“In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance” says
Paul to the Ephesians. I wonder what it might have felt like to have heard those
words when they were first written. Just imagine you were one of those early
Christians in Ephesus. There probably weren’t more than a handful of you, but
you’d have been a very mixed bunch. Some of you might have been wealthy – but
many of you wouldn’t be – the Christian faith seems to have appealed most
strongly to the poor, to women and to slaves in its early days. Many of you would
probably never have dreamed you’d inherit anything – if you were poor or
a slave what would anyone have to leave to you?
But here is Paul telling you that you have a “glorious
inheritance among the saints”. He talks of riches and of the “immeasurable
greatness of God’s power”.
All our readings today speak of inheritance in one form or
another. Daniel hears in a vision of God’s promise that his holy ones – the
ones who have stayed true to him during the Babylonian Exile – will receive a
kingdom. And Jesus in the Gospel also promises that those who suffer now, those
who seem poor now, will be rewarded, while those who have wealth that leaves
others in poverty will find that they have received all they are going to get.
Today is All Saints’ day, so all this talk of inheritance is
very appropriate. Today we are celebrating the inheritance of faith which the
saints have handed down to us, the message of the Gospel which they have taught
and lived. We are reminded too, that we have the task of handing on that
inheritance to others in our turn; we are the saints for future generations.
But what is this inheritance? Why does it matter? What do we need to do to get
it? What should we do with it once we have got it?
Inheritance can be a very fraught business. Families often
fall out over who gets what when someone dies. Nations descend into civil war
over who should inherit the power to rule. People squabble over who are the
true inheritors of the legacy of a great leader – who is carrying on their
vision most faithfully. Sometimes, though, by the time the matter is settled
the inheritance has been worn away to nothing by the struggles of those trying
to get their hands on it or so spoiled that it isn’t worth having.
I was reminded of that earlier this week, when Philip and I
were in Tewkesbury for a short break. We were wandering around Tewkesbury Abbey
when all of a sudden we came across a very familiar name. There in front of us
was the very grand effigy of Sir Guy de Bryene, lying in rather splendid state
at the entrance to one of the side chapels. Now, anyone who knows this church
well will know that we have a de Bryene here too. We’ve got Sir William deBryene, whose brass memorial lies just to the left of the altar, dating from
1395, and he happens to be the son of Sir Guy de Bryene, who we discovered in
Tewkesbury.
Sir Guy de Bryene was a very wealthy and influential person,
a close advisor to King Richard II and an ambassador to the pope. He had lots
of lands mostly in Dorset, Devon and Wales. His name still lingers in place
names there – Torbryan, Bryanston… He had three sons – Guy Junior, our William,
and another called Phillipe. But Guy Junior and Phillipe died before their
father so William was left as the only male heir. You’d expect that he would
then be first in line to inherit all those fine lands and titles, but that’s
not what happened. He is described on his memorial her just as “the Lord of
Kemsing and Seal”, titles he’d inherited through his mother’s line. Now of
course we might think that was a very fine thing to be, but I’m afraid that as
far as Sir William was concerned, it was the booby prize. What had happened to
those Bryene lands and titles which surely should have been his? Thereby hangs
a tale… and it’s not a very edifying one.
It seems that when Guy de Bryene’s eldest son died in 1385
Guy senior decided to change his will. Instead of leaving everything to his
second son, our William, as would have been normal, he cut him out completely,
and left it all to Guy junior’s daughters – just little girls at the time. We don’t know why, but perhaps his father knew
a thing or two about William, because William promptly started to manoeuvre and
plot quite disgracefully in order to try to discredit the offending will, or
even make it disappear completely. He threatened witnesses to the will, trying
to get them to say that his father was insane when he made it. He was even
imprisoned in the Tower of London after he had been caught climbing the walls of
one of his father’s castle in Pembrokeshire in order to break in and steal
documents from a chest kept there which would have undermined his claim. In the end, though, none of this finagling
came to anything. William didn’t get the inheritance, and as it happened, he
died just five years after his father, without any children of his own, and the
de Bryene line soon petered out completely.
It’s an object lesson in the damage that inheritance, or the
hope of it, can do. The inscription on William’s tomb asks that God should be
merciful to him, and perhaps he knew he needed that mercy!
The kind of inheritance that the Biblical writers are
talking about is not one of land or titles or material wealth, of course, but
it can be just as fraught and divisive, especially when we bring to it the baggage
of insecurity and greed which so often poisons our disputes over material
inheritance.
Whatever form it takes inheritance is usually as much about belonging
as it is about belongings. When families fall out over who gets the property
of someone who has died, it is usually not so much because they want the cash
they could raise by selling it, but because it symbolises how much they think
that person valued them. Siblings are
often really fighting about who mum or dad loved most when they fight over who
gets what. Someone who felt overlooked by a parent in life may well feel
slighted in death too if they don’t get what they expect in the will.
The “glorious inheritance” Paul wrote to the Ephesians about
is also, at its heart, an assurance that we are loved, that God is with
us and for us, that we belong to him, that we have a secure place in his heart
and in his family.
That sense of belonging was something which the Jewish
people of Paul’s time held very dear. It had been promised to them through Abraham
and restored to them through Moses after their slavery in Egypt. Again and
again in the Old Testament God says that his dream was simply that “I will be
their God and they will be my people.” Again and again he laments when that
relationship is broken. Again and again, his people learn the hard way that,
like all relationships, this one needs working at, it needs commitment from
them to make it real. Again and again, when they turn back to God they find him
ready and waiting to forgive.
There is a strong strand of thought in the Bible that this
relationship is not meant exclusively for them; they are meant to share it. But
that view kept being pushed aside in favour of a narrow nationalistic view of
themselves as the sole inheritors of God’s love.
That’s no surprise. Just as siblings often fight for their
parent’s love, grasping at it because they can’t quite trust that there will be
enough to go round, so people tend to treat God’s love as if it’s in short
supply and must be rationed out carefully. That usually means building walls
and setting up barriers to keep those they think of as unworthy out.
The good news that Paul discovered on the Damascus road,
though, was that this love was for everyone, that there was more than enough to
go round, that however much of it was poured out, there was always an infinite
amount left. His narrow vision of faith – so narrow that he was intent on
physically destroying anyone who challenged it - was blown open by the voice of
the risen Christ calling to him, and by the love of the Christian community
that welcomed him with joy when he would have expected them to hate him. His
good news was that the “dividing walls of hostility” as he puts it later in this
letter had been broken down (Ephesians 2.14). God’s peace was for those who
were “far off” as well as those who were “near” (2.17)
In today’s Gospel Jesus reminds us also that we can’t tell
who is “in” or “out” by external appearances and circumstances either. Being
poor, broken hearted, reviled is not a sign that you have done something wrong
or are less loved by God. Conversely, being rich, popular and successful might
tell you that you have made it in the world’s eyes, but it isn’t a sign of
God’s blessing, and may in fact get in the way of it.
Today there are many things we could celebrate as our
Christian inheritance, things we might treasure just as we do the precious vase
an aunt left to us, or our grandfather’s war medals. We can celebrate the
stories of faith, the music and prayers of the Church, the examples of service
and courage of those who have gone before us, and it is right that we do so.
But the most precious inheritance of all, and the one which is most easily lost,
is the message that all these other treasures are supposed to convey, that
assurance that we belong to God, all of us, whoever we are and whatever we’ve
done, whether we are new through the doors, or cradle Christians, whether we
think we deserve it or whether we know we don’t. It is an inheritance made all
the more precious because it is for everyone. It is something we can afford to
share with the same generosity as it was given to us, because it is endless and
eternal. Today, whatever else we celebrate as our Christian inheritance, let us
make sure we celebrate that inclusive love – a glorious inheritance indeed.
Amen
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