In my sermon last Sunday, I spoke about the prevailing attitudes in the Church of England and questioned whether the current secular business model, woke agenda driven road the Church seems intent of following at the present time was the road the Church ought to be on. I asked whether this road would actually solve any of the Church’s current difficulties and suggested that the Church would do far better if, instead, it had the faith to turn, or return, to Christ and the Gospel for answers to its problems. Today’s readings give further evidence, if indeed any was needed, that this is indeed exactly what the Church ought to be doing.
Our first reading is from the book of Wisdom. As I’m sure you know, in scriptural terms, wisdom has very little to do with secular knowledge and the amount of information we have, but is about knowing the right thing to do, in God’s eyes, in any situation. And what wisdom tells us, or reminds us, in our first reading this morning is that God created us in his own image, and he created us to live in health and happiness. And wisdom tells us that it’s only through the devil and his followers that death and destruction have entered the world. So, the wise person knows that they’re made in the image of God and knows that, to live that good, happy, healthy, and ultimately eternal life God intended us for, we need to live in God’s likeness. The wise person knows that, to follow the devil leads to unhappiness and death. For us, as Christians then, the path to health happiness and life lies in following Christ and not in following the world and its ways.
Another book of the Bible that’s regarded as wisdom literature is the Book of Psalms and the wisdom this morning’s Psalm gives us is that it is the Lord our God who rescues us from our enemies and raises us up. It tells us that, if we call on the Lord, he will hear us and come to our help. It also reminds us that it is to God that we should give thanks for our salvation. So, what this morning’s Psalm tells us, is that the wise person knows that, when they’re faced with problems and difficulties, they should turn to God, in faith, for answers and solutions, confident that the Lord will hear and answer them. And it tells us too, that the wise person then thanks and praises God for his grace and goodness. It tells us too, that the wise realise that they do need God’s help and that they can’t solve every problem and overcome every difficulty without it. And they are thankful, not proud and self-congratulatory.
Usually when we think about wisdom literature, we tend to think of the books of the Old Testament, but I think we’re quite justified in thinking about the New Testament as wisdom literature too. If wisdom is about knowing the right and Godly thing to do in a situation, what is Jesus’ teaching other than wisdom? And if large parts of the Gospel are concerned with wisdom, aren’t the large parts of the rest of the New Testament that urge and encourage people to follow Jesus’ teaching and example concerned with wisdom too?
And so we can see this morning’s reading from 2 Corinthians as imparting wisdom because, in encouraging the Church in Corinth to be generous, St Paul reminds them that this is only following Jesus’ own example. We know that the cause St Paul was asking the Corinthians to be generous in supporting was a collection to help the Church in Jerusalem and Judea. And St Paul explicitly identifies the generosity of Christians in this cause as a manifestation of the grace of God in their lives. The message, I think, is clear. The wise do not hoard up treasure for themselves whilst others are in need. The wise do not hoard up treasure for themselves and then pat themselves on the back for how worldly wise they are in accumulating their vast riches. And most especially, the wise do not do these things while their brothers and sisters in Christ are in desperate need of help. Rather, the wise show the grace of God in their lives by following the example of Christ and letting their own example of generosity be like his. And the wise don’t share their riches and good fortune grudgingly, but willingly, and they give thanks to God that they’ve been so blessed that they can be generous in helping those in need.
And we see these all things come together in this morning’s Gospel. The leader of the synagogue, Jairus, turning to Jesus, in faith, to heal his dangerously ill daughter. The woman who’d suffered for so many years, a woman with so much faith that she believed the mere touch of Jesus’ clothes would be enough to cure her of an ailment that no amount of human assistance had been able to cure. And Jesus who, despite the crowds that were pressing in on him, knew that someone had touched him. Not the touch of the pressing crowds but the touch of someone who’d come to him in faith, to be healed.
I think we have to consider here the situation Jesus found himself in. Jesus was every bit as human as you or I. How easy it would have been for him to be so taken in by the attention and perhaps adulation of the crowd, that he would have become more concerned with his own importance than with the needs of a few individuals. But rather than the selfish pride that might be expected in that situation, we see the completely selfless generosity of Jesus who was more concerned with the problems of two individuals in need than with the attention he was receiving from the crowd.
What we also see contrasted in this morning’s Gospel, are the differing rewards for those who have faith, and those who don’t. The woman who came to Jesus in faith, and who fought her way through the crowds to reach him, was healed. But when Jesus arrived at Jairus’ house and told those who were there that the little girl was not dead but sleeping, he was greeted with scepticism and laughter. No doubt that scepticism and laughter would have come from people who were worldly wise enough to know a dead person when they saw one. Their reward, the reward for their worldly wisdom and lack of faith was to be turned out of the house by Jesus. But the reward for those who did have faith, and who came to Jesus in faith, was to have their prayers answered and to witness the great miracle of the little girl being raised from the dead.
In his Letter to the Romans, St Paul asks,
‘If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?’
This morning’s readings should leave us in no doubt that God is for us. We know that God sent his own Son to teach us his ways and gave him up to death for our salvation. But if we want to have everything else, all that God offers us, we have to have faith, and turn to him, in faith. And if we have that faith, the only people who can be against us are those who put more store in human wisdom than in heavenly wisdom and who have more faith in themselves and the ways of the world than in God and his ways. In particular, those who are against us are those who, as Jesus put it, say ‘Lord, Lord’ but who do not do the will of the Father. And those who are most against us are those who say ‘Lord, Lord’ and say that they act in God’s name and to his glory whilst they do the will of the world and encourage others to do the same.
This morning’s Gospel tells us though, that the reward for those who are worldly wise but have no faith and for those who laugh and scoff at the faith of others, is to be turned out of the house by Jesus himself. So with that in mind, let’s be the wise people we’re called to be and remain faithful to God and to Jesus. If we can do that, then we can rest assured that the opposition of those who are against us, is only temporary, it is for this life only. And so, as difficult as those who oppose us can make this life, let’s never forget that, as long as we are wise and have faith, God is for us, and with us, and always will be. If we can do that then we can have faith too that, when the time comes for us to enter God’s house, Jesus will not turn us out, but take us by that hand and invite us to rise up and eat with him in his heavenly home.
Amen.
The Propers for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time can be viewed here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 