Sunday Sermons
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Sunday Sermons
Updated for 16th November 2008
Sermons from the last three weeks' Sundays and major festivals will normally be available here.
Not yet available.
Ninety years ago on Tuesday the guns ceased firing and the bloodiest war in human history (up to that point) effectively stopped. It didn't, of course, formally come to an end until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles the following year - which is why our war memorial, like most others, gives the dates as 1914-1919. And it wasn't, as many of those who survived the conflict hoped, "the war to end war". Even the immense outpouring of joy which has surrounded the election of Barack Obama as the next President of the United States hasn't quite succeeded in drowning the sound of gunfire from Iraq and Afghanistan, a sound which reminds us that young men (and women) are still dying in the service of their country. Nor has it succeeded in drowning the voices of those who still see the projection of military force as the preferred, if not the only, solution to the problems of our world - just as the leaders of the European powers so fatefully did in August 1914.
Today, above all days, as we remember the day the guns stopped firing - not only along the Western Front, but in Italy, the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa - as we remember that day, we remember the hopes which were kindled by those early commemorations, hopes which not even a second World War and the countless conflicts since have totally extinguished. We remember, too, the short-sightedness of politicians, whose desire to "squeeze Germany until the pips squeak" ensured the fulfilment of Marshall Foch's prediction that the Treaty of Versailles was "not a peace, but an armistice of 20 years". And we remember the foolishness of Church leaders across Europe who pronounced God's blessing on their respective national armies.
As we remember them, we hear the words spoken by the prophet nearly three thousand years ago, with their warning against the easy assumption that "God is on our side". We hear him warning against those who take it for granted that the God of Israel will never turn away from his chosen people but will give them decisive victory over their enemies on "the day of the Lord".
The prophet Amos was not a professional holy man but an agricultural labourer called by God to a new responsibility. The prophet Amos looked at the world of his day and found it rotten, like a basket of over-ripe fruit. He saw that the unprecedented prosperity of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah was built on oppression, that the rich enjoyed their life-style and their status at the expense of the poor, who were losing their land, their homes, their freedom. Some contemporary British politicians have claimed to be "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". Amos was not. The God of Israel was a righteous God, a God of justice. God had measured his people - and all the nations - by the standards of righteousness and justice, in the same way that a builder measures a wall with a plumb line. Those who had achieved material prosperity at the expense their poorer neighbours, those who condoned violence and oppression, were under God's judgement. It didn't matter how faithfully they performed their ritual observances or how lavishly they offered animals for sacrifice. "Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord" is his message to them. The day of the Lord brings judgement, not vindication, "darkness not light". Those who had failed to see the sufferings of their poorer brothers and sisters were doomed to live in gloom and darkness. Those who had built comfortable houses at the expense of the poor would find them places of danger, not security.
Last week, in preparation for today's commemoration, the BBC ran a series of programmes "My Family at War", in which some well-known broadcasters explored the part which their forebears had played in the years from 1914 to 1919. Most of them were faces from the trenches or the home front - an NCO here, a few "Tommies" there, a man whose job it was to recover the corpses from the battlefield and give them proper burial in one of those immaculately-kept Commonwealth war cemeteries that are dotted across Artois and Flanders. One of them, however, was officer class. Dan Snow's great-grandfather was one of the generals who presided over the disaster on the Somme in 1916. Extracts from some of General Snow's letters home to his wife were read out as a kind of counterpoint to the story of how the battle developed.
What came across was the General's selective blindness. I don't know - no one knows - whether he didn't want to worry his wife or whether his headquarters were simply so far removed from the front line that he didn't have a clue what his men were going through, but even as the casualties mounted he was still (apparently) convinced that everything was just fine and victory was within his grasp. His failure to see the suffering of his men was disturbing - nearly as disturbing as his accusation (after it became clear that the offensive had failed) that they lacked fighting spirit.
It was that last discovery that took the wind out of Dan Snow's sails. It was, as he realised, an act of injustice on his great-grandfather's part, an act that required, in a sense, penitence and contrition. Today as we remember those who died on the Somme and in all the other battles of two world wars, those in every combatant country who perished on the "home front" and those who are dying today in Iraq and Afghanistan, we, too, need to express contrition for our complicity in the violence of our world, our blindness to the suffering of the oppressed and exploited of every race and language and people and nation, both in uniform and out of uniform. We remember how the promise of "a land fit for heroes" turned into the hunger marches of Great Depression - and how, all too often, structures intended to support returning service personnel still fail to fulfil their purpose.
And as we remember our complicity in the violence and blindness of our world, we pray for grace to resist that violence - in our world and in our own hearts. We pray that we may respond with the self-giving love of Jesus our Lord. And we pray for the world and its leaders in the words of the prophet: "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Amen.
All of us are here tonight for one reason. And that is that somewhere inside we are hurting with the pain of loss. For some of us the pain may be just a nagging ache, a reminder of an old wound. For some of us the wound may still be raw and painful - so painful that we may be wondering how we've managed to find our way here. And for one or two, perhaps, bereavement is still so recent that the shock of loss has yet to move beyond a sense of numbness and incompleteness - a kind of waking dream from which we half-hope even now that we can rouse ourselves to find that the one we have lost has returned to us.
Some of us come with questions. Why did this happen? How could this happen? Some of those questions are addressed to ourselves; some to God. None of them admit of an easy answer. So we wait - and maybe weep - and we remember.
We remember the loved ones we have lost. We remember the good times - and the bad times. We remember the things we said or did and wish we hadn't; and we remember the things we didn't say or do, and wish that we had. We remember (Oh, how we remember!) the last words we spoke together, the last experiences we shared: and we try to make sense of it all.
For some of us the words of tonight's first reading may be a help. They remind us that, for those who believe, death isn't the end; that the souls of the righteous are indeed in the hand of God and no torment will ever touch them. "They are at peace... Their hope is full of immortality..." Those are words of immense comfort, written for people who were trying to make sense of their faith tradition in a culture that was at best indifferent or unfriendly - and sometimes violently hostile, a culture in which many believed (as many do today) that "life's a bitch, then you die". Those words affirm that life is not a randomly generated series of accidents. But they may not be all that helpful to those of us who are only too aware of our loved one's failings. What about those who weren't "righteous", who weren't saints but ordinary Joes and Josephines? What comfort does God have to offer us as we mourn them? Are their souls in God's hand, too?
For an answer to that question, it may be helpful to turn to our second reading, with its declaration that "Christ died for the ungodly." It isn't only the righteous, the good, the holy, who are the objects of God's love. "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us." There are no limits to God's compassion. There is no situation so dreadful that God's love cannot hold it and heal it. That is part of the meaning of the cross. That is why in this church, wherever we look, there is an image of violent, agonising death. Not because Christians are a bunch of sickos, but because the death of Jesus reveals the depth of God's love. In Jesus God shares every aspect of our human life - and that includes not only our joys, but also our suffering and our dying - and he does so in order that we may share his life eternally.
That last bit is important... "God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us" - yes! But that isn't the end of the story. Paul goes on to say that "If, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." The death of Jesus isn't some kind of pointless, masochistic wallow in human suffering. The death of Jesus opens the way to resurrection and life - both life in this world, and life lived eternally in God. That is why when we come, at the end of this service, to light candles in memory of those we love, we light them from the Easter candle.
We shall light our candles from the Easter candle, marked with the wounds of Christ, decorated with the cross of Christ - we shall light our candles from the Easter candle to affirm that each of the lives we remember tonight not only mattered to us: they also matter to God - and they matter to God eternally. They matter so much that he sent his Son into the world, so that they (and we) might live through him. They and we are included in that act of cosmic reconciliation which God brought about through the death of his Son. That is the content of the Christian hope both for ourselves and for those whom we love but see no longer.
Even though we have had to let go of them as they passed through the gate of death, those whom we remember tonight are still held in God's hand, and nothing, nothing in the whole of creation, no force in this world or beyond this world, can pluck them out of God's hand. To him all are alive.
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Is that a question people ask these days? I can remember when I was Bea's age - or even younger - going to the shops with my mother. People used to stop us for a chat. And they'd always ask her "And what does this little man want to be when he grows up?" Usually they didn't bother to wait for either of us to reply. They'd answer their own question: "I suppose he wants to be an engine driver, eh?" Then off they'd go, chuckling to themselves.
Well, I don't know what I would have said if they'd waited for an answer. I certainly wouldn't have said "an engine-driver", and probably not "a vicar". Not "a priest" either. We didn't talk about "priests" in those days. "Priests" in 1950s Liverpool were what Catholics had. I might have thought about being a ship's captain, like my dad's friend Gordon Roberts down the road. He got to wear a smart uniform and go to exciting places like Brazil - and sometimes he brought back presents. I've still got one. It's a balsa wood model of a raft that people in Brazil used to use to get from place to place along the river. It's a bit battered now, and it's lost a few parts, but it still reminds me of what might have been if I hadn't found another role-model to follow.
Actually it wasn't just one role model. There were a number of people over the years who showed me that you didn't have to sail to places like Brazil to find an exciting and fulfilling life. There were teachers at school; there were friends at church (some of the older people, too). There was the vicar of the church my parents settled in when they moved to Southampton; and the rector of the church I attended when I was at university. They were people who had something special about them. Like my dad's friend, Captain Roberts, they were on a journey, but it wasn't one that took you away for a couple of months' and then brought you back to your home port for a spell of shore leave. They were still on their outward voyage and the home port was a long way off, but sometimes you could see its lights reflected in their eyes.
Our Bible readings today are about those people. Our celebration this morning is about those people. They were what we call saints. Now, saints aren't just figures in a stained glass window, or a picture on the wall. Saints are real people. Saints are people we've met in our everyday life - though we may not always recognise it. Saints are people who know, like St John, that they are God's children. They know that they are loved. They know that they are on a journey. They don't know how that journey will end but they do know that it will end with God and that when it does end, they will be like God, because they will reflect his love in the same way that a polished mirror reflects light. They know that their home port is what we call heaven; not a place on a map, but a state of being - resting in God totally and utterly, for ever and ever.
And how do we get there? Jesus gives us directions in this morning's Gospel reading. In that sermon on the mountain he points out the way to blessedness (which is another word for what we call heaven). To get there, we have to travel light, to get rid of all the excess baggage we carry around with us. Things like wealth and possessions. As the old song says, "You'll never get to heaven in an old Ford car" - or a BMW or a Toyota for that matter. And not only things outside us, things inside us, too. We'll never get to heaven if we're weighed down with grudges and resentment. We'll never get to heaven if we're cold-hearted towards other people; if we think that the only person who matters is me and the only thing that matters is what I want. We'll never get to heaven if we're always quarrelling, or if we always think the worst of others.
But we will get to heaven if we trust God, our loving Father. We will get to heaven if we are open to sharing the joys and the sorrows of others. We will get to heaven if we're prepared to follow Jesus all the way - not just when it suits us - if we put his values, justice, mercy, peace, at the centre of our lives, if we feed on his words, and on the bread and wine of his supper, if we open our hearts and our lives to his love, so that our eyes begin to reflect the light of heaven and our hearts overflow with the thankfulness and praise that mark the lives of the holy ones of God.
In the days of the first Queen Elizabeth a story was told about a Scottish minister preaching on the gospel passage that we have just heard. He was focusing on Jesus's quotation from the scriptures - in particular the command to love your neighbour as yourself. He concluded that all people are one another's neighbour and brother (or sister) in Christ, and he was getting quite carried away. "Even the Turk," he said - "Even the Turk, the Jew, the Moor, the cannibal, the far Indian is our neighbour... Yea, and the very Englishman is our neighbour, too".
"Love your neighbour as yourself." It isn't as easy to do as it is to say. Think of what went on earlier this year in Kenya. Think of the horrors of Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s. Think of what's going on in northern India, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Think of what's going on in our own country. There was a report in the paper last week about the young people in some British towns and cities who will not move out of their own "safe" areas for fear of a beating, or worse. Think of what has been going on in Zimbabwe...
Today is the last day of One World Week. Our daughter Beatrice has spent the past week doing all sorts of exciting things at school: making a model of a Native American tepee, decorating a boomerang, dressing up in Japanese national costume (which meant borrowing her mother's kimono and putting a huge plastic flower in her hair) and sharing in a combined Diwali-Guy Fawkes firework display. All of that was to illustrate this year's theme: "Growing Together." Highworth School was pointing its pupils to the reality that, despite all the ways in which human beings are different (and the ways in which they create division), we are all part of the one race, the human race and that, as the poet said, "We must love one another or die".
The Church, too, points powerfully to that reality. In this congregation we have people whose mother tongue is German, or Cymraeg, or Sinhala, or one of half a dozen Caribbean patois. Our Scottish members would probably insist that their mother tongue is Scots rather than English.
Then there's our friend Mary Seeruttom, from Mauritius, where the official language is English but where you're much more likely to hear people in the streets speaking Creole, or French, or Hindi, or Urdu, or Hakka, or Bojpoori. And in the past few months we have been enriched by the presence of Andrew and Patience and Innocent, whose roots are in Harare and whose mother tongue is Shona. Together we bear witness that within the body of Christ there are no boundaries, no barriers of nationality or race or language or culture. That Scottish preacher was quite right. All people are one another's neighbour in Christ, even "the very Englishman".
This morning we're going to add to that body of brothers and sisters. This morning Anashe and Tiana will become part of the body of Christ. They will begin that process of "Growing Together" - and I don't just mean growing together in understanding of the rich diversity of our world, but growing together in the love of God and the love of neighbour. That means being open to one another, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, sharing, as St Paul wrote to the Christians of Thessalonica, sharing "not only the gospel of God but also our own selves".
That sharing is important. In his book, "Tokens of Trust", which several of us have been reading in recent weeks, Archbishop Rowan Williams reminds us time and again that the Church is about sharing. "We so easily make the mistake", he writes, "of thinking that peace or salvation is first a matter for each one of us alone; whereas the Bible always seems to take it for granted that we receive Christ's peace and mercy as part of the community that is created by God's word and action." That is the community that Tiana and Anashe are entering today. That is the community to which we belong, and to which our suffering brothers and sisters in the diocese of Harare belong. Innocent and Patience and their two daughters are living reminders that we are one with them in their sufferings and in their joy, in their strength and in their vulnerability. We are one with them because we are one in the love of the God who loves all humanity and who sent his Son Jesus as Lord and Messiah.
Isaiah 45:1-7 (and Ps 96:1-9, Mt 22:15-22, 1 Thess 1:1-10)
Where have you heard this, "For savers, for small businesses, and for homeowners, we must in an uncertain and unstable world be the rock of stability on which the British people can depend"?
That was Gordon Brown speaking on Monday. We will have to wait and see if his plan to rescue our banks will succeed. I'm not being cynical, but there are forces in our world that Gordon Brown does not control.
But what about the plans that God makes? Do they always succeed? Or are there forces that are beyond his control too? Don't you sometimes wonder at the chaos in our world, or maybe in your own life? Where is God when all this is happening? Does God know what to do when there is a meltdown in the world's banks? Does God know what to do when people are afraid of going out in the dark, or afraid that they can't trust the salesman in the shop? Does God know what to do about earthquakes and hurricanes and illness? Does God know what to do when the next generation rejects the Christian faith of their parents? Does God know what to do about the deep loneliness in your heart?
Back in the 6th century BC a huge disaster struck the Israelite nation. Their entire national life went into meltdown as the Babylonians invaded the country, destroyed Jerusalem and took the people off into exile. What did it all mean? Had God's plans been overwhelmed by forces beyond his control?
The reading that we had from the book of Isaiah was a message for those Israelite exiles trapped in Babylon. And it is a message for us too as we wonder about the powerful forces at work in our world.
The prophet says, "The Lord will succeed in all that he plans."
That was true in the 6th century BC. The victory of God's chosen ruler, Cyrus, was certain. And it is true now. The victory of God's chosen ruler, the Lord Jesus, is certain.
Firstly, the Lord succeeded in all that he planned through Cyrus: The Lord takes a man named Cyrus and this is what he does: He anoints or chooses him.
"Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes, to open doors before him-- and the gates shall not be closed" (Is 45:1)
He grasps Cyrus' right hand to lead him. He promises him overwhelming victory. Nothing will stand in his way.
"I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places" (Is 45:2-3)
The hidden-away wealth of other nations will be his. Cyrus is going to defeat the Babylonians and rescue the Israelites.
"For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name" (Is 45:4)
It is as if God says to his people, "You may be in captivity because of your rebellion against me, but I have not forgotten you. You may be miles from home in Babylon, but you are not beyond my help."
But this good news must have been mixed with terrible shock once the Israelites realised who this Cyrus was. He was a ruler over another powerful pagan empire - the Persians. And what does God call him? "My anointed", literally "my Messiah"! (v1) This is the title for Saul and David and the line of the kings that followed him, the title that would finally be given to the Lord Jesus. Israel's kings have failed. They have abandoned God and they are powerless to rescue their people. But God is not powerless. Even a pagan ruler like Cyrus can be his instrument.
After Cyrus conquered Babylon, amazingly he let the Israelite exiles return to their own land. He told them to go back and rebuild the Jerusalem temple. He sent them back loaded with money and gifts and with all the sacred vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from their temple (see Ezra 1).
This may be a big shock, in another way, for us. Does God act to bring disaster on Babylon, to overthrow rulers and to subdue nations? "Surely God only does nice things. He would never lift a finger against anyone, would he?" Are you sure? Do you mean that painful, destructive things are nothing to do with God? Aren't you then saying that the Lord is powerless to stop them, that someone else, outside of God's control, is responsible for darkness and woe? Does God only send light and well-being? No!
"I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things" (Is 45:7).
God is not embarrassed by his actions; quite the opposite. Cyrus is going to have to acknowledge that it is the Lord, the God of Israel who has called him and given him victory. As he did (see Ezra 1:2).
And not just Cyrus, but the whole world.
I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other. (Is 45:5-6)
Eventually everyone, from east to west, will have to admit what is really real in this universe - the absolute rule of God: As it says in v23, "To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear"
Secondly, the Lord will succeed in all that he plans through Jesus. 'Anointed One', or 'Messiah', is the name that belongs properly to him. God gives complete victory to his chosen ruler, the Lord Jesus Christ and the result is eternal good for his people, his church. He has brought our captivity to an end, our captivity to sin, and now he rules, with all God's authority, over all creation.
Of course Jesus was humble and came to serve us. But that is not the whole story. What did Mary, the mother of our Lord, say would happen through her son?
"He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly" (Lk 1:51-52)
The Lord will succeed in all that he plans to do through Jesus.
Jesus has been chosen by his father to be ruler over all. And everyone will see this.
"Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil 2:9-11)
In the Lord Jesus we meet the same powerful God that Isaiah spoke about, the God who will succeed in all that he plans.
Do you recognise this God as the God that you worship? Because it is easy to create in our own minds an image of God as we would like him to be, and not as he really is, a God who is loving but not an all-powerful ruler. But when we imagine God as we think he must be then we have simply crafted (in our minds) an idol.
As our reading from 1 Thessalonians reminded us, the heart of Christian faith is that we turn from idols, to serve a living and true God. The God who reveals himself in the Bible says that there is no one besides him. "I am the Lord and there is no other."
Or perhaps you get despondent, because the problems the world faces seem too big for God to deal with? Sometimes it feels as if the human race is like driftwood on the sea. We seem to be at the mercy of random forces beyond our control. But we are not. The power that shapes events in our world is none other than the powerful, purpose-full hand of God. God does know what he is doing when our lives are hit by financial worries, illness, loneliness or disappointment. God has no problems, only plans. Nothing will stand in the way of him giving full victory in everything to the Lord Jesus Christ, for the sake of his people.
And how can others come to belong to this God? You and I must tell them what he is truly like, and invite them to turn away from the man-made gods that dominate their lives to serve the living and true God. So we might tell our friends that we do hope that Gordon Brown and his colleagues will be able to get us through this crisis, but that, in the end, our hope is in the God who made the world and whose plans never fail.
The Lord, through his Son, will succeed in all that he plans. Won't you put your trust in this God.
Bible quotations are from the NRSV.
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