the care of the sheep and the keys to the kingdom, both are given to him.

Knowing what we know of Peter, it’s enough to make you ask: Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Lord? Do you really know this man? But of course, he does.

And he knows Paul too. Saul when we first meet him, holding the coats of those who stoned Stephen, then breathing threats and violence against the saints and persecuting them with a zeal that has terrifying resonances with persecutions going on today. Killing people in God’s name? Saul didn’t flinch. So it’s no wonder that when the converted Paul is first introduced to the Christians of Damascus they’re deeply suspicious – like bringing a wolf to meet the sheep. Are you sure? they ask. Haven’t you heard about this man?

But Paul converted is just what the Lord needs. The mind of a lawyer, but the heart of a poet – “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love I am a noisy clang or a sounding cymbal; so faith, hope, love abide – these three - and the greatest of these is love”. And Paul will use any means to get the Gospel out there: Roman roads, Roman shipping lanes, sometimes even appealing to Roman Law (although under Roman Law he’s killed in the end); taking the Gospel right to the heart of intellectual Athens and debating with the philosophers on their own terms and even quoting their own poetry. He says: "I make myself all things to all men, so that by any means I may save some". Would Paul have used Facebook? – you bet. And Twitter too, no doubt, although I doubt if he’d have got his great Epistle to the Romans down to 140 characters.

Paul can, of course, get a bad press over some things that are very much of his time and context – notably that women should keep their heads covered in worship, not be permitted to teach, and be subject to men – although you have to balance this by the clear evidence that women were among Paul’s closest friends and fellow labourers for the Gospel, and that men are firmly instructed to love and respect both their wives and their children – everyone submitting to each other in love. But the greatest gift Paul gives us quite simply is Gospel.

If he hadn’t argued it out with Peter and the other apostles in Jerusalem, pleading to be allowed to extend the Gospel to the Gentiles, we might none of us be sitting here. Peter may be the Rock on which the Church is built, but Paul is the visionary, the far-seeing one. It’s significant to know that the very first Gospel we have is the Gospel according to Paul. His letter to the Galatians predates our earliest written copy of any Gospel by at least twenty years.

And this is what he tells the Galatians: the first written proclamation by any Christian that’s come down to us – “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery”.

These two imprisoned men, know that grace has set them free. Could you have more to live down, more to regret than either of them? Peter with his three denials, Paul with his hatred and violence, his past as a bigot with a mission. And Jesus sets them both free. Both would know miraculous jail breaks involving angels – no need for a key hidden inside a cake or a bar of soap if you’ve got angels around. But the real liberation is the one they preach and their voices echo right into this place, this time and into our hearts. Peter, who self-deprecatingly says he can’t compare with Paul’s learning (and actually sometimes doesn’t understand him – which is comforting) is in fact every bit as much of a poet as Paul is. Why? Because he’s in love: I have this to tell you, he says, “and you would do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and Christ the morning star rises in your hearts”.

Set that alongside Paul’s “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Set these words of Peter and Paul side by side and you have Good News – and millions have been touched by the witness of these flawed, but beloved and grace-filled men.

Two men who could not be more different, but the same love claimed them – and the love that claimed them claims us too. This Jesus who loved them into being more than they ever dared dream of will do the same for us. Paul says: For freedom Christ has set you free; Peter says, and he should know, This truth – this Jesus - is a lamp to shine in any dark place.