One of the problems I’ve spoken about in the past is that of trying to really understand what’s going on in a Sunday Gospel reading when we read them as we do, that is, taken out of the context of the Gospel as a whole. And I think today’s Gospel reading is a good example of that. 

On the surface, today’s Gospel reads a little like four short, stand-alone incidents taken from Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem. His rejection by the Samaritans, which includes a short discussion with his disciples, and then three separate discussions with three unidentified people who say that they want to follow Jesus. But why do these incidents appear where they do in the Gospel and why did St Luke put them together as he did? To understand what’s going on, the first thing  we have to do is to put these stories back into context.  

A little earlier in the Gospel, after Peter had confessed his belief that Jesus was “the Christ of God “, Jesus had begun to teach the disciples that he would be rejected by the religious authorities and be put to death but that he would rise again on the third day. And he warned them,  

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”  

And it’s important to remember these words when we read this morning’s Gospel.  

Immediately after this in the Gospel is the story of Jesus’ Transfiguration. We know that, at that time, Jesus appeared in glory with Moses and Elijah who discussed with him the ‘departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.’ And it’s in that context that we have to read this morning’s Gospel because it’s full of allusions to the stories of Moses and Elijah. There are allusions to the story of Ezekiel too and it’s that context we read that Jesus’ ‘face was set towards Jerusalem.’  

We read this morning that it was because his face was set towards Jerusalem that Jesus was rejected at the Samaritan village. But that’s not surprising. We know there was a long-standing religious enmity between Jews and Samaritans. As we read in St John’s Gospel when Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well. The woman said,  

“Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.”   

And so, just as it wasn’t surprising that the Samaritans in the village wouldn’t accept Jesus, it’s perhaps equally unsurprising that, in response, some of Jesus’ disciples at least, wanted to call down hell-fire on the village! And that shouldn’t be surprising because how many times have religious people and do religious people still want to destroy those who don’t agree with them? And not just people of different faiths. The so-called Wars of Religion that raged for about two hundred years following the Reformation in the Western Church are now, thankfully, over but how often do we still today act in ways that are very, very far from loving towards those of different denominations and traditions within the Church? But Jesus’ rebuke of the disciples for wanting to harm the people of that Samaritan village should tell us how wrong it is to wish, seek or do harm to others simply because they don’t agree with us. How much happier a place would the world be, and would the Church be, if a few more people would hear that message and take it to heart?  

Jesus’ rejection at the Samaritan village should though cause us to cast our minds back to his warning about the cost of discipleship, his warning that to be his disciple is to take up our cross each and every day. The need to set our faces towards Jerusalem, so to speak. That’s not to look to the city in the modern-day state of Israel, but to make being obedient to God and God’s call on our lives our priority in life. And that’s really what the three brief discussions that follow are all about.  

The first person we read about tells Jesus that they’ll follow him wherever he goes. But in response Jesus speaks about having “nowhere to lay his head.” And this is a warning that being a disciple of Jesus means getting out of our comfort zone. To be a true disciple of Jesus, we have to take up our cross and follow his example. We can’t be a true disciple of Jesus if we’re not prepared to follow his example and set our faces towards Jerusalem for the sake of the Gospel.  

But how many people really are prepared to do this? How many times when people in the Church are asked to do something for the Church do they respond with something along the lines of,  

“I’ve never done that before.” 

Or “I don’t know how to do that” 

Or even, “Well that’s not really my thing.” 

And decline the invitation to help out? 

The second person Jesus speaks to says he will follow Jesus but first wants to go and bury his father. That seems a very reasonable thing to do and is in keeping with the commandment to honour one’s father and mother. But Jesus responds by telling the man,  

“Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  

That seems a very harsh thing to say but we have to bear in mind here that in Jesus’ time burial was very different to what we mean by burial. In those days, the newly deceased would be buried but after the body had decayed until only the bones remained, the bones would be gathered up and buried again in an ossuary, or bone box, and that might be up to a year after the person had died. In this second encounter, Jesus asks the man to follow him, and he says he will, but he has something else to do first. And whilst the reason he gives seems a good one, what it amounts to is, ‘I will, but not yet.’ So we can read this as a warning to stop making excuses for not taking up our cross and following Jesus. But how many people do just that? How many people, when they’re asked to do something for the Church say,  

“Oh I will but I don’t really have time at the moment, I’m too busy with…” whatever it might be. But how much of it really is genuine and how much is just excuses? I remember very well, for example, once asking someone to help out at a parish event who told me that they’d like to but couldn’t because they were working that day. That’s fair enough, but according to the photos and post that appeared on Facebook, what they were actually doing that day was having a day out in the Lake District! 

The third person Jesus speaks to says that they will follow Jesus but wants first to go and say goodbye to those at home. Again that seems a very reasonable thing to ask. But Jesus replies,  

“No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”  

Unlike the request to bury their father, saying goodbye to the people at home wouldn’t take very long so there’d be no real delay in this person following Jesus; they could probably have gone home, said their goodbyes, and caught Jesus up further along the road to Jerusalem. But Jesus implies that even this short delay in following him isn’t acceptable. Or at least that what he seems to be saying. I think rather, what Jesus is really talking about here is the problem of not being able to move on, of not being able to leave our old ways behind but of constantly being drawn back to the things we did and the way we were before we heard the Gospel and accepted Jesus as our Lord. And this is a problem we must all know about and be familiar with because it’s a problem we all have to deal with in our attempts to follow Jesus. Those of us who’ve been confirmed have promised to follow Jesus, in that sense we’ve all set our faces towards Jerusalem. But we can’t help looking back at times can we, to things we did before, things that we now know aren’t in keeping with the teaching and example of Jesus, but that we’re still drawn back towards because we enjoyed doing them. It’s a constant battle for us; it’s one I hope we usually win, but it’s one we sometimes lose, if that wasn’t the case we wouldn’t be the sinners we all accept that we are.  

Taken out of context, as it is, this morning’s Gospel might not be the easiest to understand but when we put these four brief episodes from Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem in the context of what comes before, we can find a lot of teaching that’s as relevant to us today as it was to those Jesus spoke to 2000 years ago. So as we follow Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and we feel like calling down hell fire on someone, whenever we think the road is getting a bit too difficult for us to walk, whenever we feel like taking a break from the journey or delaying the next part of the journey, and whenever we look back and feel like retracing our steps and going back to where we were before, we’d do well to think about these few short stories from Jesus’ own journey towards Jerusalem and try to hear him calling to us, pointing us in the right direction and telling us to keep our eyes on the road ahead.  

Amen. 

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Propers for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 29th June 2025

Entrance Antiphon 
All peoples, clap your hands.  
Cry to God with shouts of joy. 

The Collect 
O God, who through the grace of adoption 
chose us to be children of light, 
grant, we pray, 
that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error, 
but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth. 
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, 
God, for ever and ever. 
Amen. 

The Readings 
1 Kings 19:16, 19-21 
Psalm 15:1-2, 5, 7-11 
Galatians 5:1, 13-18 
Luke 9:51-62 

Prayer after Communion 
May this divine sacrifice we have offered and received 
fill us with life, O Lord, we pray, 
so that, bound to you in lasting charity, 
we may bear fruit that lasts for ever. 
Through Christ our Lord. 
Amen. 

One of the most well-known of all prayers is the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.

This is a quite modern prayer; it was only composed in the 1930’s, but it has become a very well-known, much loved and often used prayer. And that’s understandable, what’s being asked for in the prayer is very much in keeping with the teaching of Jesus, and I’m sure people would be much happier if they could have the serenity, courage and wisdom mentioned in the prayer. And yet whilst we pray for these things, we often seem to find them very elusive and difficult to practice in our lives.

I remember very well, for example, a time when one of my fellow ordinands at the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield was looking very troubled about something and when I asked him what was wrong he said he’d just submitted a piece of work and was sure he’d left something really important out of the essay. But, as I said to him;

“But you’ve already submitted it?”

“Yes”, he said.

“So can you do anything to change it now then?” I asked,

And he said, “No.”

To which I replied,

“Well there’s not much point in worrying about it then is there?”

That’s just one example from my experience, but I could give others as I’m sure we all could because, at times we all lack the serenity to accept what we can’t change, the courage to change what we can and the wisdom to know the difference. But as we look at the world around us, these are qualities, gifts, that we really do need to have and to practice.

We live in a very troubled world, a very dangerous world, at the present time. If we read a newspaper or watch the news on television, about our own country we seem to hear about nothing but trouble; the cost-of-living crisis, the grooming gang scandal, the problem of illegal immigration, rising crime rates, two-tier justice to name just a few things. And news from the wider world is even worse; war in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and now fighting between Israel and Iran that’s threatening to involve many more countries in a much wider and far worse war. People are worried, very worried about the state of the world, they’re frightened about what may happen, and that’s understandable. But really, can we change any of these things? We may be able to influence things in this country by raising our voices in protest, but are the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Iran, the United States, or any other nation going to listen to what we say and allow what we say to change what they do? I think that’s not even a remote possibility. So these are things we can’t change but, whether we like it or not, have to have the serenity to accept. That doesn’t mean we have to like what’s going on in the world and we shouldn’t. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned with what’s going on in the world, because we should and we should have the courage do whatever we can to help the victims of what’s going on in the world. But we have to accept that the reality of things is that we can’t change much of what’s going on in the world.

In our Gospel reading this morning, we heard St Peter’s great confession of faith that Jesus is “The Christ of God.” And we’re here in church this morning to make that same confession of faith, the Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the incarnate Son of God who was sent into the world to show us the light, to lead us out of the darkness of the world and its ways into the light of God and God’s ways. So what does Jesus have to say to us in the face of so much trouble and danger in the world?

One thing Jesus tells us is not to worry about the things of the world, the things of this life because we gain absolutely nothing from worrying about these things. He asks,

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” 

He tells us not to worry about what will happen in the future: 

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” 

Jesus was speaking here about our own comfort, clothing, food and drink, but he spoke in the same way about great events in the world too: 

“And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.”

But while Jesus tells us not to worry about things we can’t change, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about them and especially for the people involved in and affected by troubles. We know that, while Jesus accepted that the destruction of Jerusalem was coming, he still wept about it. He had compassion on crowds and individuals; we read that a number of times in the Gospels. We know he wasn’t immune to personal anguish because we read how he wept at the grave of Lazarus and suffered in Gethsemane. Even in his own darkest time, as he carried his Cross to Calvary, he still felt compassion for others, as his words to the women to weep for themselves and their children rather than for him tells us.

Jesus’ own example shows us that we should feel compassion for those affected by the world’s troubles but that’s not surprising given his commandment that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. And according to that same commandment and Jesus’ own example, if we can do anything about their suffering, we should. But Jesus also tells us that there are things we can’t change. Things can and do and will happen that we can do absolutely nothing about, but he tells us not to worry about these things. In fact, the only thing that Jesus really says we should be worried about is not being ready to meet him when he comes.

In this morning’s Gospel Jesus tells us that, if we truly want to be his disciples we have to take up and carry our own cross every day. And to carry our cross means to stop thinking about ourselves and our own pleasure and comfort in this life and put seeking the kingdom of God first. It means to stop worrying about worldly matters and concentrate on heavenly matters, eternal things. Time and again in the Gospels Jesus warns us that we have to be about this constantly. He warns us to be ready at all times, never to be found sleeping from this work is the way he often puts it. And he says this is what we must do even when it seems that the world is coming to an end.

“But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” 

And this is something we should worry about because this is something that does lie in our own hands to change. Many things, many terrible things happen in the world that we can’t do anything about, we can’t change those things. But we can change ourselves so that we’re more Christlike and if we don’t make those changes it’s our own fault. Of course we can’t do it without God’s help, without God’s grace, but we have to want that help and we have the courage to use the grace of God to change our lives so that we are living as Christ’s disciples each and every day of our lives.

Many people are looking at the state of the world today and coming to the conclusion that the end times are here, that the end of the world is nigh. Que sera, sera, what will be, will be. There’s very little, if anything  we can do to change the great events of the world, there’s nothing at all we can do to change God’s mind if he has decided that the end has come. What we can do though is ask ourselves if we’re ready to meet Lord. I’m pretty sure that answer for all of us will be something along the lines of.

“No, not really. Can we have a bit more time?”

Well, we may have more time but who knows how much. We might be run over by a bus tomorrow and then what the world does on Tuesday won’t matter to us at all will it. None of us know how much time we’ve got until we have to stand before the Lord so let’s make good use of the time we do have while we have it. Let’s try to have the serenity to accept that there are things we simply can’t change, no matter how much we might want to so that we can worry less about these things than about the things we can change. Let’s ask God for the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can and can’t change. And let’s ask him for the grace to help us change the things we can change and need to change and for the courage to make those changes so that whenever it happens, we will be ready to stand before the Lord. 

Amen.

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Propers for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 22nd June 2025

Entrance Antiphon
The Lord is the strength of his people,
a saving refuge for the one he has anointed.
Save your people, Lord, and bless your heritage,
and govern them for ever.

The Collect
Grant, O Lord,
that we may always revere and love your holy name,
for you never deprive of your guidance
those you set firm on the foundation of your love.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Zechariah 12:10-11, 13:1
Psalm 63:2-6, 8-9
Galatians 3:26-29
Luke 9:18-24

Prayer after Communion
Renewed and nourished by the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of your Son,
we ask of your mercy, O Lord,
that what we celebrate with constant devotion may be our sure pledge of redemption.
Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

In my sermon last Sunday, I spoke about some of the problems we encounter in the Church when it comes to both the profession of our faith and the living out of our faith. To be more specific, I spoke about the problem of people passing off their own ideas as articles of faith and the problem of people claiming to be Christians whilst, at the same time, they ignore the teachings of Jesus and the prompting of the Spirit. People who do these things can and do cause problems in and for the Church. They can often be very forthright in their views and opinions, not least of the sinfulness of those who disagree with them. They can be very public in their rather less than Christian behaviour too. And people can and do leave the Church on account of people like this and people outside the Church can be and often are put off the Church and the Christian faith because of people like this. So how do we deal with this problem.

Obviously, before we can deal with this problem we have to be clear about what the Christian faith, the faith we’re called to live by, actually is. But here again we can run into problems. For some people, the fullness of the Christian faith is found in scripture and anything that’s not there isn’t and shouldn’t be part of the faith. Those who are ordained in the Church of England, for example, are asked to declare that they,

‘…accept the Holy Scriptures as revealing all things necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.’

And yet before they’re asked that the archdeacon or registrar must confirm that those to be ordained have made oaths of allegiance to the sovereign, obedience to the bishop and have, 

‘…affirmed and declared their belief in ‘the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness’.’

So it’s not quite so straightforward as it might seem.

Many people in the Church speak about the true Christian faith as that which was ‘once delivered to the saints’. That’s an expression we find in the Letter of Jude, and it’s obvious that it was first written to deal with the very problem I’m speaking about.

‘Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.’

But who are the saints the faith was once delivered to? The Apostles, certainly, but a lot of what we regard as the basics of the Christian faith were formulated by the early Church, long after the time of the Apostles. The Nicene Creed, for example,  which we say every Sunday and which we use as the standard profession of the Christian faith was first set down in the year 325. But the version we use which speaks of the Holy Spirit being worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son didn’t appear until 381 and that version wasn’t finally ratified until 451.

So whilst the Christian faith, as we now know it, was first delivered to the Apostles by Christ, it was more fully developed by the Apostles and the early Church through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But that shouldn’t surprise us because it’s quite in keeping with what we read in this morning’s Gospel. Jesus quite openly tells the disciples, those who would become the Apostles, that he hasn’t told them everything because they’re simply not ready. It’s the Spirit who will lead them into a fuller revelation of the truth. So it should be no surprise that the Christian faith has developed over the years and has continued to develop as we live under the influence and guidance of the Spirit who guides us into all truth.

But how then can we decide what is of the Spirit and what isn’t? How can we discern between those who are speaking under the influence of the Spirit and those who are simply speaking for themselves?

When it comes to matters of doctrine the best and simplest way is to look at any new idea or teaching and ask if this is consistent with scripture and especially with the teaching of Christ. If it clearly isn’t in keeping with these things, and especially if it contradicts these things, then we can safely reject the idea as being of human origin. But if it is in keeping with scripture and Christ’s teaching then it’s something that we should think about very carefully. And that still goes even if what’s being said is only implied in scripture but can reasonably be said to be true.

One of the groups I often think of when it comes to this is an obscure sect that grew up in Russia in the 18th Century, the Klysts. On the whole they were simply a rather extreme Pentecostal Church who rejected clergy and all the saints except the Blessed Virgin Mary and whose liturgies consisted of ecstatic utterances, speaking in tongues and dancing until they dropped from exhaustion, all under the influence of the Spirit. But there was a small sect among the Klysts  who had some very strange ideas. Some of the Klystee seemed to believe that in order to experience forgiveness and salvation they had to sin. And the more sinful they were, the greater the experience because the greater the grace they were given through forgiveness and salvation. Mixed in with this seems to have been an idea that to be truly holy, all earthly passions had to be lost, and the simplest way to lose earthly passions was to sate them until they no longer wanted them. I think the reasoning here is easy to understand. If you want to know what something tastes like, taste it. And by the same rule, if you want to know what forgiveness and salvation is like you have to do something to be forgiven for and saved from. So the reasoning is easy to understand but carrying on like this can hardly be said to be living in accordance with the teaching and example of Christ can it? So we can’t possibly accept this as a revelation of the Spirit.

Today we celebrate a great mystery of the Christian faith. It’s something that’s never stated explicitly in Scripture and it’s something that, in fact, many people have said and do say, contradicts scripture. But nevertheless, it’s something that has been revealed to the Church by the Spirit and set down in the Creeds of the Church accordingly, the mystery of the Trinity.

We worship the God of Jesus, the God the Old Testament and the New Testament. Both Testaments say that God is one. And yet we worship a God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We know that Jews and Muslims might think that we can’t possibly be worshipping the same God they do because we must have three Gods, not one. We know that, over the years, and still today, there are those who accept Jesus as their Saviour, and yet cannot accept the Church’s teaching that while God is one, God is, at the same time, also three distinct persons. But whilst this understanding of God isn’t made explicit in scripture, it is implied in scripture.

It’s implied at the very beginning of The Scriptures that, although there is only God, there’s some distinction within God;

‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light.’

That’s implied again in God’s creation of the first human being;

‘Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’

We at least have a distinction here between God and the Spirit but, in the prologue to his Gospel, St John speaks of God’s Word as distinct too.

We find implicit references to the divinity of the Son of God in Jesus’ own words that he and the Father “are one” and in his prayer,

“…Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.”

We find implicit references to the Trinity in the account of Jesus Baptism, in the voice of the Father revealing Jesus as his Son and in the descent of the Spirit in the form of a dove. And in Jesus’ command to his Church to baptise people in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

So when people may say that the uniquely Christian understanding of God as Trinty isn’t found in scripture, they’re mistaken. It may not be explicitly stated in scripture, but it is implied in many places in scripture. How God can be three distinct persons, at one and the same time, and yet still be one is a great mystery. It’s something that defies explanation. But shouldn’t we expect that of God? Shouldn’t we expect that there are things about God we simply can’t fully understand or explain? Some people say that the doctrine of the Trinity defies reason. I say that what defies reason is that we should be able to understand God so well that we can fully explain God. Rather than trying to explain the inexplicable, I think it would be much better if we simply accepted the Trinity as a mystery of God. Something we can’t fully understand or explain but as a truth about God that has been revealed to us by the Holy Spirit who was sent to lead us into the truth.
Amen.

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Propers for Trinity Sunday, 15th June 2025

Entrance Antiphon
Blest be God the Father,
and the Only Begotten Son of God,
and also the Holy Spirit,
for he has shown us his merciful love.

The Collect
God our Father, who by sending into the world
the Word of truth and the Spirit of sanctification
made known to the human race your wondrous mystery,
grant us, we pray, that in professing the true faith,
we may acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory
and adore your Unity, powerful in majesty.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

The Readings
Proverbs 8:22-31
Psalm 8:4-9
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

Prayer after Communion
May receiving this Sacrament, O Lord our God,
bring us health of body and soul,
as we confess your eternal holy Trinity and undivided Unity.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.