This is the sermon from Sunday 12th October. ur Priest in Charge, Red Dr Susan Carter presided over the Eucharist, and I, the Licensed Lay Minister, preached thesermon.
When I am preparing for a sermon, I always begin by reading the collect and the readings for the day to see if any common themes make themselves clear to me. Although it wasn’t immediately obvious, I started to think how each of the readings today talk about the choices we are offered between the world’s “wisdom” and the wisdom of God’s kingdom, and how we have to deal with the consequences that the choices we make have on our lives and the lives of those around us.
I must admit, as I read the verses from Proverbs, the first thing they made me think of was the current situation with the pandemic: everywhere we turn we hear opposing views on the necessity of, or the efficacy of vaccines, of wearing masks, of the Pass Sanitaire , and these exchanges of opinion can become quite heated. Some views are based on science, on the advice of experts; others are based on anecdotal evidence, of what a friend said or experienced; yet others are based on something that was read on Facebook but the provenance of which is unclear… We have to choose what we listen to, what we believe, what advice we follow. We can choose to make changes to our lifestyle, that may be inconvenient to us as individuals, but which are for the common good, or we can decide to continue doing what is comfortable for us. And our choices have consequences – both for ourselves and for others.
Of course, I am not saying that Proverbs was written thousands of years ago, specifically about COVID 19. There are many other situations where we are offered advice and facts from people who are experts, or not, and we as individuals need to weigh up what we are being told and make our own choices. In this season of thinking about God’s creation, and the unfolding climate crisis, we can choose to take seriously what experts are warning us about, or we can close our ears to the signs, to pretend that this is not happening. We can choose to make changes to our lifestyle, that may be inconvenient to us as individuals, but which are for the common good, or we can decide to continue doing what is comfortable for us? But, we are warned: waywardness kills the simple, and the complacency of fools destroys them…
Moving on to our NT reading, in the passage from James, the author speaks graphically about how the tongue, the words that we speak, can have devastating effects on others. He compares the tongue to a spark that can set a forest ablaze: small words can have huge consequences. He even describes it as a restless evil, full of deadly poison. We are warned to be careful what we say; to choose our words wisely.
I guess that in the past, this would have referred solely to the spoken word. Gossip about another – that may, or may not be true – can destroy their reputation, and their lives. But in our modern world this can also now apply to all those social media platforms as well. In the same way as Proverbs tells us to choose well who we listen to and believe, James is warning us to choose carefully what we share and pass on to others. Be sure that the information you post on your own Facebook, Twitter, Instagram feeds is true and good and helpful.
But I believe there is more to what James is saying than just “guard your tongue”. He goes on to write With (our tongue ) we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.
Basically, he is saying: make a choice. You can’t follow Christ and continue to gossip, to make decisions to share information about others that isn’t true, or that hurts them. As Christians we are called to make changes to our lifestyle, that may be inconvenient to us as individuals, but which are for the common good. There is no knowledge of God that does not require us as an individual to gaze into the eyes of another person and realise that we are bound together inextricably. Our actions have consequences for others.
And this is distilled in the Gospel. We have Jesus asking the disciples “Who do you say I am?” And if you think about it, in answering this question about Jesus’ identity we also answer the question “Who do you say you are…?” In revealing what we believe about Jesus we reveal ourselves, and where we have chosen to stand.
If we stand with Peter, and say, “You are the Messiah” we are saying that we have made the choice to follow Jesus. We have chosen to have a relationship with God, and this relationship should be manifest and embodied in our relationships with our brothers and sisters; in our relationship with the world that God created and in which we live. And this means that we start to think about how our actions benefit others and our environment, not how comfortable life is for ourselves.
Jesus did not hide this, or pretend there was another agenda. He was open about what following him could and probably would entail. If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me, he says. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
Strong words. Daunting words. What do they call on us to do? What do they call on us to be?
So often we hear people say things like “Oh, my arthritis! What a cross to bear!” or “My teenagers behaviour is just another cross to bear” Statements like this are talking about situations that there has been no choice about : it has been given to you. You have to learn to deal with it. Tant pis.
But Jesus isn’t saying “this is your cross; get on with it”. Rather, he is offering us the choice. If you choose to follow me, then you must be prepared to take up your cross – you are the one that chooses to start on this path, just as Jesus chose to take up his cross. And when he talks about losing one’s life well, yes, Jesus may be talking to some people about martyrdom, about being put to death for choosing to follow him. And sadly, in our world today, there are still Christians who face death every day just for being Christian.
But the Greek word from which we get our word “martyr” doesn’t necessarily mean “someone who dies for their faith”. It means “a witness”. Someone who tells the truth, someone who reacts to what they have seen. So if Jesus calls on us to be willing to lose our lives for him, to become martyrs for him, he calls on us to be witnesses for him. To live our lives witnessing to the truth of him, and witnessing to how this makes a demand on us to change our lives. He is calling on us to make the choice, and to be fully aware that if we choose to stand with Jesus, we need to be willing to take the consequences.
And the biggest consequence is that we are called to turn away from our self-centredness and to realise that our life is no longer ours. Losing your life doesn’t always mean you die; what it means is that you make changes to your life, that may well inconvenience you, but which are for the good and benefit of others. It’s not exactly yourself that dies; but rather your selfishness.
Saint Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine rule of life, spoke of how we are called to always do what benefits the other, not oneself. We are to actively work for the good of others – which means that we love the other in a way that makes us actively engage with them, to think and to ponder what needs they have and how they can best be met. This doesn’t mean we roll our eyes heavenward and put up with whatever is happening: no, it is to actively engage. So it isn’t just dropping a coin in a beggar’s cup and going on your way feeling better about yourself; it is considering that beggar as a person, maybe speaking a few words, or asking them a question. It is about treating them as a human being
A programme on Netflix that Andrew and I have been enjoying is “New Amsterdam” set in a hospital in New York. The maverick new medical director is a thorn in the side of the hospital board, because he will not consider cost cutting exercises, or how to save money, but rather focusses on his patients, and his staff, and their needs. His most common phrase is “How can I help?” which so often has the effect of opening the floodgates, of allowing his patients the opportunity to say what they need and feel…. He treats them as people, not as numbers, often to the inconvenience of the hospital and himself.
This is what our cross is. That question “How can I help?” . Because when we ask it of others, we must be prepared for an answer that may well inconvenience ourselves; we must be prepared to lose our lives in order to become immersed in the lives of others and the life of the created world..
It isn’t an easy choice to make. And God knows, even the best of us will fail over and over, but even in our failings we will be those witnesses, those martyrs, to the Kingdom of God. Last week was zero waste week, and one blogger who wrote about her efforts posted the slogan “We don’t need one person doing Zero waste perfectly; we need millions of people doing Zero waste imperfectly” This could be God’s slogan too: I don’t need one person working for the Kingdom perfectly; I need millions of people working for the Kingdom imperfectly…. We will never be perfect – until we meet God in all God’s glory – but we can be perfectly imperfect. We can consciously and mindfully choose to do our very best, with God’s help, to lose our lives, to ask that question “How can I help?” and to commit to responding to the answer.
And then, as one writer said: In turning away from our self-centred universe, our hearts and lives will be broken open (even to the extent of feeling at times as though we are dying) and we will live in the universe of God’s love.
So be it. Amen.