We hear a lot in the news these days, do we not, about the divisions in our society and about the problems and trouble that these divisions are causing. But then we in the Church should know all about this kind of thing because we’ve been dealing with the problems of division for a long time. And if anyone here thinks that there was a time when the Church was not divided in some way, and those divisions did not cause problems within the Church, I’m sorry to disillusion you, but we need only read Acts of the Apostles and St Paul’s Letters to see that division within the Church has been present since the very early days.  

And division and all the problems associated with division are still with us. For example, almost immediately after the announcement of the Reverend Sarah Mullally as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, GAFCON, the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, the grouping of conservative Anglicans, largely from Africa and Asia, expressed its sorrow and dismay at the appointment, and its concern that the appointment of a female, liberal to the See of Canterbury will only deepen the divisions that already exist within the global Anglican Communion.   

But then we don’t have to look to the wider world, either secular or sacred to see division. People here in our churches today will, I know, be divided in their opinion about what we’re celebrating in church this morning because our annual Harvest Thanksgiving services are a source of division. Some people love them, while others loathe them.  

I must admit, I’m not a big fan of Harvest Thanksgiving services. Not though, because of any great objection to these services in themselves, but because of the inordinate fuss that people can make over them, and the trouble they can cause between even those who absolutely love them. I’ve been in parishes where, if you were to judge by the time and effort that goes into decorating the church and organising who’s going to do what at the service, you’d think that Harvest Thanksgiving was more important than Easter and Christmas combined. I’ve known churches where they form Harvest Thanksgiving Sub-Committees to discuss and organise their Harvest Thanksgiving service which is something they most definitely didn’t do even for Easter and Christmas. And such a completely OTT carry-on is utterly ridiculous, for what is, when all is said and done, simply an optional local celebration in the Church’s calendar.  

And then there’s the trouble these services can cause between those who want to get involved in them. How many times have I heard people arguing and falling out about who’s doing what and who’s decorating which window sill for a Harvest Thanksgiving service. And when it comes to who’s going to do that piece de resistance, the central display in front of the altar, well, at times you’d think people were vying for seats at the right and left hand of the Lord himself!  And the arguments and upset and fall-outs these things cause is again, utterly ridiculous. I’ve even known people leave a church because somebody has done something for or at a Harvest Thanksgiving service that they thought they should have been allowed to do!  

So that’s my problem with Harvest Thanksgiving services. But for other people there’s a more fundamental problem with them For some people, Harvest Thanksgiving services smack of ancient fertility rites They’re uncomfortable with symbols taken from nature taking pride of place in a church and these things fly a little too close to paganism for their liking. And again, I know someone who did leave a church because, in his opinion, things went a little too far in this direction at a Harvest Thanksgiving service one year. As I recall, putting a Green Man image at the centre of the display in front of the High Altar was the straw that broke this particular camel’s back! 

For other people though, Harvest Thanksgiving services are simply anachronistic. For some, they have no real place in today’s world, or at least in our part of the world where the vast majority of people no longer work in agriculture and we no longer rely on the annual harvest for our food.  

Having said all that, you might be forgiven for thinking that I think we’d be better off without Harvest Thanksgiving services but actually, I do think that these services can serve a good and useful purpose, if we can do away with the OTT fuss that some people make of them, and all the pagan imagery and associations that can go with agricultural celebrations, and get back to what should always have been at the heart of our Harvest Thanksgiving services. Originally, Harvest Thanksgiving in church was intended to replace the pagan, or at least semi-pagan festivities that went on in agricultural communities at harvest time with a Christian service of thanksgiving to God. And that’s what we need to get back to; making Harvest Thanksgiving services a reminder of our need, our obligation even, to give thanks to God. And not just for our food, but for all that God gives us.  

To be honest, I think that thanksgiving is sadly lacking in what we do in church, and perhaps in what we do as individual Christians too. Like me, many people here today will be of a generation that was taught to give thanks to God on a daily basis for the food we eat. How many of us, when we were at school had to stand up in class just before the dinner break and say something along the lines of, 

“For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.” 

It’s something we all did, every day from Monday to Friday during school term times. The fact that so many of us remember it from so many years ago tells us how much a part of our lives it was. But how many of us still say grace, a payer of thanksgiving before we eat, today? I do, but not always, I must admit.  

And how many of us include thanksgiving in our prayers? I’ve spoken before about ACTS of prayer where ACTS is an acronym for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication, the idea being that our prayers should be made up of these four elements and in that order. But how much of our prayer is simply a list of requests of what we want God to do for others or for us? And if our prayers are answered, do we even then give thanks to God? Just think about our intercessions in church. One common way to introduce the intercessions is with the words, 

“Let us pray for the Church and for the world and let us thank God for his goodness.”   

But where is the thanksgiving in what follows? We often pray for peace in the world don’t we? But when peace comes, do we ever thank God for it? We pray for the Church but when do we ever thank God for the Church, even though it is his gift to us? We pray for ourselves, and we often lay our problems at the Lord’s feet; but how often do we thank God for the good things in our lives or how often do we thank him when our problems are resolved? We pray for the sick, but do we ever thank God when they recover and are restored to health? And we pray for the dead, asking God to gather them into his heavenly kingdom. But when do we ever thank God for the promise of that gift, the gift of eternal life?  

There is a lot of thanksgiving in our Eucharistic liturgies but, as we say or hear these words of thanksgiving, are we really giving thanks to God? Are we really thinking about the words and feeling thankfulness in our hearts, or are we simply going through the motions? And at the end of the service, for example, when the Dismissal used requires a response of, 

“Thanks be to God.” 

Are we really thanking God for all we’ve just head and experienced? Are we thanking God for that most wonderful gift we’ve received, the very body and blood of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ in the Most Holy Sacrament of The Altar, in our reception of Holy Communion? Or are we simply expressing our thanks that the service is over, in effect saying, “Thanks be to God” but actually meaning something more like ‘Thank God that’s over!’? 

Giving thanks to God should be part of all we do both in the Church and as individual Christians, and Harvest Thanksgiving services should be a reminder of our need and obligation to do that. So whatever we think about Harvest Thanksgiving services personally, let’s at least use them in this way, as a reminder to give thanks to God not just for out food but for all that he’s given us and gives us to sustain us on our earthly pilgrimage.  

Amen.   

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Propers for Harvest Festival, Sunday 5th October 2025

Entrance Antiphon 
The earth has yielded its fruit, may God, our God, bless us. 

The Collect 
O Lord, good Father, 
who in your providence have entrusted the earth to the human race,  
grant, we pray, that with the fruits harvested from it,  
we may be able to sustain life and, with your help, 
always use them to promote your praise and the well-being of all. 
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 
Joel 2:21-24, 26-27  
Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 7-8 
1 Corinthians 1:6-11, 17-19 
Luke 12:15-21 

Prayer after Communion 
Grant, we pray, O Lord,  
that, as we give you thanks in this saving mystery 
for the crops harvested from the earth, 
we may, through the same mystery working within us,  
be worthy to receive still greater blessings. 
Through Christ our Lord. 
Amen.  

Well here we are on the last Sunday of September, ¾ of the year is behind us already and we’re now less than 3 months away from Christmas Day. Exciting isn’t it? I mention that because, notwithstanding that it is a little early, I want to start my sermon this morning with a quote from that most famous of Christmas stories, Charles Dickens’, A Christmas Carol.

It’s from the scene in which Scrooge’s fiancée breaks off their long engagement because she believes that money has replaced her in Scrooge’s affections. And Scrooge responds by saying,

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world” … “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

At the heart of Dickens’ story is a critique of the social conditions of his day and an advocacy of a compassionate social responsibility towards the poor. But in spite of this, and in spite of the high ideals and fine words of so many people since, has anything really changed in the since Dickens wrote those words in 1843? To be honest, I think not. We might not have in this country now the level of abject poverty that existed in Dickens’ time, but nevertheless the poor are still with us, and the world is still very hard on them. And things are still the same when it comes to the pursuit of wealth.

Now I think Dickens chose the words he put on Scrooge’s lips here very carefully and very well. Many people today still do profess to condemn the pursuit of wealth, but for most people it is only a profession, it’s a claim. Because isn’t it true that those who condemn the pursuit of wealth, the greed of the wealthy, very often want to be wealthy themselves? Isn’t it true that they condemn the pursuit of wealth on the one hand while on the other hand, and at the same time, look for ways to make themselves wealthier? And how many people would complain if they were wealthy, very few indeed, I’m sure, because while we often hear people complaining about not having enough money, when do we ever hear anyone complaining about having more money, let alone too much money?

So just as in Dickens’ day, the world is still very hard on poverty and still professes to condemn the pursuit of wealth while at the same time actually doing all it can to pursue wealth. As Christians though, we should have a different attitude towards these things. We should be hard on poverty, but not on the those who suffer from poverty. That is, we should be hard on the existence of poverty as a condition in which people are forced live, lacking the resources and essentials to sustain at least a reasonable standard of living, while at the same time being compassionate and showing some care towards those who are living in poverty. And while there’s nothing wrong with wanting a better standard of living for ourselves and achieving the means, the wealth, to get that, and the Christian faith does not condemn wealth, we should see wealth as something through which we can help not only ourselves but help others too. And this is the lesson of the parable in this morning’s Gospel.

Nowhere in the parable does Jesus say that it’s wrong to be rich. Nowhere in the parable does Jesus say that it’s wrong to enjoy the good things that wealth allows us. Nowhere in the parable does Jesus say that the rich man was a crook, that he’d acquired his wealth dishonestly. Jesus simply says,

“There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.”

Similarly, Jesus makes no comment on why Lazarus was poor. He doesn’t say Lazarus was a bad man who was in any way deserving of his lowly condition. We know that to the ancient Jews, misfortune was often seen as divine punishment for sin, and there are people today who do believe that at least up to a point, the poor are to blame for their own plight because they’re lazy and can’t, or won’t, make good judgement calls between what’s right and wrong, good and bad. But there’s no hint of that in what Jesus says about Lazarus. Rather Jesus simply says,

“And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

So there’s nothing in the parable about the relative merits of either the rich man or Lazarus. Because that’s not what the parable is about. The parable is about the unrighteousness of turning a blind eye to the suffering of others. And more precisely in this case, it’s about turning a blind eye to the suffering of others when it’s going on right in front of our eyes, and we could easily do something to help alleviate their plight.

We’re told that the rich man in the parable dressed in purple. That was the royal, or imperial colour, so it tells us just how rich the man was. He was as rich as a king. And he” feasted sumptuously every day.” So he spent a lot of money, an excessive amount of money, just on food and drink while all the while, there was a poor man, who’s plight he couldn’t help but notice, lying at his gate. A poor man who would have been happy with just a few scraps of food, not from the rich man’s table, but that fell from his table; a few scraps of food that would have either been eaten by dogs or swept up and thrown away with the rubbish. But he wasn’t even offered that. Jesus doesn’t say this explicitly in the parable, but I don’t think we’re left in any doubt that this situation was left unchanged until that great leveller, death, took both the rich man and Lazarus; one to the side of Abraham and one to Hades, one to heaven and one to hell.

Because Jesus didn’t condemn the rich man simply for being rich, there’s no doubt he wasn’t tormented in Hades simply because he was rich but because of his complete indifference towards the plight of the poor man at his gate. A man who’s suffering he was well aware of, and whom he could so easily have helped without it in any way affecting or diminishing his own lavish lifestyle and yet didn’t. And this is what condemns him, not his earthly wealth per se.

In the parable, the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers so that they might change their ways and avoid the torment of Hades. But as Abraham says this has already happened. No, they haven’t been visited by Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas past, present and future, but they have been visited by Moses and the prophets, so they should listen to them. This is something he, and no doubt they haven’t done but perhaps if someone were to go to them from the dead, they’ll not only listen, but repent. But, as Abraham says,

“If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

We know that Jesus is speaking about himself here. He’s saying that if people won’t listen to Moses, to the law, and the prophets, they’re not going to listen to him either. And we know that for many people has been and still is the case. But we’re Christians. We’re people who not only say that we do listen to Jesus, but that we follow his example and live by his teaching. But do we? And especially do we listen when it comes to what he says about wealth and what we should do with it?

We might say, and I’m sure many would say that, Yes, they do listen. And they show that by contributing to charity and so on. But even so, isn’t there still at least a bit of the Ebeneezer Scrooge in all of us? For example, one of the issues that people often raise with me is the inequity of a society in which footballers can be paid more each week, than what even nurses at the very top of their profession earn in a year, and many, many times more each week what nurses lower down the pay scale earn each year. And yes, I would say that is wrong, just as those asking me the question think it’s wrong. But when I’ve asked those people if they were offered tens of thousands of pounds per week to do something they like doing, would they turn it down, suddenly, their expression changes. Because of course, No, they wouldn’t. And the vast majority of people I’ve asked that have been honest enough to admit that they wouldn’t.

And how many of us do the National Lottery? How many of us say that if we had a big win on the lottery that, while we’d obviously look after our family, we’d give lots of money to our parish church and to various charities and we’d use the money to help people. Well we may very well do that. But can any of us honestly say that if we won millions of pounds we wouldn’t use an awful lot of it, perhaps, or probably even, the majority of it to look after ourselves, to improve our situation and indulge in our own pleasures?

I started with Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, because this morning’s parable reminds me a little of the story of Scrooge and Tiny Tim Cratchett. Scrooge is aware of the poverty in the world around him, but he’s so wrapped up in his pursuit of wealth that he ignores it; as far as he’s concerned it’s nothing to do with him. And Tiny Tim is the poor, sickly child of Scrooge’s clerk. But as the story unfolds, Scrooge does begin to listen, he sees not only the error of his selfish ways, but also the good that his wealth can do to help others less fortunate than himself. And he changes. He changes from the “odious, stingy, hard, un-feeling man” he has been and becomes ‘a second father’ to Tiny Tim and

‘… as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.’

Scrooge didn’t give up his wealth as such, he didn’t make himself poor, he just learned how to use the wealth he had for the good of others and did it. And Jesus doesn’t ask us to make ourselves poor, but simply to share our wealth with those less fortunate than us. The question is, are we listening?

Amen.

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Propers for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 28th September 2025

Entrance Antiphon
All that you have done to us, O Lord, you have done with true judgment, for we have sinned against you and not obeyed your commandments. But give glory to your name, and deal with us according to the bounty of your mercy.

The Collect
O God, who manifest your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray, your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven. 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
Amos 6:1, 4-7
Psalm 146:6-10
1 Timothy 6:11-16
Luke 16:19-31

Prayer after Communion
May this heavenly mystery, O Lord,
restore us in mind and body,
that we may be coheirs in glory with Christ,
to whose suffering we are united
whenever we proclaim his Death.
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.
Amen.

If you find this morning’s Gospel reading a little difficult to understand, don’t worry, you’re not the only one! This parable of the Dishonest Manager is one that’s taxed the minds of a great many people including biblical scholars and theologians. The problem with this parable is seeing what Jesus is actually trying to teach us through it. Because he seems to be saying things in this parable that are not only contradictory in themselves but that also contradict our understanding of his teaching in general.

Just think about it. Jesus tells us about a rich man who had a manager who was accused of wasting the rich man’s possessions. So the rich man decides to sack the manager but first he wants an account from the manager of what he’s been up to . And the manager’s in a tiswas because he has to do something very quickly otherwise he’s not only going to be out of a job, but he’s also going to be out on the streets. So what he decides to do is call in as much of his master’s debt as he can and because he hasn’t got much time, he cooks the books in an attempt to make things look right on paper. But this is where the parable takes a strange turn. The manager is getting the boot for not looking after things properly and now it looks like he’s making things worse by fiddling the accounts to cover his tracks but when the master finds out, he actually praises the manager for his shrewdness; he might be dishonest but he’s no fool when it comes to business. And here is where it becomes strange.

The parable reads as a commendation of dishonesty doesn’t it? And we would expect some kind of condemnation of this kind of shenanigan from Jesus, but he actually seems to commend it to his followers, suggesting that they should act in the same way;

“The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.
For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own
generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for
yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may
receive you into the eternal dwellings.”

But surely Jesus can’t be saying that his followers should be like the dishonest manager in the parable, that they’ll receive a heavenly reward for being dishonest. That flies in the face of everything we know and understand about Jesus and his teaching doesn’t it? So what is going on here, what is Jesus really saying in this parable? To be honest, I think what Jesus is trying to say in this parable becomes easier to understand if we read what he says after the parable before we actually read the parable itself.

As we heard this morning, after the parable, Jesus goes on to speak about the importance of faithfulness, in essence he asks if people can’t be faithful with earthly riches, how can they hope to be trusted with heavenly riches. In other words, if we can’t be faithful with what we’ve been entrusted with in this life, how can be given eternal life. To all intents and purposes he says that we are either children of darkness, children of the world, or children of the light , children of God. And we can’t have a foot in both camps, we either serve God or mammon, which is earthly wealth and possessions. And reading on a little further still we find that what Jesus said here brought him into conflict with the Pharisees who we’re told were ‘lovers of money’. And if we read the parable with these things in mind, we see it as both a comparison and a contrast.

So first of all the comparison. The manager is someone who’s been unfaithful. He’s wasted what his master had trusted him with. The manager himself says that he’s not strong enough to work and too proud to ask for charity. So here’s someone who’s abused his position of trust, not least by taking advantage of it by being lazy and thinking that he’s a bit better than other people. But now the party’s over, he’s been found out and asked to give an account of himself. And that spurs him into action, he knows he’s got to do something to save his own skin, and he’s got to do it very quickly. So he does and is spite of the fact that what he does is rather dodgy, his master recognises how shrewd the manager’s been and praises him for it.

And we can compare that to the way God will treat us. We’ve all been entrusted with things by God, and we’ve been charged with being good managers of what God has given us. Now we can be faithful managers of what we’ve been entrusted with, or we can be unfaithful managers of those things, we can either use them, or we can waste them. But one thing is certain, and that is that we will all eventually be asked to give an account of what we’ve done with the things God has entrusted to us. And if we’ve been unfaithful and wasted those things God has entrusted to us we’re going to find ourselves out in the cold, or perhaps in a very hot place in this case! And because we don’t know when we’re going to have to give that account of our management of what God’s entrusted us with, we can’t afford to hang around either. We need to put our affairs in order ASAP and we need to start doing that even sooner. Now.

If we were in this sort of fix in our everyday, worldly lives we would do something about it ASAP, but we delay doing anything when it comes to heavenly matters because we don’t recognise the fix we’re in, it’s not immediately apparent to us and so we think we’ve got plenty of time to put things right with God. And I think this is what Jesus is driving at when he says,

“For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own
generation than the sons of light.”

So we need to recognise the trouble we’re in and do something about putting things right, and we need to get on with it without delay.

The contrast in the parable is in how wealth is used by the children of the world and the children of light. In the parable, the manager fiddles the accounts to try to save his own skin. He’s in trouble for not doing his job properly in the first place and now he tries to put things right as best as he can by cheating his master out of what he’s due. But far from getting into even more trouble, he’s actually praised for his shrewdness, for being smart enough to see a way out, even though it is dishonest. The master, a rich man, a man of the world and no doubt a shrewd businessman himself, recognises a kindred spirit, a shrewd operator and fellow man of the world, and so he praises the dishonest manager.

In contrast, Jesus says to his disciples,

“…make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that
when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.”

Unrighteous wealth is any kind of wealth that holds us back from God. It’s any kind of wealth that we might become so attached to that it stops us from living out the Gospel, any wealth that we might be tempted to use for selfish or even evil purposes. Jesus tells us though to use this to make friends for ourselves. But then he reminds us that wealth will fail.

We know that. We can fall into hard times and run out of wealth and if we’ve used it to buy friends and friendship, how many of those friends remain friends when the wealth does fail? Not many usually. And wealth always fails in the end because we all die and what good is all our unrighteous earthly wealth to us then? None at all. So what does Jesus mean here?

Well the friends he urges us to make are those who can receive us into heaven so he’s not talking about ordinary human friends. Because who can receive us into heaven but God? So Jesus is telling us to use our wealth in such a way that we make a friend of God. He’s telling us to use our wealth in ways that are pleasing to God, so that we become kindred spirits with Jesus. And we know that means using our wealth, whatever it might be, to help other people rather than using it simply to help ourselves. And this is simply another way of saying, as Jesus does a little later,

“You cannot serve God and money.”

This parable then, that seems so strange, is actually not so hard to understand really because all Jesus is trying to say to us is that we need to be faithful managers of what God has entrusted to us, and if we haven’t been, we need to put things right ASAP. He’s telling us that if we’ve used what God has entrusted to us to feather our own nest, we need to stop doing that and start using those things in the way God intended us to use them, that is, to make a friend of God by using what he’s entrusted to us in loving service of others. We have to be shrewd in the service of God, not of earthly wealth, because that is the way to be commended by God for our good management of the things he’s entrusted to us and that is the way to be admitted to the eternal dwelling of heaven.

Amen.

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Propers for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time, 21st September 2025

Entrance Antiphon
I am the salvation of the people, says the Lord. Should they cry to me in any distress, I will hear them, and I will be their Lord for ever.

The Collect
O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law upon love of you and of our neighbour, grant that, by keeping your precepts, we may merit to attain eternal life. 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
Amos 8:4-7
Psalm 113:1-2, 4-8
1 Timothy 2:1-8
Luke 16:1-13

Prayer after Communion
Graciously raise up, O Lord, those you renew with this Sacrament, that we may come to possess your redemption both in mystery and in the manner of our life. Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.