Trinity 8

 

Matthew 13.31-33, 44-52, Romans 8.26-39, 1 Kings 3.5-12

The Kingdom of Heaven is like…

Seeds are obviously important as this is our third week in a row where they are mentioned by Jesus. Perhaps it’s their potential to become useful, great and beautiful, all from something we might not look twice at.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like, like what? When you dare to imagine, do tiny seeds and yeast come to mind? Maybe we think of a warm summers day, free from all worries, resting in a gentle breeze. But how often are we aware of unseen things? The yeast in our bread is neither seen nor tasted yet without it things would be a bit flat, it’s at work without us giving it a second thought.

Perhaps treasure and jewels are there as symbols which are easier to relate to as things which are instantly desirable by most people, dazzling symbols of things which we might want so much that we would sell everything to get them. Jesus was trying to get the crowds which had gathered by the lake to see that if they understood what the kingdom of heaven was like they would want this above everything else.

Put another way Jesus was engaging the minds of the crowd to consider the same question that God asked Solomon in our Old Testament reading’ Ask what I should give you’ which I take to mean what is it that you want right now above all else.

What would our answer be? Healing for sick people, peace in the parts of the world where unjust suffering is endured day after day, certainty that we will be reunited with our loved ones who have gone before us?

Paul reassures the church in Rome that the spirit interprets our deepest longings, the yearnings we may struggle to articulate to God. We are reminded of the fact that no suffering or loss, no pain or worry sits outside the scope of God’s love for us. He never looks at a situation and thinks’ sorry but you are on your own this time’.

The last part of today’s reading from Paul’s letter reminds me of that feeling of security offered to children lucky enough to have loving parents or guardians. As a small boy growing up in Essex it felt like my parents were superheroes and I couldn’t imagine coming to any harm as long as they were there. As I grew older I realised the limitations every parent faces and that most are just doing their best, muddling through at times.

The beautiful thing is that whether we were lucky enough or not to have had loving people raise us, Paul reminds us that ‘God is for us’ in a way that simply can’t be matched, he’s given his own Son for us and secured for us, everything we will ever need. Despite whatever suffering we may have to face we cannot be separated from the love of God in Jesus.

So even if we are so down we cannot pray, even when we cannot feel God’s comfort or healing, he is there with us, knows our innermost thoughts and the Kingdom of Heaven is no less real.

The Kingdom of heaven may often be found in unexpected places, a common theme throughout Jesus’ teachings, encouraging his followers to have open eyes, hearts and minds. We need to overcome our prejudices and challenge long held assumptions to have the greatest chance of catching a glimpse of God’s kingdom.

It's so easy to get worn down with the bad things we see happening that our minds become closed to the good. Near my workplace in south London there’s been a spike in people grabbing mobile phone’s from those holding them out as they walk along the street talking. The thieves then speed off on electric bikes or scooters.

So when a young woman told me she was shouted at by an unfriendly looking homeless man in the street, I understood why she sped up and ignored him, but he was too fast for her. As she turned to ask what he wanted he presented her with her purse containing cash, cards and travel passes, ‘you dropped this back down the road’ he said as he handed it over.

In the last part of today’s gospel Jesus refers to the ‘master of a household who brings out his treasure, what is old and what is new. Those hearing Jesus were meant to see that whilst there is great value in the wisdom accumulated by their ancestors over the centuries there are also now new treasures to be discovered in the Kingdom of Heaven.

We have potential to achieve most when we come together drawing upon the wisdom and experience of older people but combining this with the energy and fresh ideas of the younger people.

There are no restrictions based upon past knowledge and experience, no current limit by age or physical ability, we have to trust in God and dare to imagine a future with him. Each one of us has potential to bear fruit in a new way, we just need to find the courage to imagine and then pursue this.

After all, friend of mine started a yacht building business in his loft and everyone told him it would never work. Last time I checked with him he told me ‘sails had gone through the roof!’

On a more serious note we must not settle for ‘that will do’ or ‘that’s for other people’ at any stage of life, be confident that God still has plans for us, probably not as boat builders, if we are prepared to offer ourselves.

Those who were against Jesus would have been wise to heed his warnings. He and his followers might appear weak and insignificant compared with the Roman army and the Jewish temple, yet he was letting them know that from small beginnings his power would grow and spread and rise up to exceed anything they knew and the examples of the mustard seed and yeast were attempts to get them to listen in a way that wouldn’t be possible if he told them straight.

This is something dangerous for the authorities, the kingdom could spread in ways that they can’t always see or control and they were right to be frightened.

It’s something to keep in mind when we are few in number, when our beliefs and actions are ridiculed by those whose minds are closed to the extent that they are, sadly, missing out on so much.

People who have been ‘infected’ by God’s Kingdom ‘infected’ for want of a better word, have been known to do stuff that looks crazy to others, like standing up for their values when ridiculed and outnumbered, like helping those who can offer nothing material in return and losing ‘friends’, that just turned out to be acquaintances, as they change to live out their faith.

Daring to imagine something that doesn’t already exist isn’t easy for us. Maybe part of the problem is that imagination is often referred to in a negative way alongside delusion and untruth. We may grow up hearing ‘it’s a figment of her imagination’ and then it certainly doesn’t sound like it’s something to be encouraged.

But surely we can dare to imagine what glimpses of the Kingdom of God might be like. When I have previously asked people what they thought the Kingdom is like their answers included peace, justice, forgiveness, love and freedom from suffering.

It’s worth celebrating the fact that we are all invited to discover our own images of what the kingdom of heaven is like. Jesus is certainly reminding us that we don’t need to be great theologians by the everyday subject matter used in his parables, God’s kingdom is accessible to everyone and can be found in the everyday.

Ultimately, I can’t tell you and you can’t tell me exactly what the kingdom of heaven is like as we each have to discover this for ourselves. But when we do catch a glimpse, the new reality Jesus told of breaks in, and we will see things in a way which is wonderfully new.

Amen

Kevin Bright

30^th July 2023

Trinity 7

 

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43, Romans 8.12-25 & Isaiah 44.6-8

We heard that Jesus explained the parable to the disciples. It is one of the very few that he explained in detail…’The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.’

So there you have it and there’s nothing that any preacher can do to improve upon that. But, hopefully we can take the explanation and consider what it means for each one of us personally. Jesus has given us an important framework and it’s important to be faithful to this exactly.

Maybe it helps to start in the field, and it’s a good time of year to do so as many crops are showing their ears if we walk around our local countryside, but whilst there may be a dominant crop there’s also plenty of examples of where unwanted seeds have germinated among them.

What Matthew most likely refers to, however, is tares, darnel or cockle, a noxious weed that closely resembles wheat and is plentiful in Israel. The difference between the weeds and wheat is evident only when the plants mature and the ears appear. The ears of the real wheat are heavy and will droop, while the ears of the darnel stand up straight. It’s not a weed for the impatient among us then, it has to be given space, light and nutrients to grow, before it can be recognised for what it is.

You may have already noted that Jesus doesn’t say who the slaves represent in his explanation to the disciples. Maybe he feels they will obviously assume this role themselves, or perhaps he wanted it left open so that all who followed could identify with them.

Let’s ask a couple of questions of ourselves and see whether anything aligns. Has anyone among us ever felt frustrated that God doesn’t step in to stop evil which appears to thrive like weeds, despite the best efforts of good people in every community. Has anyone among us ever felt that they know exactly which people are causing all the problems and felt that they would like to see them weeded out and punished?

Botanical pun intended, this seems to be a perennial problem for Jesus’ followers. Generation after generation have their over zealous ‘weeders’ for want of a better description, who are certain that they know their weeds from their wheat, despite the fact that our parable makes it very clear that hasty decisions to root out the weeds is likely to cause damage to the entire crop. After all many people will have sprayed weed killer only to kill the healthy plants as well as the invasive stinging nettles.

Our reading of St Paul’s letter to the Romans explains how we belong to God as free people, not those trapped in slavery and fear but people who have received a spirit of adoption, by God. Despite this we can find this freely given love hard to accept, perhaps trapped by old ways or feeling unworthy.

The slaves in our parable are keen to act. Perhaps we identify with them when they appear anxious, fearful or inadequate, thinking that they will be blamed for the fact that the crop has become contaminated by weeds. In doing so they behave like enslaved people stuck in a mindset that struggles to accept the love and forgiveness which is theirs. They focus too much on the immediate, the now whereas their master recognises the problem, but also knows that there will be a long term solution. The longer they live and work with their master, the more they will learn to think like him and trust in his judgement, learn to behave as children of God and not like slaves.

Our parable reminds us that evil persists in our world, direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus, often hidden amongst what we perceive to be good. Whilst none of us are perfect, if we are for Christ, then we also have to be workers keen to ensure God’s Kingdom can co-exist and, in places, even thrive among ‘the weeds’.

Even though Jesus has identified who the key players are in the parable to his disciples we are still left with feeling that ‘he has done it again’. If we attempt neat explanations we risk being a bit like the people who rush to identify problems and implement hasty solutions.

 

I feel that Jesus wants this to be something we need to explore and then live out every day, making the best judgments that we can. I think that Jesus is telling us that we had better get used to living with ambiguity, living with both the wheat and the weeds until the day of harvest when they may be separated in God’s time.

 

There may be some of us who are literally struggling with the identification and efficient extraction of actual weeds at this time of year but there will also be more difficult decisions that we each are wrestling with. How best to care for loved ones, whether to fix the mortgage and for how long, what’s the best course of action for a medical condition, what will be the best school for children and grandchildren. Each of us will have situations where the best course of action isn’t clear, yet we know that doing nothing, avoiding any decision, is not an option.

 

We know from experience that we don’t always make the best decisions and there is no certainty that everything will turn out well in the short term. But whatever happens we do know that God will be with us to the end and that he will hold us, our decisions, their consequences and our lives together in his love. And in the meantime we can pray for, support and serve each other the best that we can. We can make this church a community of people who are slow to judge, a place where all are welcome to bring their confusion, their difficult choices, the ambiguity in their lives before God to seek his forgiveness and guidance.

 

Matthew wrote this part of the Gospel aware that fledgling churches were struggling in many ways. He wants them to relate to God’s time, to be encouraged and keep the faith when an easier option would be to give up.

The words we heard from the Prophet Isaiah came at a time when many wouldn’t have blamed the Israelites from giving up on God and frankly everything else, based upon their lived experience.

The Babylonians had destroyed and plundered all that assured the Israelites of their place as people chosen by God including the temple, monarchy and homeland.

The many false gods promoted by their enemies may have appeared to triumph and it seems that they need a reminder of who their God is.

Yahweh declares, “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god” (Isaiah 44:6b). There can be no other object worthy of worship, there is no other source of life and freedom, no other redeemer, no other King. Despite their suffering the Israelites could still trust in God.

In short, despite whatever we see around us that goes against God he remains unchanged, unwavering in his love for us.

Jesus makes clear that it’s not for us to decide who is ‘in’ or ‘out’ as far as God is concerned. After all remember the assurances Jesus gave to the penitent thief crucified alongside him, when the authorities had condemned him and all around had written him off, ‘today you will be with me in paradise’.

So what might we take away from today? Well, for one thing if anyone says your garden is overgrown or full of weeds just tell them you are doing what Jesus taught you and that they should go and read the bible where there’s sound teaching about not rushing to pull them up.

It’s so easy to be influenced by the press and news channels that get most space, the online influencers who know how to shout loudest and hard to go against the flow when most voices are against us. Yet, history reminds us how societal judgments have repeatedly failed to align with God. The prostitutes and tax collectors as well as many considered unclean by ancient society were among those Jesus chose to align himself with, however costly. And only this week politicians recognised the previous wrongful treatment of LGBT people who bravely served in our Armed Forces which affected both unknown and well known figures including Dame Kelly Holmes.

Jesus reminded us again and again that God’s judgments may take us by surprise. So let’s be slow to condemn others and instead focus our efforts on making his kingdom a reality for those we live alongside .

Amen

Kevin Bright

23 July 2023

Trinity 6: The generous sower

 Isaiah 55.10-13, Psalm 65, Romans 8.1-11, Matthew 13.1-23

 

“Hear then the parable of the sower”

 This famous story is one of the best known of Jesus’ parables, partly, I’m sure, because it is one that is easy to tell to children, so many of us heard it first in school or Sunday school. It’s very visual, too. We can imagine the sower casting handfuls of seed around him. We can imagine the birds descending on the seed on the path, the withered plants in the rocky ground, or smothered by thorns, never having a chance to grow. If we are gardeners, we’ve probably know this in real life. We sow seeds hopefully in the spring, but only a fraction will end up as full grown plants. Heat, cold, drought, flood, slugs, pigeons, and in the vicarage garden wild rabbits too. There’s always something waiting to snuff the life out of our seedlings. It’s a wonder anything makes it at all.

This is one of only two parables that Jesus himself gives a title to. “Hear the parable of the sower”  he said. The other is the parable of the weeds in the field, not the wheat and the tares, as we often call it, - it’s next week’s Gospel. The titles we give to parables tend to reflect what we think they’re about, and can skew our interpretation of them.  The parable we call the “prodigal son”, for example – the Gospels don’t give it a title – could equally be called the Loving Father, or the Two Sons, or “Family life and how not to live it” which would change the focus completely. In this week’s parable, though, Jesus is clear. It’s the parable of the Sower.

And that’s a bit odd, because actually, the sower is hardly mentioned at all. He comes along, sows the seed and then disappears. It’s the other “characters” in the tale, if you can call them that – the seed and the various types of ground it falls on - who take up most of the column inches. Despite this, though Jesus’ title puts the enigmatic Sower centre stage. Hold that thought, because we’ll come back to it later.

So what about those other, inanimate, characters. The seed, Jesus explains to his disciples -  though not to the wider crowd to whom he first tells the story - is the “word of the kingdom”. Words are a way of expressing ourselves, making ourselves known, making things happen. Words change things, for the better or for the worse, and once they are uttered we can’t take them back. If human words are powerful, God’s words, the “words of the kingdom” are even more so.  In the book of Genesis, when God spoke the words, “let there be light” there was light. His word brought everything into being. In John’s Gospel we hear that the Word was God. He identifies Jesus as God’s living Word, God’s supreme way of speaking to us, of revealing himself to us.

The seed in this story, then, is the presence of God, God at work, God’s very self, given to us and for us. And where is it? It is everywhere, thrown around with what seems like no thought for where it might land, into unlikely as well as likely ground. It’s not carefully rationed, not planted deliberately in places where it would do best; it just lands where it falls.

The different soils in the story, are the human hearts and lives it lands in.

This parable can be interpreted in a very judgemental, condemnatory way – woe to you if you are stony ground, weed-infested, plagued by birds! There’s no hope for you. That interpretation tells us that we should all make sure we are a good seedbed. But the problem with that is that soil is what it is. Soil has no choice, no agency. It can’t decide to plough itself. It can’t do anything about the bedrock underlying it. It can’t fight off the weeds, or the birds.

If we hear this parable as an instruction to us to be better soil, we are on a hiding to nothing. Of course, there are things we can do intentionally to be more receptive to God’s word, and Jesus speaks elsewhere about that. But here, he very deliberately chooses an image of something that can’t do anything about itself to represent us, and that seems to me to take the story in a very different direction.  

The clue is in the little episode that separates the telling of the story and its explanation. The disciples ask Jesus why he speaks in parables. Wouldn’t it be better just to say what he means in plain words? But Jesus tells them that it doesn’t matter how plain the words are, some people will hear and others won’t, or won’t at that moment. It’s just as true today. We look around us – and in the mirror at ourselves – and see unpromising, stony, thorn infested, downtrodden soil. We see indifference, carelessness, apathy, anger, abuse, manipulation. We see people trying to make the world better, but being knocked back again and again, their efforts coming to nothing. It looks hopeless. Why bother to try to change or influence anything? What’s the point?

But this is where I come back, as promised, to the title Jesus gives to the parable. It’s the parable of the Sower, not the parable of the seed or the soil, because the Sower is the key to it. If this sower knows his land at all, he surely realises that much of it is inhospitable, unlikely to produce a crop, but he doesn’t write it off. He carries on sowing anyway, because between the stones and thorns, in cracks in the pathway, there will be good soil too, maybe just in patches or pockets, maybe with only room for one stray seed to germinate, but if he doesn’t sow anything there, there is no chance for that stray seed to bring forth life the life that is in it. If he does, though, that one seed might bear 100 more.

It would have seemed like a risky, wasteful strategy to those who first heard the story. Seed was precious and limited to them, not something just to be chucked around willy-nilly. But I think Jesus means them to be surprised, to notice that, and to realise that you can only behave like this if you have an unlimited supply of seed, and that, he is saying, is how it is with God. God doesn’t need to ration his word, his love, his presence and activity in the world, and we don’t need to do it for him either. The green shoots of God’s life might take root and spring up anywhere, not just in the neatly ploughed and weed free corners of the world where we might expect them. After all, they somehow took root in us. If we want to join in with God’s work, be part of his kingdom, we do that by loving people wherever we find them, just as we were loved where others found us.

“My word shall not return to me empty” said God in our first reading. God’s love is never wasted, never pointless, never in danger of running out. He’s not anxious about where he sows it, and it’s not up to us to judge who is worthy of it and who isn’t. Freely you have received, freely give, said Jesus, elsewhere; God will do the rest.  Amen

 

 

Patronal Festival: The feast of St Peter and St Paul

 

Patronal Festival 2023

 

Today is our Patronal Festival. Like a lot of the words we hear and say or sing in a church context, Patronal isn’t a word you’d be likely to encounter in casual conversation in the supermarket. It comes from the word Patron, of course, which in turn comes from the Latin Pater, a father. in the ancient Roman world, where this language of patronage developed, patrons weren’t necessarily actual fathers. They could be anyone who took you under their wing - who encouraged and supported you, who took notice of you, looked out for your interests and promoted you. It was a formal relationship, with set obligations on both sides, and a vital part of how their society was organised. Having a powerful patron was vital to success.

 

The patrons we celebrate today in church aren’t wealthy business people or politicians, though; they are saints. Today is the feast of St Peter and St Paul, to whom this church is dedicated. When a church was first built, and its people chose a dedication for it, they were consciously putting it and its people under the protection – the patronage - of those saints, declaring a particular relationship to them, looking to them for inspiration and guidance. They hoped, too, that they might be “friends in high places”, speaking for them before the throne of God. I’m not sure that courtly imagery works so well for us these day: perhaps thinking of Peter and Paul as companions on the journey is more helpful.  We don’t pray to the saints, still less worship them, we pray to God, but I like to think of the saints as people who pray with and for us, just as a living friend might do, offering us company and encouragement.

 

The Creed talks about the “communion of saints” reminding us that being a Christian isn’t meant to be a solitary endeavour. It’s something we do together – with our church community, with our brothers and sisters across the world, and with those who have gone before us, who have shone with the light of Christ. Sometimes when I pray, it’s just me and God, and that’s fine, but sometimes its good to picture myself surrounded by that great team of well-wishers. It’s like turning up to a party and finding that there are friends there you didn’t know were coming, or having a buddy go along with you for moral support when you are doing something difficult. The saints remind us that being a Christian isn’t a solitary thing. We are called to discover and explore it together, helping each other along the way.  

 

Our readings today, which feature Peter and Paul, illustrate that. They aren’t portrayed as heroes, rugged individualists, but people who needed others, and to whom community was important.

 

St Paul is one of the giants of Christian history. He left a legacy that that changed its course, through the letters he wrote to the churches he founded around the Mediterranean. But at the beginning of the reading we heard today, no one would have predicted that. When we first meet him he is going by his Hebrew name, Saul; it was common for people to use more than one name, in different situations, so that they fitted into whatever the local culture was, just as immigrants today sometimes Anglicise their names if they feel it will make it easier for others to pronounce them. He was Saul to his Hebrew friends, but Paul to the Gentile Romans and Greeks. When we first meet him, he is hell-bent on rooting out anyone who followed the way of Jesus, who he saw as a troublemaker, who’d got his just deserts when he’d been crucified for his radical interpretation of the Jewish faith, an interpretation Paul thought was completely wrong. But on the way to Damascus, Paul heard the voice of that same Jesus speaking from the right hand of God, evidently favoured, not condemned, and suddenly his world was turned upside down. Blinded by the light, he could no longer see the way ahead – spiritually and emotionally as well as literally, and had to be led into the city. Left to his own devices he might simply despaired, but God didn’t leave him to his own devices; he sent Ananias, a local Christian, to him. Ananias knew of Paul’s reputation. He knew he’d had Christians imprisoned elsewhere. He has to have wondered whether he was simply walking into a trap.  But he went anyway, and thank God he did, because if he hadn’t perhaps we wouldn’t be here today; it was Paul’s ministry which enabled the Christian message to spread westwards into Europe, and eventually to these damp islands at the edge of what was then the known world.

 

Paul’s ministry, from the very earliest moment was one which was rooted in community, recognising that we needed one another, just as he had needed Ananias,  and that shines through in his letters. He describes the church as a body, with every part essential to the whole. He speaks of the primary importance of our love for one another, which reflects the love of God for each of us.  

 

St Peter, too, doesn’t get where he needs to be on his own in the story we heard today. Jesus has been raised from the dead, but now what? It’s all too much for Peter – the roller-coaster of his denial of Jesus, Jesus’ death, and then, just when Peter thought it was all over, his resurrection - so he goes back to what he knows, or thinks he knows: fishing. Except that even that goes wrong. He and his friends fish all night but catch nothing. Fortunately, a stranger calls out from the beach that he should cast his nets on the other side of the boat, and he does, and catches a catch like he’s never caught before. But it takes one of his friends, “the disciple Jesus loved” as he’s described here, probably the apostle John, to point out what Peter has missed.  “It is the Lord!”, he says. Peter jumps into the water and swims towards him, into a new life and a new commitment as a leader in the church.

 

Peter and Paul; our Patron saints – two giants in the Christian story, but could only become so because of the communities they were part of, because of the other saints around them, the people who might seem like bit part players, but whose contribution made all the difference.

 

That’s what distinguishes saints from superheroes. Saints don’t have superpowers; they’ree just people who are open to the call of God, whether it is to something apparently great or something that seems insignificant at the time. Today as we celebrate our Patronal Festival, we remember Peter and Paul, but we also remember those who were so vital in their story, Ananias, who bravely welcomed Paul, and the unnamed disciple who saw Jesus and pointed him out to Peter, and all the others who made up the communities they were part of, encouraging and helping them along the way. Their stories hold up a mirror to our own, inviting us to play our own part in that great communion of saints through whom the light of Christ shines in the world, yesterday, today and forever.

Amen